This is a classic movie to me. Not just because it's a classic movie for everyone else, but also because it's a movie that I first hated, then I didn't like but I saw its merits, and then that I loved and it easily became one of my all-time favorites. But that's just my style, initially hating something that I then come to love. What's funny about it is that there seems to be a similar thing happening with the movie itself, as in the initial perception of it isn't quite what the movie really is. You need to dig a little bit, and the more you dig the more the movie's inner nature is revealed. Or at least that's how I see things now, because The Exorcist is one of those movies that people sometimes find boring and funny, which is its own weird perception, or else they find it horrifying and brutal, which is the perception I have come to disagree with the most. Not just about the movie but about the book as well, which is a must-read for any fans of the movie and any fans of books, any books of any sort. So it every so often occurs to me how most folks get carried away by the movie's infamy, and soon find themselves looking deep into a dark abyss of utter despair.
Still, it occurs to me how that is all superficial, how in reality the true nature of the movie is optimistic, and that optimism is all in the details. Because it seems to me that the details are what separates a good movie from a bad one, and more than that, they're what separates a true story from an idea. It's very easy to have a cool idea, to have some set pieces in mind and to know what happens here and there, but to know the living details with which to fill in the gaps? That takes some genius, and luckily we are in the presence of two of them, the director, William Friedkin, and the writer, William Peter Blatty, of course, both of whom, at least in my opinion, have managed to take this story right to the edge of the abyss, and yet they also filled it with so many nice moments along the way that reveal its true optimistic nature.
The man in khaki shook his head, staring down at the laceless, crusted shoes caked thick with debris of the pain of living. The stuff of the cosmos, he softly reflected: matter; yet somehow finally spirit. Spirit and the shoes were to him but aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other.
The book is expertly written, not so much like a classic horror story but in an almost matter-of-fact kind of way, like a fairly long news clipping. This particular quote comes up right at the beginning, and it's as beautiful as all the rest, but for me it's even more special as it compares life and suffering with the debris that inevitably clings to our shoes. I say that because I myself had a similar idea, maybe I copied it and I ain't even know it... Whatever the case may be, these are Father Merrin's thoughts as he partakes in the archaeological expedition, shortly before he's called to the spot wherein he finds the demon statue head. The book specifically describes it as the statue of Pazuzu, demon of the southwest wind, who has dominion over sickness and disease. And from this moment on, Father Merrin anticipates a great battle of good and evil, precisely the battle on which the entire story hangs.
Right away one of the most optimistic things is that while the demon is paving his way and preparing his work, other forces are seemingly at play to counter him. First there's Merrin of course, standing before the full-size demon statue in confrontation. But we also have Father Karras, the priest-psychiatrist-boxer, the tormented man who will eventually save Regan. He shows up in her mother's life seemingly for no reason, as she notices him first standing in the crowd and then walking away, maybe as a bit of divine synchronicity. Because while the demon lays his plans, God lays even better ones.
She turned, looking over her shoulder for the Jesuit who had smiled when Burke had uttered the obscenity. He was walking in the distance, head lowered despondently, a lone black cloud in search of the rain. She had never liked priests. So assured. So secure. And yet this one…
For now, Karras is left a bit to the sidelines, at least as it relates to the main story of Regan, although he's always on Chris' mind, even when she feels disappointed when it is Father Dyer who instead shows up at her party. That's always a big strength of The Exorcist, both book and film, because it effortlessly changes main character to then tie all of their storylines together in a neat bow. Maybe Kinderman is left floating a bit in the movie, and some other details didn't quite make it onto the sequel, but still. Now speaking of characters, Regan is arguably the most important character, even if she also has her spotlight stolen, by the demon no less, but until that happens the story shows us the root of the optimism I seek to highlight here, and it shows us how it's not all bad... Because maybe even with all the demonic stuff there's still something good, maybe something even great, at the center of it all.
“Hi ya, stinkpot!” Beaming, Chris caught her in a bear hug and kissed her pink cheek with smacking ardor; she could not repress the full flood of her love. “Mmum-mmum-mmum!” More kisses. Then she held Regan out and probed her face with eager eyes. “So what’djya do today? Anything exciting?”
