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Reviews
The Exorcist (1973)
A film that bears your soul open to its wounds...
I've wanted to write something about the film 'The Exorcist' for quite some time now. With over a thousand reviews I wasn't sure if I could add anything new or original, but perhaps there is.
The Exorcist was a cultural phenomenon, appealing to and playing on the most primal fears of millions around the world. Only three other movies have been capable of attaining some of the levels of primal dread that infuse the whole of the Exorcist, and they are the 1963 version of 'The Haunting', 'The Legend of Hell House', and (believe it or not) the first instalment of 'Paranormal Activity'.
The Exorcist was released back in 1973, and at that time I was a curious thirteen year old, but being a tall fellow, I passed for eighteen, so with 2 other friends and my then girlfriend, we managed to get into the cinema and watch the original theatrical release a week after it opened here in the UK. I was already a thoughtful and deeply internalising young lad. I don't mean to say that I had psychiatric problems or anything, I didn't, just that I have always had a penetrating observation and intuition. I suppose you could say both my girlfriend and I were equally intelligently sensitive, and we had both read the book.
The Exorcist hits home on a number of levels, primarily because it is a visceral assault upon both eyes and ears. The director, William Friedkin, gave the film a pseudo-documentary realism, employing techniques of imagery and high and low sound that had not been fully utilised in movies before, but certainly some aspects of it employed in his earlier film 'The French Connection'.
I wasn't to realise at the time, but the most poignant scene in the movie did not appear in the original theatrical cut, and only some 30 years later was it added in the Director's cut. I am writing about the scene with the two Jesuit priests sat on the stairs, just after the first part of the exorcism. Friedkin was wrong not to include this scene in the original cut, because it contains all the dread of the film, and also the required hope the audience craved for as relief, not just from the visceral assault on their senses, but also, as something to take home with them as protection and defiance against their primal superstitions and fears.
Father Karras, asks of Father Merrin, why this little girl had been chosen by such an evil and chaotic force? The whole film rests on Father Merrin's response, which is itself an exorcism when he states in a very tired and world-weary quietness, "
that it is to get us to despair. To make us think that God could not ever truly love us." Perhaps, the reason why 'God is dead' as Nietzsche declared is because we chose the concept of God to be dead? Numbed and deadened into its rejection, and the vacuum it left could only be filled with all the aspects of despair and purposelessness, and an absence of anything meaningful in our lives. It places us in a limbo of emptiness, and today's modern world utterly reflects this. It is nothing more than a mask of glitter and sparkle, but on the inside, it is rotten and putrid and infested with malignant despair. It is sterile, but we pretend it isn't.
At the end of the film the child is saved through the sacrifice of the lives of the two Jesuit priests, but there was no winner of the battle. It was simply one of many spiritual skirmishes, and such scuffles of the spirit continue today, and that is both fault and blame of all religions, because of their canons and dogmas. Religion highlights the one important aspect of humanity that it never actually teaches, and that is, humanity is possessed, both figuratively and metaphorically, and evil souls are running the world. Is there a ritual of prayer to answer such sickness?
Hannibal (2013)
Opportunties missed, yet engaging...just.
Having just watched the pilot episode of the new American TV series Hannibal, one cannot but draw references and parallels with the 'Hannibal' material already extant, and perhaps, also, to the Millennium series starring Lance Henriksen.
The character Hannibal Lecter engages our interest for any number of reasons, he certainly engaged mine, as I have read all the books, and have all the movies on DVD, but I don't obsessively re-read or re-watch the material over and over again, so there's nothing to be read (in the way of a profile) for my interest in the character. The Lecter universe came from the mind of American author Thomas Harris, so what sort of profile about him could be gleaned about that? I thought the pilot episode too short. I felt it would've profited more by dealing more with Hobbs' killings. We enter the frame after he has killed 8 girls, but we soon learn that one of the murders was not Hobbs', but made to look as if it were to hide the real killer and his motive.
Will Graham, a character whom is the opposite side of Lecter's coin, twins of polarity, equally engages our interest, through his flawed and fragile disposition. He's an acute empath, and able to intuit motives of others by their actions and words, able to feel other's pathological behaviour and know their raison detre, bringing him face to face with the most unpleasant knowledge.
Hugh Dancy plays the character of Graham with too much overwrought conviction, he makes him too fragile, bordering on dysfunctionality, and doesn't present the one thing that drives him to take on the cases...his sense of wanting to protect and to bring justice, for without which, his empathetic ability would have him constantly crumble into a heaped mass of gibbering insularism. Dancy needs to dial the fragility back, and dial forward a bit more on his inner strength.
Mads Mikkelsen seems to be playing his Bond bad guy character in portraying Lecter. He needs to bring more gravitas to the character as Lecter is a super-intelligent, socio-psychopath of incredible range and versatility, with an almost supernatural sense of foresight, and as such, a most fearsome predator. He too, paradoxically, is an empath, but in the negative sense to Graham's, having disconnected morality altogether from the ability due to environmental life experiences whilst growing up...utterly devoid and incapable of emotional response or connection.
