"But
whoever causes the downfall of one of these little [children]
who believe in Me-it would be better for him if a heavy
millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned
in the depths of the sea!" -
Jesus Christ, The Bible
These
words should be a warning to anyone who would hurt a child-much
less try and use God as an excuse for such abuse. But unfortunately,
in the life of Angela Shelton, these words were never heeded.
Traumatized
as a child by her father, stepmother, and brother, Angela
Shelton tried to forget about the past by becoming a successful
model in Paris and New York. Eventually she even went on
to help Gavin O'Conner make his first film, "Comfortably
Numb" and co-write his second film, "Tumbleweeds,"
for which he won the Filmmaker's Award at the 2000 Sundance
Film Festival. However, she could never quite get past her
own past demons, finding herself drawn into one abusive
relationship after another.
Feeling
all alone as a woman, Angela decided to make a movie about
women in America. She decided that the most random way to
select women would be to find all the women who had the
exact same name she had. Somehow, she felt if she could
make a documentary about all of them, she would find what
she was missing in herself.
To
her shock, she discovered that, of the 40 other Angela Sheltons
she tracked down who were willing to participate in the
movie, 24 of them had been molested, raped, and/or suffered
extreme physical abuse. What had started out as a general
search for women who happened to have her same name was
transformed into a journey of discovering what abuse does
to women who suffer it and making other women realize they
are not alone.
Eventually
she tracks down an Angela Shelton that happens to live in
the same town as her abusive father. This Angela Shelton
actually tracks down sexual predators and encourages the
filmmaker to confront her father.
On
Father's Day, she ends up doing exactly that.
Angela
starts on a journey across
America in an RV that eventually...
...leads
to her confronting her
child-molesting father.
Content
As I sat down to watch this film, I noticed that the pacing
is a bit slow and shaky in the beginning. At first I simply
chalked it up to a minor flaw, but then reconsidered as
I watched the rest of the film and finally saw it conclude
in a similarly shaky method. It was edited in such a way
that even the pacing of the film felt like the confession
of a survivor - starting slowly at first, as the person
works up the courage to bare her soul, and then begins to
gush forth like a dam bursting as all the darkness pours
out in a single telling; and when all of the grief and the
anguish and the evil she have been exposed to has finally
been expended, she ceases her narrative amidst sobs of utter
exhaustion.