The story then continuously alternates between the everyday life of these characters with the underlying current that something is off, something or someone is suddenly planning something. And while this feeling is ominous, maybe it is also sent by a good force, as every little tiny detail is set in motion in such a way that, in the end, the demon will have lost. Father Merrin is in standby mode already, Father Karras has been noticed but he still has his own journey to make, Chris has shown her undying love for Regan, and Karl, Willie and Sharon have shown themselves to be just as loving, although in a slightly more subdued way. And funnily enough, this preparation is even shown through jokes. For example, Burke Dennings answering Chris' serious question about death and non-existence with a joke, saying that the priests can give her comfort. Another example would be how later in the story Kinderman advises Chris to watch out for drafts as a surefire way to cure whatever ails Regan, which is pretty funny as Pazuzu is a so-called wind demon.
In the meantime, Karras goes on his own journey, first by visiting his mom and dealing with his own guilt. In typical christian fashion he encounters a homeless man, dirty and sick, who asks him for some coin. The movie doesn't quite go into detail here, leaving the interaction as just another one of those odd, coincidental moments, another of those many strange faces staring back at you from the silver screen. In the book however, we have quite a lot of descriptions, and furthermore, we have Karras giving the man some money, which then forced him to walk the rest of the way.
The priest eased him down; stretched him out; saw his train. He quickly pulled a dollar from out of his wallet and placed it in the pocket of the derelict’s jacket. Then decided he might lose it. He plucked out the dollar, stuffed it into a urine-damp trouser pocket, then picked up his bag and boarded the train, sitting in a corner and pretending to sleep until the end of the line, where he climbed up to the street and began the long walk to Fordham University. The dollar had been meant for his cab.
There's no getting around it – this moment is disgusting. And yet it's quite the christian act from Karras, a man who is struggling with his faith. He went out of his way to help a urine-soaked, vomit-flaked derelict man, because whatever good he has done to the least of us, he has done it to Christ. And in this way the story goes deep into christianity, it doesn't present a clean and neat view of it, what with fairly well-off homeless people who are kind and caring, just a little down on their luck. No, instead this story has Karras lowering himself into filth to do some good unto others, as he will later on as well. But for now he struggles with his faith, wanting out of the job almost like he's in a cop movie, and once again the story doesn't shy away from the nasty business of life as Karras inner thoughts are given, showing us what causes him to doubt God's love.
An item in the paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop; set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. No. No, too emotional. Vague. Existential. More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil and much of it resulted from doubt, from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not finally reveal Himself? Not speak?
It is made clear Father Karras is going through a crisis, worsened further still as his mother dies and he has a nightmare where she's alone emerging from a subway kiosk, calling his name but not finding him, only to then go down those stairs again into the hellish maze... Then as the stories converge more and more, something being wrong with Karras is mirrored by something being wrong with Regan, as after the party she asks her mother what's wrong with her in a haunted tone, something much deeper than what her condition at least initially appears to be. And then also there's something apparently wrong with the house itself, as if it too is haunted, a sense of foreboding Chris characterizes as a “setting stillness” and “weighted dust” very much as if all around her something isn't quite right.
In all these things the story doesn't shy away from evil. For example, Karras details a story about a nurse who apparently killed newborn babies by piercing their skulls with a needle, though she may have confessed this only after being tortured, and therefore it's possible the stories are grossly exaggerated. Then again, in all this darkness it's hard to see the optimism, but as Regan gets worse, and as the story gets darker, the good moments are more easily singled out, if you only know where to look. For example, all throughout Regan's illness, Chris consistently refuses to give up on her by sending her to an asylum. Not only that but she never sees those vile actions as coming from Regan but instead from someone else, another entity. Something similar happens with all other characters in the story, all of whom converge on Regan, and all of whom may not seem openly loving, all of whom may stumble all the time, but who constantly and consistently act with love... And some of them aren't too sure why they are doing it, such as Karras for example, of whom I'm now reminded of as I just can't resist quoting these passages of when he first meets Chris MacNeil.
He was suddenly aware that he wanted to impress her. Why? He wondered; and immediately saw the answer in the slums of his boyhood; in the balconies of theaters on the Lower East Side. Little Dimmy with a movie star. […] To Karras, it suddenly seemed unreal: Key Bridge; motor traffic; across the river, the Hot Shoppe with frozen milk shakes and beside him a movie star asking for an exorcism.
Things do look out of this world for Dimmy, especially when he kicks his skepticism into full gear even after entering that room where Regan is, or rather the thing that appears to be Regan. The filth and the stench are always recurring themes, a very heightened instance of that derelict at the train station, but while previously he just saw a man made in such a way that is difficult to love, now he confronts something else, something strange, something that can only be pure evil.