The series is not gruesome enough, nor dark enough in resonance, and therefore lacks the gravitas it needs to convey the terror of both Graham's empathetic immersion into the killer's mind, and the actual acts of the killer. The way the series presents Graham's actual immersion into his empathetic imagination will soon become repetitive and annoying, so I hope future episodes see a lessening in its use.
With a little more daring and darkness, a little more immersion into that which Graham is capable of imagining, this series, already a winner, could become a classic series, but it needs to take more substantial risks as it is too sanitised for its subject matter.
Eden Lake (2008)
A Disturbing and Visceral Attack upon the Emotions...
Never at any time did I feel frightened watching 'Eden Lake', what it did imbue in me was a swirl of emotions that led me on a roller coaster ride of intense feelings, up and down and around with anger and despair, and hopelessness.
If you allow it, this film will caress you at the beginning, and slowly begin to squeeze you until it has you gripped in raw malice with its visceral and shocking ending.
Yes, there are some implausible actions from the lead male actor's character (Fassbender), which ultimately opens the door to what befalls him and his girlfriend (Reilly), but for the viewer there are some recognitions to be had when we first come across the teenagers and their display of 'feral' and disrespectful behaviour. We have all seen it in teenagers, many of whom society laughingly and wrongly calls 'children'. It is these recognitions that makes the movie so disturbing for the audience, for we may know people like these teens, and we could accidentally and tragically meet them on the way home from some where? Such as the awful and tragic 'real-life' situation on this line of thought that was met with by Sophie Lancaster and Robert Maltby, for whose meeting with 'feral' youths as depicted in this movie may have provided the story?
This film will not leave you feeling good, even though it is a good movie. Discretion is advised on first viewing.
Knowing (2009)
Well paced and engaging movie, but not for everyone...
I really enjoyed this movie, even though the ending will be perceived as something akin to religious overtones. How you will perceive this movie will depend upon a number of things, least of which will be your own mindset.
The movie itself is well-structured, evenly-paced, particularly when the pace is picked up towards the film's final denouement. The effects are incredible and realistic, although containing much of fantasy elements at the end.
I'm not going to discuss the film in respect of giving away the plot, but as depressing as the elements of the film are in how they are conveyed, it does end on a upbeat note by piquing one's sense of religiosity (ie, one's sense of feeling spiritual).
Whatever your mindset or ideology, creed or philosophy, the film is thought-provoking and engaging, and can be enjoyed if you allow for what Coleridge coined in his notes on poetry..."the suspension of one's disbelief"...and undertake the analysis sometime later. It is good to see Nicholas Cage back to participating in a film that is going to be a surprise hit.
Go see it...it's a good one!
Taking Liberties (2007)
If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear...
Well this is not about hiding, but about becoming cognescent of the draconian creep taking away personal privacy, and public freedoms and liberties. It is not about terrorism, but about the misuse of the terrorism act to surveille the population. It is about agenda, opaque to public perception and concern.
Non-professor Stahlman would have you believe it is all bunkum, even though it is unfolding right before his and your eyes. He would seek to curtail your curiosity in seeing this movie, with petty innuendo and obsfucation. You have your mind to decide what you see and don't see. It is for you to decide the importance of the film...whether the film is crap or not, it carries a very important message, and it is one you should at least be aware of.
Some reviewers have called the film entertaining and humorous, it is neither, Its subject matter is neither entertaining or humorous, it is serious and downright scary. Sometime in the future you will face the very thing this film discusses. No matter how hard you try to keep yourself and your family out of it (as if it is someone else's problem, someone else's fear), it will come calling. The question you need to ask is...What will you do when it does? How will you be able to deal with it, and what resources will there be at hand to help you? Well, if you do not prime yourself before hand, you will perceive there to be none.
I found myself getting extremely angry whilst watching the film, because it reminded me all too starkly that what was defeated with Hitler, is now winning with Blair and the current imbecilic incumbent of No 10. It is winning through a series of gradual unfoldments, incremental tightenings of the noose around each of our necks. You already feel it in your personal economy, the means by which you are enchained to repeatable patterns of behaviour, day in and day out.
Generally the media will not report it. When they do, they will sing the constriction of your liberty as beneficial to you. They will make it sound like a good idea; but like all good ideas, they are open to abuse sometime in the future. Freedom and liberty has to be constantly guarded and fought for. You cannot expect government to be benign, and for your good to safeguard your liberty. It will not do that, it will safeguard its own, and you being freedom and liberty-loving, are a threat to that.
If you've nothing to hide, and have nothing to fear, why then the systematic reduction in your freedom, liberty and personal privacy? Simply because, your government considers you to be a potential terrorist, and will misuse the terrorist act to defend, not you, but itself. Individually, you are expendable, collectively, you are a mob. See Naomi Wolf - From Freedom to Fascism ( A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot). This is not just happening in Britain, but around the world. See the movie and discern for yourself, it just might open your eyes.