Review of Great Photo, Lovely Life

Photojournalist Amanda Mustard and filmmaker Rachel Beth Anderson have made a brutal documentary about Amanda's grandfather Bill Flickinger, a self-admitted serial pedophile who abused the female members of his own family and patients and their family members within and related to his chiropractic practice for many years. It took until the early '90s for Flickinger to be held legally accountable for any of his crimes, but even then he served a relatively abbreviated prison sentence (and got released early for his "good behavior"!) The links that Amanda makes to the Christian religiosity of generations of her family (until she relinquished that blind faith) are interesting, with many interview subjects emphasizing that God will forgive even the most prolonged and heinous sins imaginable and then welcome His true believers with open arms into Heaven (playing the "Get Outta Hell Free" card). Flickinger's claims that most underaged girls he victimized "enjoyed" being in his company and his inappropriate touching as much as he did-made me physically ill. Here's what I've never been able to fathom about pedophilia: how can it be sexually stimulating or fulfilling to cause someone to be abused who is sexually undeveloped and/or inexperienced and utterly incapable of understanding what's happening to them (more accurately, being perpetrated upon them)? It seems, not just terrifyingly insensitive, but literally illogical and totally nonsensical. So it's got nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with abuse of power and adult authority. In other words, it's the unmitigated torture of children, and the worst crime I could imagine. Although I don't disagree with some reviewers saying this film is self-indulgent, it's interesting how many believe that the family/victims had the right to hide their trauma from each other and the rest of the world, help the abuser cover up serious crimes and ultimately help him avoid both legal and personal accountability for years. In other words, people's so-called "rights to their privacy" trumps society's rights to know of the threats to their own lives and safety. Rate 8/10.