Laura Reviews

" For me, there's no greater horror film than The Exorcist"
~Radio Free Movie Review

"I have never read horror, nor do I consider The Exorcist to be such, but rather as a suspenseful supernatural detective story, or paranormal police procedural."
~William Peter Blatty

Though it is now over thirty years old, The Exorcist is still held up by many as the gold standard in horror.  I recently sat down and viewed the film for the first time in order to relay my impressions of it to you, the reader.  The movie begins slowly, building up towards the climax of the exorcism ritual.  Characters are developed and the possession of Regan (a twelve year old girl) occurs in stages, until the point where her personality has been completely subverted by the evil within.  

I tend to agree with William Peter Blatty about his story, The Exorcist, on which the film is based.  It is not a horror.  It is, however, a careful and compelling look at modern society and how we deal with guilt and the possibility of forces beyond our comprehension.  Throughout the movie, the viewer is not meant to doubt the fact that Regan is possessed.  That is established beyond the shadow of a doubt.  However, due to the reluctance of modern science to entertain extreme possibilites, she is forced to endure a battery of medical tests and two misdiagnoses (the first of a nerve disorder, the second of a brain disorder).  Incidentally, I found the medical procedure scenes to be the most chilling of the movie.  The cold and clinical pain Regan was forced to endure as doctors blindly sought a cause for her malady was far more frightening than the over the top anguish caused by her possession.  A current day possession would undoubtedly be handled this way, which I found contributed an element of realism to the beginning of the film.  The emissaries of the church seem equally ill equipped to handle the monster they are faced with.  Father Merrin, purportedly the closest thing the church has to an exorcism expert, bungles things and loses his life because of this.  Father Karras doubts for most of the movie that Regan is actually possessed, but agrees to go along with the ritual because she fulfills the criteria the church states must be met before an exorcism can be performed.  

Unfortunately, the concept of how possession would be dealt with in current times forms only part of the film.  If you'd like to see a more indepth treatment of that subject, I recommend The Exorcism Of Emily Rose instead.  The Exorcist is heavy handed as far as horror films go.  Tactics such as fleetingly glimpsed demonic faces and contortionists running downstairs on the backs of their hands have become a cliche in our horror-inundated culture.  No holds are barred in this particular movie.  Through the use of '70s style gore and (amusing) '70s style special effects, the director attempts to shock and horrify us into believing that, yes, this is indeed a bona fide possession.  However, such measures distance the viewer from Regan's character, as she eventually becomes a monster and no longer even bears the semblance of a child.  If more of her had been kept intact, the horror element might have been accentuated, because in my mind, that was the truly horrible aspect of the movie--that an innocent individual, even a child, can be so taken over by mental illness or, in this case, a malevolent outside force.  However, Regan is lost beneath the stage makeup and voiceover, and nothing is left to the imagination.  At the end of the film, the viewer is left without any questions, as the conflict is neatly resolved.  The insidious sort of horror that leaves possibilities open, that leaves threads dangling, would have suited better.  I would like to see a version of The Exorcist in which the question of whether Regan is undergoing possession or psychosis is never answered--one that grapples with the idea of great evil more fully, and whether the capacity for it dwells in us all or is caused by outside, demonic influence. 

In short, I found the form of the film unbelievable, rather than the subject matter.  The difference between evil and good are clearly delineated, with an ancient demon representing one and the church representing another.  There are no grey areas in The Exorcist, which is unfortunate.  In my experience, it is in the grey areas--in the fog of moral uncertainties and unknown causes, the mist of the probable impossible and of extreme possibilites--that true horror is born.  Humans like the safety of a clear answer, which The Exorcist provides.  What we are truly afraid of is the unknowable.

 I began Henry James' 'Portrait Of A Lady' with high hopes.  The back jacket blurb told me that the book is the most stunning achievement of the author's early period, and informed me that the plot centers around a headstrong young American woman embarking on a journey to self-knowledge.  Apparently said character, Isabel Archer, is "delineated with a magnificence that is at once casual and tense with force and insight."  SparkNotes speaks of James' "polished, elegant prose and his sedate, slow pacing".  

What's Laura's opinion of the book?  Snore.  By "sedate, slow pacing" all SparkNotes means is that James gets bogged down in seventeen page long descriptions of Italian architecture and even longer descriptions of his heroine's convoluted and self-absorbed thought processes.  Without the literary tricks and clever introspection the pertinent plot points could be expressed in one hundred pages, rather than dragging on for six hundred and seven.  I understand that the story is one of an inner journey, but in the case of Portrait Of A Lady, brevity would have been a virtue.  James says the same things in dozens of ways, circling back on his own writing so it seems as if the story will never move on.  While in some cases, his technique of glossing over the pivotal events of the plot and instead describing their aftermath might be effective, in this case it only projects the impression that he's ill at ease with his main character, and particularly with her feminine aspect.  Isabel is imaginative, which is certainly a prevalent quality in young people, but she lacks emotion.  Occasionally James tries to demonstrate some sort of feeling on her part, but on the whole the <i>reader</i> is left without sensation, unable to work up any sort of sympathy for such a strangely distant girl.  It's as if Isabel lives in a conceptual world of her own making, rather than the physical plane around her.  Again, while I admire the use of this technique in regards to Isabel's "journey to self-knowledge", it's overdone.  James is too busy listening to the sound of his own voice, or scratch of his own pen, as it were, to truly invest himself in his characters.  His descriptive passages smack of literary ego.  

At its worst, The Portrait Of A Lady is unapproachable and far too wordy.  At its best, it creates atmospheric images of foreign locations and detailed impressions of inner sensation.  The only moment of the story I found myself particularly engaged in was towards the end, during an electric moment between Isabel Archer and an old suitor, Caspar Goodwood.  Unfortunately, this scene was overshadowed by the way the book concluded.  James reverted to his usual trick of describing pivotal events from a distance, and the reader is left with an unsatisfying feeling, as though the book had simply stopped, rather than come to an end.  The main character is removed from the central narrative at the very last, which seemed unnatural considering the strong emphasis placed upon her thoughts and sensations.  We are left without any knowledge of the motives driving her final act, and this choice on the part of the author only enhances the reader's emotional distance from the subject.  

All in all, this portrait's emphasis on fine detail marred the clarity of the big picture.  Rather than the prose serving to convey the characters and plot, the storyline seemed to serve as a medium for the prose.  The Portrait Of A Lady is for the most part well written, but remains a slow-moving, unemotional read despite its quiet beauty.  

Recommendation:  No.