Reining in his revulsion, he closed the door and then his eyes locked, stunned, on the thing that was Regan, on the creature that was lying on its back on the bed, head propped against a pillow while eyes bulging wide in their hollow sockets shone with mad cunning and burning intelligence, with interest and with spite, as they fixed upon his; as they watched him intently, seething in a face shaped into a skeletal mask of unthinkable malevolence.
After witnessing such an evil sight the easiest thing to do would be to simply leave. Chris should put Regan in an insane asylum, Karl and Willie should hand in their resignations, Sharon would do the same, Father Karras would leave without a word except a polite psychiatric recommendation, and Father Merrin would stay far away peacefully writing his books. But instead that's not what happens, instead what we have in this story is all these people refusing to let go, refusing to give up on Regan, and instead they are constantly acting with the kind of deep love that you can only find in all of the smallest moments.
“Now go to bed,” Karras told her. “Will you please go to bed right now?”
“Yeah, okay,” Chris said softly; “I promise.” She looked up at him with warmth and the trace of a smile. “Good night, Father Karras. And thanks. Thanks so much.”
And yes, to me that's the second most striking aspect of the story. Because though this situation is horrific, though what has befallen the MacNeil household is a mark of pure evil, it is also the case that this household is inhabited, not by unusually strong people, but by people who, even in their weakness, continue to do their best, they continue to struggle and struggle until they win in the end. And as much filth as the demon continues to produce, Karl and Willie and Sharon just as quickly clean it all away. It sounds at the very least unbecoming to speak of such things, and yet it's in cleaning them that one shows love, rather than merely feel it or attempt to feel it. Love is an action, then a feeling, then a reaction. And so the demon's barrage of obscenities and filth are no more than the vain attempts of someone who's playing dirty and still hopelessly losing.
As a slight sidenote at this point, and since I mentioned Karl, maybe I might as well go into a story that the movie omits – Karl has a daughter who struggles with addiction. So while he spends his days going into a room to help a sick girl, he spends his nights doing some more of the same. And while both places are filled with things most unbecoming, William Peter Blatty can't quite resist writing about them in his brand of precise beauty.
Karl met the eyes that were shifting hardness, that were haggard wells of pain and blame; glimpsed briefly the dissolute bending of the lips and the ravaged face of a youth and a beauty buried alive in a thousand motel rooms, in a thousand awakenings from restless sleep with a stifled cry at remembered grace.
Back in the main household though, Karras is struggling to come to terms with the truth, a truth that only Father Merrin's acts of faith will fully reveal to him. For now he acquires the necessary conditions to perform an exorcism, and just before taking charge of it, he is given a short window of opportunity he can use to wash his hands clean of the whole thing, and yet he just can't seem to do so. In the meantime Father Merrin is likewise in a similar situation, being made an offer he can't or simply won't refuse, as the showdown alluded to in the prologue to this entire story now comes to a close.
His manner serene, the old priest thanked him and then turned to renew his contemplation, to continue his walk through a nature that he loved. Now and then he would pause to hear the song of a robin, to watch a bright butterfly hover on a branch. He did not open and read the telegram. He knew what it said. He had read it in the dust of the temples of Nineveh. He was ready.
He continued his farewells.
Father Merrin, beautifully and expertly played by Max Von Sydow, is easily the foundation on which the optimism of this story hangs. His entire presence shifts the tone of every scene, as he seemingly brings a distinct calm to the entire house whenever he speaks, with a voice gentle and soft, yet strong and reassuring. In that sense Merrin maybe really is the heart of The Exorcist, or he is if you don't count Regan herself, and it is for that reason that his writing, which is in reality the writing of Cardinal John Henry Newman, is a very beautiful and measured approach to this whole thing, to life itself being both frail and beautiful. And while I'm often captured by the idea of a big nothing, Father Merrin, or rather the Cardinal, instead puts forth the idea of the great whole.
Frail and transitory as is every part of it, restless and migratory as are its elements, still it abides. It is bound together by a law of permanence, and though it is ever dying, it is ever coming to life again. […] We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to wither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops—which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.
