I know that I brought this movie up in another post that is very recent but as that post entailed, I bought The Exorcist and watched that thing that night, late in the dark of the basement room I sleep and practically live in, and really enjoyed it for perhaps the same reason I think I did as a kid since it really is not a horror film or at least it isn't intending to be, it is more like in the vein of a psychological thriller which is kind of the horror type movies I have grown to over the recent years. Movies that don't necessarily have a lot of blood and gore or throwing as many nameless characters to get slaughtered, but where it has a slow build where the main focus is the story and the characters that allow itself not to shock (or at least not always) but to have this feeling of angst and dread permeate throughout, sticking inside of someone's mind for years to come. I'll get into those movies more in detail in a future post since that isn't the real focus of this one so back to the movie. I had a lot of things that I remembered about it but some things I had forgotten was how slow and methodical the movie was, where it takes a little over a half an hour into the film before something that pertains to the possession sinking in occurs or even the fact that the exorcism doesn't happen until the 1;30 or so mark. I could go on and on while kind of kick myself for not buying this movie sooner since it really has become one of my personal favorite movies (which is pretty much my entire Bluray collection up to this point, the DVDs are filled with good movies and some so called guilty pleasures).
After watching the movie, I kind of grew an obsession with it and watched through all of the special features that were available and part of it did kind of involve what William Friedkin's interpretation of what the message of the movie was, which he described as being about the mystery of faith. That got me thinking about the movie all the more and what was really the focus, that the thing that people most likely remember about the movie, the possessed Regan MacNeil and the exorcism, was looking at it the wrong way. Throughout the movie, it does show a lot of the going ons of the MacNeil's, with Chris being an actress who is working on a movie in Georgetown who has to deal with her daughter's changing personality out of the blue, initially through a lot of medical tests (another thing I had completely forgotten yet might be one of the more cringe worthy moments of the movie) but there is also the amount of time that is put on Damien Karras to the point where the story might be about him and what goes on with him throughout the film.
The amount of time spent with Karras is the reason why I completely agree with the whole mystery of faith angle, since in the beginning of the movie, he is losing his faith due to the deteriorating health of his mother and the fact that he moved away from her due to his work and rarely sees her. Eventually, his mother dies and it leaves him struggling with himself since he still goes through his duties in the church yet feels as if he is lying to himself while trying to deal with the regret of thinking that he had been the main reason why she died in the first place. It isn't until while later, after he had been interviewed by Detective Kinderman regarding the death of Burke Dennings, the director/boyfriend of Chris MacNeil, where he actually meets the girl, who at that point was taken over completely by the demon Pazuzu. Since he is a psychiatrist along with his faith being diminished, he is skeptical of what is going on, only going to see her again later to record some evidence due to how scared Chris was with what was going on, which was coming from a nonbeliever (which I'll get to later). Part of what gets to him though is that the demon knows what is going on in his head and plays around with it, either through the changing voices to people that he saw like the homeless man and even his mother, to the point where it could be said that the real purpose of possessing Regan was to break Karras by the worst means imaginable. So later on, Father Merrin comes into play to perform the exorcism and the whole time, the demon is more focused on Damien and even poses as his mother for a moment to get at him even more. And then the end happens, with Karras sacrificing himself and is left dying while confessing his sins to Father Dyer, which could signify that the whole experience had brought his faith back.
There are a few scenes that aren't focusing on Karras that do kind of go into the mystery of faith angle as well. The first one I'll mention is the one that turns out to be the breaking point of Chris to where she realizes that the only solution might be an exorcism, and that is the scene with the cross and the "Let Jesus fuck you" line. In some of the interviews, the writer of the book and screenplay William Peter Blatty wrote that scene that way for a purpose that is stated rather well and that is he needed to come up with something that would convince a nonbeliever (Blatty sees Chris as an atheist which might be more stated in the book but it could just be pure agnosticism in the movie or I'm reading that wrong) to actually realize what needed to be done. The scene needed to be powerful enough to make someone who puts all of their faith in science and technology that this was beyond the mortal coil and it works since what could be worse for a mother than to see their daughter mutilate themselves with a cross and them forcing themselves on her. I'll go into one more and it is something that I only got when listening to the commentary track and that is when Father Merrin is about to begin the second round of the exorcism after kicking Karras out due to his realization that he couldn't handle it. In the movie, Merrin takes nitroglycerin pills due to his heart condition that might have been caused by the previous encounter with Pazuzu years prior, and right before he enters the room again, he is in the bathroom taking another pill with the realization that he most likely will die in that bedroom no matter the outcome. Back to the preparation, in the commentary Friedkin told Max Von Sydow to perform the prep scene in a way where he was also giving himself his last rites in the process due to knowing that his life would be cut short very soon (and it does). It gives that scene a lot more to it than I initially gave it since it also does play into faith and that the demon was trying to break everyone in the house along with Karras. Merrin is more stoic at this point than Karras is since his faith was not wavering like the latter's was and that scene could also mirror the sacrifice Karras gives in the end as well.
I would not want to get into my own personal beliefs since I think that if I did, the people who read this would probably get the wrong idea of my interpretations of the film. But I can talk about Friedkin's since I'm not the guy but I've heard him talk about it a lot in interviews. He considers himself agnostic, filming The Exorcist as a believer (mainly in the news story that the book was based on) and his philosophy amounts to a line from Hamlet that I wish I could remember exactly what it was. It was something like "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt up in your philosophy" but I might have written that wrong just now. I can get behind that and it does kind of figure into why he views the movie as a meditation on the mystery of faith. Faith really does have a bad reputation due to its connection with religious beliefs but limiting faith to that is a disservice. Faith can amount to having a belief in something that you think to be true without any knowledge whether or not that would be the case, which in itself can either be broken or enforced when one were to learn new things that might contradict one's previous beliefs. The main characters, mainly Chris and Damien, all have times in the movie where their faith in whatever they believe in is broken and there is always that struggle of what to do afterwards with all the pieces remaining. It really is a mystery and the questions that could be asked from viewings make this movie more able to stand the test of time along with elevating it beyond what could be nothing more than just pure shock and that has to be a credit to the dual vision of Blatty and Friedkin in order to put out the best film they could, hopefully having future generations watching the movie and getting their own interpretations of it while still being able to enjoy it.
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