The Exorcist

Please note the purpose of this blog is to discuss established classics that I've never seen. As such, the following is laden with spoilers.

Why So Long?
There's a whole sub-genre of films that everyone of my generation managed to see before they turned eighteen. Think Jurassic Park, Star Wars or The Goonies. For some reason, The Exorcist belongs to this genre. Which, when you think about it, must have been a close run thing for some people as it was only shown on television for the first time in 2001. Suggesting to a group of mates that we watch The Exorcist was met with objections regarding how they'd already seen it and were too scared to watch it again. As time marches on and I progress into my mid-thirties, I thought it time that I take a break from my annual Halloween tradition of re-watching The Shining and stick this on.

And?
I can't think of a better way of summing this one up than, f**k me this is a great film. This film holds what must be a near-unique position in that, despite being universally praised, it still manages to be better than I was expecting. Even when one enjoys a film that they come to late, there remains the issue of familiarity with the more iconic moments. There are probably tribes in the Amazon who are aware of the pea-soup scene. In most cases this familiarity with certain sequences means that, as a viewer, we already have a fair idea of how a film will play out and I had assumed this would be true of The Exorcist. Instead, much to my surprise, the most iconic moments can't add up to much more than fifteen minutes of the running time. Furthermore, they're not representative of the film, if like me you were expecting two hours of head-rotations and screaming, you're in for a quite a shock.

There's no jump-scare, no sudden volume-increase on a scratched violin, nothing at all to release the tension that slowly builds up in your body throughout. The difference here though is that we're also under no illusion as to what is happening. We know there's no twist coming, we know that the doctors are wrong and that this truly is a demonic possession. As such, one doesn't experience the film as a series of thrills and chills, instead one is just overcome with a sense of true dread. 

"You're gonna die up there"

The biggest surprise for me, although when I paused to reflect afterwards, it really shouldn't have been, was just how catholic the whole thing was. I don't mean in the obvious sense, the film is called The Exorcist after all. Rather, what I'm getting at is how the whole film hinges on the idea of faith. If we do not empathise with Father Karras, if we don't embark on this spiritual journey with him, the film immediately loses its power. If the film was to shift focus to Burstyn's tortured mother, or Von Sydow's religious soldier; we'd have a very different film and one that, I wager, would not work half as well. Odd to be writing this about a film that was banned in the country I grew up in but this might be the most catholic film I've ever seen. And I've seen The Passion of the Christ. If they aren't already, they should be selling this in the Vatican.

Will You Be Watching It Again?
Hell yes.


Has Any Light Been Shone on Some Heretofore Unknown Bit of Pop Culture?
This one is too famous for any of its cultural moments to have come as a surprise unfortunately. However someone really needs to write a great piece on Max Von Sydow's crusade against the dark forces, from The Seventh Seal, through this to Game of Thrones, when the man passes, we might be in some serious trouble.