The phrase “distant attentiveness” is one of the main traits with which Merrin is characterized, this sad smiling man going about his Father's business in a stranger's house where a demon has entered. It's a sad and somber occasion, and yet he constantly brings a sweet calm, especially, and in a moment I am sad was cut from the film, when he briefly discusses the beauty of names with Chris, a beauty behind which is a great sacrifice in favor of the great whole of existence, the scope of which mankind can see but a glimpse of.
“It was the name of a priest who devoted his life to taking care of the lepers on the island of Molokai. He finally caught the disease himself.” Merrin looking aside. “Lovely name,” he said again. “I believe that with a first name like Damien, I might even be content with the last name Glutz.”
Chris chuckled. She unwound. Felt easier. And for minutes, she and Merrin spoke of homely things, little things.
He turned his head to look at Merrin. Through the hours, the elderly exorcist had said very little: now and then a homely story of his boyhood. Reminiscences. Little things. A story about a duck he once owned named Clancy.
“What is your daughter’s middle name?” Merrin asked.
“It’s Teresa.”
“What a lovely name,” the old priest said warmly. He held Chris’s gaze for a moment, reassuringly, and when he turned his head and looked at the door to Regan’s bedroom, Chris again felt that tension, that thickening of coiled darkness behind it. In the bedroom.
Beyond that door.
Merrin nodded. “All right,” he said softly.
What's in a name? A demon by any other name would be just as evil... These are easily the moments that make Father Merrin the heart of the story, as he's the most knowledgeable one about the demon, and yet he's also the most kind and appreciative of the small things in this world. Things like Chris making him a cup of coffee with brandy, or Sharon offering Karras something to eat, or Karl returning Karras' shirt now perfectly clean and sweet-smelling, or like Regan putting a rose on her mother's plate every morning... And so the whole point of the story, the great whole if you will, is that the demon's entire goal is to make us forget these things, to make us blind to them, to make us unaware when they happen and unworthy when we do finally notice them. Therefore, to ignore away The Exorcist as a profane story is precisely to surrender to the demon, it is to become more shocked by a bedside table drawer opening on its own rather than by a group of people struggling in the world and yet constantly moving in love, and through love, and by love.
“Who can know?” answered Merrin. “Who can really hope to know? And yet I think the demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us… the observers… every person in this house. And I think—I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us.”
“Ah, well… at last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion. No. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do it unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.”
“There it lies, I think, Damien… possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here… this girl… this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves… for ourselves.” […] “And perhaps even Satan— Satan, in spite of himself—somehow serves to work out the will of God.”
In essence then, that's the big point of the story. People get lost focusing on the demon, on all the nasty things he possesses Regan in order to do, all the evil he enacts in the world to make us despair. Alas, we focus on all that nonsense when instead we should be focusing on the good things, such as how everyone involved in this story is ultimately good, such as how neither Chris nor anyone in the household gives up on Regan, such as how they constantly lower themselves to act out in love even if in their minds they think about quitting and moving on, and about how Father Merrin and Father Karras died trying to save the life of a girl they never even knew. All that is much more striking and much more impressive, and even much more powerful, than anything the demon could ever do. In that sense and in quite a few others I'd venture to say that The Exorcist is not only an optimistic story but a very beautiful one too. All writing and all cinematography aside, the true power of this story is in the very human and even a little invisible and subdued characters, while the demon is just for show, as are all demons, whether real or merely metaphoric.
Chris glanced to her breakfast plate. Nervous and excited, she hadn’t eaten. The rose was still there. She picked it up and pensively twisted it, rolling it back and forth by the stem. “And he never even knew her,” she murmured.
In the end then, it would appear Father Karras found the world beyond, or at least that's how it comes across to us in writing and maybe in the film as well, seeing as we understand his sacrifice to not have been for nothing, even with the underrated third entry in this saga, but that's a story for another time. For now it suffices to say that this is, at least to me, ultimately a profoundly optimistic story, one that goes deep into the pits of evil and despair and filth, yes, but it does so to prove a point. And that point is that while evil is so blatant and obvious, it is still true that good exists in this world, even in a much more overwhelming quantity if you think about it, and an overwhelming quality too. It's just that it tends to be softer and quieter, it tends to work within the details, and indeed sometimes it is the very details. The Exorcist is therefore a story of how when faced with the perfect opportunity to let go of love, people just loved each other even more. And while the demon's actions were made futile, every single loving action by these people was done with a great big purpose in mind, even if they themselves didn't quite see it at the time.
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