Harefooted Halloween: The Devils

What I Liked: This one’s all about the excellent performances.  Oliver Reed (The Brood) is the big standout though as Grandier, a snarky 17^th century French priest who likes to have lots of sex and then tosses the women aside like a crumpled piece of trash.  He also doesn’t believe in the quack medical practices of the time making him a bit of an outlier.  Reed relishes the part which offers him plenty of room to be bombastic as he denounces his accusers of being the ringleader of a spate of demonic possessions but also deeply mournful as he pleads for his life before the court.  This one runs the gamut.

The sets are cool looking with a lot of big open spaces and white coloring.  They’re somewhat stark, almost alien and whether the scale is large or small there’s always a sense that the surroundings are closing in on you.  Director Ken Russell (Song of Summer, Tommy) purposely did not go period accurate (1600’s) and wanted them to even have a futuristic quality.  Risky move but I like the results.

What I Didn’t Like: Not much.  I don’t think I have any big issues with any of it.

Overall Impressions: Amazingly this is based on a true story.  Grandier had many enemies due to his loose ways and haughty attitude and folks wanted to see him punished.  When he turned down the post of spiritual director at the local nunnery Mother Superior lost her shit and claimed he put the devil in her.  The rest of the sisters followed suit and before you knew it this act of retaliation got way out of hand.  Meanwhile allies of the king of France wanted Grandier out of the way so they could take over his town and saw this as their opening.  It all caught up with the man and they imprisoned and tortured him.

Grandier is an interesting figure because he was seemingly sorta progressive for his time but he was also kind of a douchebag so he’s a flawed hero.  Despite his imperfections I think we can all agree that he shouldn’t have been falsely accused of religious crimes and had his life obliterated.

The film is certainly more play-like where it’s the ensemble that sells it (this was based on a book and a play).  Vanessa Redgrave (Mother’s Boys) and her cohorts shout fire and brimstone but also distort and wince their bodies like the mad lunatics they are.  And the priests who carry out the exorcisms are intensely focused which also contain a ton of yelling and sharp grimacing.  Jesus, with such passionate performances the shoot must’ve been absolutely exhausting.

This is a good movie about a tragic event in history.  I mean I don’t know how accurate it is but it rides the line very well of being arty, entertaining, melodramatic and pretty scary at times at how humans can treat each other.