Pain and Helplessness in The Exorcist
Last November, when Doctor Sleep came out, I got to write about The Shining, and at its core, it’s about a dad slowly trying to kill his family. The person or member of a family we otherwise think of as being nurturing and giving all they have to protect their loved ones. Realizing now that a similar idea can be applied to William Friedkin’s masterful The Exorcist, even with supernatural elements at play, it still comes back to that idea.
It starts with a little girl, Reagan MacNeil (Linda Blair) who is the daughter to Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) an actress living in Washington D.C. balancing work and being a mom. As things slowly start to get worse with Reagans’ health and unexplainable disorders are soon emerging, Chris is forced to deal with the internal battle with science and superstition with Doctors and Psychologists coming up with different answers to deal with Reagan. In a last-ditch effort, Chris turns to Damien Karass, a young priest with somewhat of knowledge in Exorsicms but Father Lankester Merrin (Max Von Sydow) knows more, and together they work to use religious rituals for lifting the demon out of Reagan
It’s truly a feat of filmmaking from Friedkin, editing by Evan Lottman and makeup effects by Dick Smith to conjure something with such longevity. The Exorcist is the perfect “lightning in a bottle” case study with all the right people coming together at the same time, even with the decisions considered risks paid off considerably well. Max Von Sydow is unknown to American audiences, child actors are always a gamble and Jason Miller had never acted before. Ellen Burstyn is the only recognizable face, coming hot off King of Marvin Gardens and The Last Picture Show but wasn’t Warner Brother’s first choice, Shirley Maclane, Jane Fonda or Audrey Hepburn was.
The gambles even extend onto Friedkin, who is off of winning best picture with The French Connection and couldn’t be less of a conventional horror director, but someone who gives a documentary, raw approach. He has a reputation for being psychotic onset, known to slap actors to get the emotion he is looking for and shooting guns with crew around him to capture certain energy. At least from what I’ve seen, this isn’t as infamous as the mentally and physically toxic methods from someone else like Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher, since probably Friedkin never held the consistency in his filmography like the other two. Still, he saw this a more an Ingmar Bergman film like Cries and Whispers rather than something else more condescending. Like Friedkin sees himself and relates to Chris’ distraught and paranoia, while the writer of both the original novel and screenplay William Peter Blatty can sympathize and belives in the power of Christianity more with Father Karass
Which is another thing you can say it shares in common with The Shinning, that the interrupter from text to screen has the unfortunate task of chipping away details to fit their vision with respecting the person who made the story come to be? The big difference being Blatty wrote the script and King didn’t, leading to a notorious, longstanding disagreement between Kubrick and King but with Blatty, he formed a relationship with Friedkin that is somehow perfect to complement both their interests. The skeptic v the believer.
Blatty had more disputes with Warner Brothers, mainly about creative differences and doubts this movie has poor chances of working out with no known names attached than he did with Friedkin, who was the only director he wanted to adapt his screenplay. Its something that book to the film will always be difficult, considering that it is the director’s movie but the original text puts up borders to respect and fans of said original text to be extra critical.
The Exorcist really just digs at the idea of helplessness so perfectly. Nobody feels like they have a secure grasp on this unexplainable situation, especially Father Karass. We spend the most time with him and expect he is our hero to come in and save the day with Chris’ worries put to rest, but he just lost his mom. Karass is a very young priest at that, feeling doubtful that he can’t rise to the occasion as opposed to someone like Father Mirren can.
The imperfections benefit this character and lend a helping hand to Chris with providing relatability and clarity that she desperately needs. She knows just as much about the art and philosophy behind exorcism, debunking any assumptions that these things are routine. Furthermore, Chris’ husband is only mentioned to be off-screen in Europe, Karass then fills this void of a father figure and rock to Chris. Not one single parent can take the mental anguish the with witnessing the things your daughter goes through and Ellen Burstyn masterfully communicates how the jargon and lack of results from health officials and psychologists only confuse and hurt her instead of help.
Here is a third act that's one of the best ever in a horror movie. Chilling and exhausting, both for Karass, Merrin, and the audience, the titular exorcism is one sheer psychological anxiety. Reagan has fully transformed into something truly terrifying but heartbreaking because of the reminder that she is a twelve-year-old girl. The process Mirren and Karass practice on Reagan is uncertain but looks like the best case with Mirren’s commanding character introduction. With much time spent on rehearing hail mary’s and spritzing holy water to penetrate the demon, Karass is then winded from the name-calling and Mirren dies mid exorcism. Even though Karass sacrifices himself once the demon enters himself, we find that there is ultimately light at the end of the tunnel. With how much emotional turmoil we see this mother-daughter duo go through, Friedkin and Blatty leave them with just peace and quietness, which is more than enough to ask for.
