This will be the first of a three part series on the Exorcist films. Obviously I've seen the original before several times, and it holds fast as an absolute classic of 70's horror. But I've only seen chunks of Exorcist II: The Heretic, and haven't seen a lick of Exorcist III: Legion, but Emily and I will endeavor to complete the trilogy this week! Stay tuned!
The Exorcist (1973)
William Friedkin
"That's much too vulgar a display of power, Karras."
Note: some light Once Upon a Time in Hollywood spoilers ahead, but if you haven't seen that by now...what are you doing?
A film from this year that I can't get seem to get out of my head is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I'm a big Tarantino fan, but his latest movie is the first of his to really hit me in a profound way. The world he constructs, the characters he fills it with, and the narrative path he takes to conclude his story is filmmaking from a bygone era. Movies don't look like they used to, and Tarantino's new film makes this abundantly clear. Obviously the look of films changing over time can be a good thing. Visionary directors and cinematographers are supposed to come along and reshape the landscape of film every once in a while, but being able to lovingly emulate the style of an old master is a talent as well. And that's exactly where Tarantino's excels. He has the ability to see film like he's inside the head of the filmmaker who made it, and then recreate it in front of a camera with his own flourish.
But beyond just his technical skill and vision, the story of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood grabs me in a way his stories haven't before. Don't get me wrong: I love how his other stories unfold, and his ability to spin a trashy yarn with all sorts of fun twists and turns is amazing, but Hollywood is so simple and effective. If you go in with some knowledge of the murder of Sharon Tate, the film will lead you on a journey past the fateful end of the 1960's into a mythical land of what-might-have-been. It's as much of a fantasy film as Raiders of the Lost Ark is; a re-litigation of past events as the omnipotent god of a tiny, self-contained film universe.
At the end of Tarantino's film, he conjures a mythical world where the murders did not take place. Does The Exorcist get made in that world? Does the tonal jump from a film like Rosemary's Baby to films like The Exorcist and even Roman Polanski's own Chinatown happen organically without such a senselessly awful and violent crime being committed among one of Hollywood's own? Within just a few years, the Hollywood good guys aren't winning, filmmakers are pushing the boundaries of what's suitable for mass audiences, and movies are being splashed and splattered with bodily fluids. There are other undeniable influences for the reshaping of film through the 1970's--the images coming from the wholesale slaughter in Vietnam and violence in the civil rights movement did a lot to mold independent film around this time as evidenced by titles like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Night of the Living Dead and Ganja and Hess (the murders also directly inspired a new style of exploitation film: the hippie freakout movie, which...stay tuned!)--but for the mainstream Hollywood machine, the Tate-LaBianca murders were a pivotal moment.
Now it seems almost quaint, but the idea of a character projectile vomiting on screen used to be considered the height of depravity, saying nothing about a scene featuring a 12-year-old girl screaming "fuck me!" while violently masturbating with a crucifix. The Exorcist is soaked in blood, bile, vomit, and urine. The scene where Regan pees on the living room rug is particularly effective, especially since Friedkin gives us a beautifully understated scene of the maid later desperately trying to scrub the stain out of the rug, and out of the film. Her efforts are in vain, as eventually the dam breaks, and soon the movie is drowning in revolting slime. And so is film as a medium.
This is a good time to talk about the filmmaking style of people like Friedkin in this era. The detached method of directing, where the auteur sits in his chair and commands his army of actors like a field marshal, died with the last of the technicolor epics. Now directors were in their actors' faces, goading them, prodding them, torturing them to elicit the perfect reaction and emotion to the scene. The Exorcist looks like a wholly unpleasant film to star in. There's intense screaming, physical rending, horrifying apparatuses that thrash them around, and disgusting goo squirted on them. Ellen Burstyn hurt her back in the scene where Regan clocks her in the eye, because Friedkin ordered the harness rig to be yanked back violently to achieve the desired look. Burstyn asked that this particular shot not be used in the film, but it was too perfect, too real, so Friedkin used it anyway. The famous pea soup scene also features a genuine reaction, this time from Jason Miller. The stream was supposed to hit his chest, but instead it sprayed onto his face and into his mouth (a technical glitch he blamed Friedkin for). Is it right to go this far for a film? There's no excuse for physically and emotionally torturing an actor, but the spectacle it produces is certainly a more visceral experience, and that was the goal.
This is plainly evident in the scene where Regan has an imaging procedure performed on the vascular structure of her brain. My wife, a neurologist, was horrified by the procedure, but in doing some reading after watching the film, it was done using cutting edge medical practices from the time. And Friedkin filmed an actual procedure taking place, which means that the pulsing arterial spray we see on the film is someone's real, honest-to-goodness blood squirting out onto the surgeon's hands. It's cold, technical, and horrifying. That whole hospital testing scene is a mix of sterility and bloodshed: a jumble of hulking machines noisily clanking and whirring over a terrified little girl who's lost control of her personality. It's the scariest part of the film by far.
This is going to sound especially depraved, but maybe not so unusual considering my love of Hagazussa: the scene with the crucifix is my absolute favorite. It's where all of the subtext about the mother-daughter journey through puberty and a young girl's confusing libidinal urges passes through the filters of Catholic repression and demonic possession, and we get the wildly unpleasant Regan/Pazuzu masturbation scene. It doesn't matter what era of film you're in: a girl rubbing her mother's face in vaginal blood and then smacking her across the room is always going to be a shock. But I'd argue menarche and the discovery of sexuality are huge shocks to young girls across the world. Maybe not on such an extreme level, but they're life changing and oftentimes traumatic events. Every 12-year-old at some point wonders fearfully to themselves alone in their rooms, "Am I the only one on earth who does this?" This scene can be an almost calming influence: you're not alone, puberty sucks for everyone, and some people have it waaaay worse than you do.
My good friend Ryan is currently wrapping up a Marlene Dietrich film marathon and has been talking about the scenes that filmmakers were able to shoot in the days before the Hays Code took over Hollywood. Sexual perversion, depravity, and excess were fair game before the priggish marms ruined everyone's fun and drove dangerous cinema underground. Did the Tate murder, Vietnam, and civil rights really reshape people's brains in Hollywood, or was it always there under the surface? Did daily violence on television inure audiences to the idea that the world can be a bloody and terrifying place? Is the entire genocidal history of our country to blame for Hollywood filmmakers finally deciding to spray the screen with gore? How deep could we go? How far back could we delve in our own biological history before we found the root need to get grimy?
Without filthy, disgusting art we have no window into that side of ourselves. Actively choosing not to explore the ugly darkness doesn't stop bad thoughts from forming, nor does it stop bad people from doing terrible things. The idyllic Hollywood that Tarantino wistfully dreams of should have given way to filth regardless (and likely that's his point, given what transpires in the last 20 minutes of his film), because that's what audiences need to see to help them make sense of the awful, confounding, and revolting aspects of our own being.
Long live the new depraved flesh.
RATING: A thousand puking Pazuzus
HOW I WATCHED IT: Shamefully I don't own it, so I had to rent it for $3 on Amazon.
BEVERAGE: Double Two Hearted Ale. A depraved amount of hops.
No comments:
Post a Comment