Unrelenting

Rating: Null/10 (22 December 2005)

THE EXORCIST is one riveting horror film for reasons most people who know the film don't talk about. This William Friedkin movie, based on the novel by William Peter Blatty, is not only about the terrors of demon possession- the idea of which is unsettling enough in itself. THE EXORCIST is also about the sterility of the contemporary world, and that is terrifying indeed.
Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn), the lead character in the story, is a successful film actress who is working on a movie being shot on campus at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a film which is the "Disney version of the Ho Chi Minh story", in her words. During the time of this production, McNeil's only daughter Regan (Linda Blair) is stricken with a mysterious ailment, which turns out to be possession by an ancient and violent energy from hell. After numerous medical tests and consultations regarding the "attacks" her daughter is experiencing, the medical staff that she is taking her daughter to advise her to seek the assistance of an exorcist.
McNeil consults a priest/psychiatrist whose brooding presence has caught her attention. Father Damien Karras(Jason Miller), a priest and student of psychology, is himself experiencing alienation and emotional trauma brought on by the recent death of his mother and his own growing lack of faith. Karras agrees to look into the McNeil case. Convinced by a number of disturbing phenomenon that the possession is for real, he makes arrangements for Regan to be exorcised by a father Lankester Merrin (Max Von Sydow), a specialist in both theological and archaeological studies. Merrin travels from Iraq to perform the exorcism. He and Father Karras have a number of dramatic exchanges with the demon, the penultimate of which results in the death of the older priest. Karras then confronts the demon in a sort of street manner, defies it to leave Regan and enter him, and once it has done so, destroys both himself and the demon by hurling himself out a third story window. The negative forces in the earth are set back once again, and the curtain falls.
But what the film leaves unresolved is the surrounding horror, the everyday horror that is much less then supernatural. All through this film, what is pronounced alongside the horrific things the demon does to Regan McNeil, is the essential coldness and lack of imagination to be found in the contemporary world, and this isolation and desolation is suggested in a number of scenes and camera techniques from the very beginning of the film. The opening frame, with the night time shot of the Georgetown brownstone the McNeils live in, is one that proclaims isolation even in the midst of prosperity. The camera jumps then to Baathist era Iraq in its semi-feudal misery, where the priest/archaeologist Father Merrin is overseeing a dig. Not only is the desolation of the near eastern landscape pronounced, but the isolation of Merrin as the western visitor and "other" in a world that he is not part of on anything but a very abstract level.
Back in Georgetown, where modern medical science at its apogee is offered to the McNeils, the very machinery of the modern reeks of sterility and the loneliness of infirmity and death. Nowhere is this theme more pronounced in the film then in the scenes where Karras, seeking to care for his dying mother, is forced to visit her in an underfunded and bureaucratic mental institution that serves the poor. When Father Karras' mother dies, she dies alone, and it is two days before she is discovered by the neighbors.
Friedkin, to his credit, brings onto this hopeless scene some warmth and some light relief through his character Police Lieutenant Kinderman, here played by the very fine actor Lee J. Cobb. Kinderman lives a life of police department by-the-book, but he also has a life of mind and imagination that bolsters and prepares him for his everyday world. A film geek, he is fond of making semi- humorous allusions to his favorite movies in conversations with the protagonists in the movie. And it is entirely suitable that the movie ends on a note with him and a young associate of Father Karras, as opposed to the last, cold shot of the stairway next to the brownstone, as did the earlier released version of this movie.
All in all, I think THE EXORCIST is far more about the horror of humanity at war with itself then it is about any supernatural visitations. I offer as parting validation for this assessment one of the last dialogs between Father Karras and Father Merrin. Karras asks why the demon has chosen a child to victimize, and Merrin replies that it is so people will despair, and feel themselves unworthy of the love of God. And it is this very self-imposed unworthiness that Friedkin focuses on for much of the film. At the end of the day, it is we whose imaginations have failed, who have no answers to our mutually agreed upon isolation. And that's the real terror. No demons need apply.