Great DVD... Dreary commentary...

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 2003)

The DVD edition of "the version you've never seen before" is technically perfect. But the director's commentary is dreadful. It is of the "descriptive video for the blind" kind, and spends the whole time describing, without insight or originality, everything that happens on screen. The only exceptions give rise to horrendous factual errors. Two of them are in the Irak introduction: William Friedkin talks of "prophet David" (for Daniel) being buried under Nabuchodonosor and comments on the walls of Nineveh being destroyed by Joshua's trumpets (I don't care how powerful those trumpets were, they were in Jericoh, 2 thousand miles away). I would have switched the horrid thing off but I stuck with it to understand the only thing that still bothers me with the script, i.e. how the St. Joseph medal Father Merrin finds in Irak ends up around the neck of Father Karras in the last scenes. [Anyone's input on this is welcome.] Unfortunately, this is not the sort of thing Friedkin has on his mind and this apparent contradiction is never explained. We will have to assume that it is a medal that is very common and that Father Karras came across one independently. P.S.: Friedkin's description of the scene where Regan tears off this medal from Father Karras' neck has "Chris" (Regan's mother) ripping it off the good father's neck...