#11 The Exorcist (1973). While the special effects are justly celebrated and memetically abundant -- the turning head, the spewing vomit, the raised lettering on skin, the floating above the bed -- I have always found the quieter moments of Friedkins adaptation of Blattys novel the more memorable. It is easy to forget because of the effects pyrotechnics on display that at black heart, this is a very quite, understated movie, at least that is, between moments of intense shock and horror. Even the famous Tubular Bells motif by Mike Oldfied (surely one of the most influential musical themes of the era) is very restrained, favoring silence over bombast. During the long stretches of almost entirely dead or emptied production sound, we are treated to a meditative study in the meanings of modern morality, in what it means to be good or evil in a scientific age. Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) is a troubled soul in danger of losing his immortal being, or at least, any belief in an afterlife where one is supposedly saved by a benign God. Between his Jesuit study of psychiatry (in which he has seen the Churchs own culpability in confusing mental illness with demonic possession, often to even worse results than not performing an exorcism) and his own loss of faith owing to his mothers horrific demise to lingering pain and misery, Father Karras is the perfect protagonist to become enmeshed in the hopeless case of popular film actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her troubled daughter Regan (Linda Blair). After state-of-the-art doctors, medicine and mental health advocates have failed her, MacNeil turns to faith to salvage her daughter from the clutches of evil personified in the form of Pazuzu, an ancient Middle Eastern demon loosed in part by the unwitting acts of excavationist Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) during an archeological dig in Iraq. The intensity of the quieter moments wherein all of the shown participants struggle to make any sense of their lives amidst the confusion of endless wars, cultural clashes and political protests, is a very 1970s distillation, and yet, remains powerfully transcendent into modern times, right down to the troubles originating in Iraq and then taking possession of the D.C. homeland in the form of our former innocence, a sacrificial child. And, too, as a parent of a child with mental illness, I can readily relate to Burstyns distraught attempts to find an answer, any answer, that will provide the one thing all forms of intervention often seemingly lack: a satisfying outcome. The film was a sensational hit in its era, helping to define the very blockbuster mentality that would, ironically and sadly, come to doom such New Hollywood visionaries as its director William Friedkin to a later it must open huge or well move it out initial weekend at the box office mentality. But faulting Friedkin for excellence as causative is unjust, as modern films that are watered down clones hoping, and failing, to generate similar cultural relevance demonstrate. I have often thought Fellinis Juliet of the Spirits was an influence on the Regan possession scenes, especially the scenes wherein Juliet consults with the blind psychic, who growls in a similar fashion and is similarly seen in her bed in a nightgown, offering prophetic words of caution and doom. And, yes, the possession scenes are still terrifying, and shocking in their grotesque nature, which still makes The Exorcist one of the greatest horror movies ever made, IMHO.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 14:33:19 +0000
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