Classic Movie Review: 'The Exorcist'

The Exorcist (1973)

Directed by William Friedkin

Written by William Peter Blatty

Starring Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Jason Miller

Release Date December 26th, 1973

Published October 10th, 2023

The first image you see in William Friedkin's The Exorcist is the sun, bright, orange, dawning a new day. This is followed by an image of a sweltering desert in Northern Iraq. On the soundtrack is Arabic music. What does any of this tell us about the rest of the movie we are about to watch? I would argue, it tell us nothing. The sun doesn't have any meaning related to the rest of the movie. Nor does a sweltering desert. Perhaps if I reach beyond logic, I could argue that the sun and the desert reflect the heat of Hell? Maybe? But that is a very big stretch.

An archaeological dig is occurring in this northern Iraqi desert. Numerous men swing pickaxes and other implements intended to break rock and remove dirt. Why? We can assume it has something to do with ancient religion, an attempt to uncover something lost to time. Here, William Friedkin lingers over the images of Iraqi men with their tools, the dirt, the heat, is this a representation of what hell is like? What does it mean that Friedkin's stand in for Hell is located in a Muslim country? What does this have to do in any way with a child who will, later in the film, stab herself in the crotch with a crucifix?

An elderly white archaeologist is called to come to a place where some small items have been found. The old man goes and when he reaches into the cave where these small items have been found, he finds one more, a small idol with what appears to be the face of a dog or a dragon or something. We don't know who this old man is at this point, but we stay with him as he goes to a café and has some tea. He's shaky, he takes pills for what I assume is a heart condition. He appears shaky though whether that is due to having found this idol thing or because he's very old and has been working in the hot sun all day, is unclear.

The shaky old dude leaves the café. He walks around the corner and sees three blacksmiths hard at work, rhythmically pounding away at a piece of hot metal. One of the men turns to the old man and reveals a cloudy eye. The old man, our seeming protagonist, wheezes, and the scene ends. Cut to a ticking clock. The old man mumbles 'Evil against Evil.' Finally, we learn that the old man is a priest as the other man in the room refers to him as 'Father.' The clock on the wall stops and the man says he is sorry to see the old man leave. Father tells the man that he has something he must do. The old man goes back to the archaeological dig site, he locates a statue, one that resembles the small idol he found earlier. A man kicks some rocks, dogs fight, Father stares at the statue, we fade to the sun which ends the scene and takes us to Georgetown, Virginia, USA, the setting for our story.

Why does William Friedkin's The Exorcist begin with this prologue? What have we learned? Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) was in Iraq. He found an idol and stared at a statue. The idol and the statue are related. By the rules of storytelling then, this demonic figure that Father Merrin found must be related to the possession of young Regan O'Neill (Linda Blair). There is one, relatively inane visual scene that links Iraq and the idol to Regan and Georgetown. Following the offscreen death of a filmmaker who was directing a movie Regan's mom was working on, a Police Detective (Lee J. Cobb) finds what looks like an idol just like the one Father Merrin found in Iraq.

And that's it. That is all that ties Father Merrin's discovery in Iraq and the story that is the actual center of The Exorcist. The detective character never meets Father Merrin. They never compare notes and the idol is never mentioned by Father Merrin or the Police Detective. Why was any of this in the movie? Beats me, but for me it points to the heavy flaws of this supposed film classic, there are so many inane, pointless things occurring in The Exorcist. Lee J. Cobb, a fine actor who has a welcome presence in the movie, is the single most useless and pointless character in the film. He serves no purpose and discovers nothing.

There is a scene in the second act where Cobb's detective goes to speak with a Priest, Father Karras. We've been following Father Karras in a separate track of the story. We know that his mother has died and that he is racked with guilt over not being there for her. He's begun to question his fate and considered leaving the priesthood all together. He's also a psychiatrist and that's why he's sought out by Cobb. The murder of the film director was more than just a man falling down some stairs. Cobb has a hunch that the murder and the recent desecration of a church, may be related and he suspects a Priest, someone perhaps suffering from a religious mania.

Father Karras, being both a doctor and a Priest, bound by patient-doctor confidentiality and the Priest-Confessor discretion, cannot tell the detective anything. He persists and the scene goes nowhere. The scene finally ends after the Detective, apropos of nothing, asks Father Karras if he likes going to the movies. The detective relates how he gets free tickets to the movies and how his wife doesn't like going to the movies the way he does. He has tickets to see a film adaptation of Othello and he asks Karras if he'd like to go to the movies with him. The scene ends with a joke about Groucho Marx being one of the lead actors and Father Karras passing on the invitation.

Why does this scene exist? What did this add to The Exorcist? What did this bring to the story? The scene is colorful and well performed. Lee J. Cobb, as I mentioned earlier, is quite a good actor and he brings a charm to the scene. But, ultimately, this has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It does nothing to further what little plot there is in The Exorcist, and then it's over and the scene never has a role to play in the larger narrative. So, why is this scene in the movie? Your guess is as good as mine. I've puzzled over this scene and I come away with nothing.

That said, the biggest amount of nothing in The Exorcist comes from Father Merrin. Max Von Sydow is a legendary actor. He has gravitas and presence. He's an exciting actor in the right role such as in the work he did with the legendary Ingmar Bergman. But, why is he in The Exorcist? Why was Father Merrin needed in any way? In what fashion did Merrin affect the plot of the movie. The opening scenes in Iraq are pointless and uninteresting. The found idol and statue go uncommented upon after the opening scene, and then Merrin is entirely ineffectual in the actual attempt to exorcise the demon from Regan. And then, Merrin's dead. He dies offscreen. We don't even get a minor moment where he's a hero, he's just gone, found dead by Father Karras.

Karras himself, is equally ineffectual. In the end, he defeats the demon via punching a small child repeatedly. He grabs Regan off of her bed, punches her and calls on the demon to go into him. The demon leaves Regan and enters Father Karras. Father Karras considers letting the demon kill Regan and then, he saves the day by throwing himself through a window to his death and with him, the demon dies And that's how this movie called The Exorcist ends. Not with a successful exorcism but with the priests dead and damn lucky they were able to take the demon with them.

I don't understand what people enjoy about The Exorcist. For me, I find the profanity to be a child's idea what shocking is. I like the head spinning around thing, that was kind of neat, but beyond that, the demon inside of Regan isn't particularly intimidating. For a time, it's defeated by being tied to the bed. The demon doesn't get exorcised. It jumps to a new host and finds that it cannot control that new host nearly as well as it did a small child and is thus defeated before it can be transferred to another body. So, even the big bad of the movie isn't all that big or bad. It gets defeated by punching.

Is The Exorcist a bad movie? For me, yeah, it kind of is. I like aspects of it. I appreciate the actors involved and their professionalism. William Friedkin is a solid technician with an appreciable talent for setting and staging scenes. Beyond that though, what is the point of The Exorcist? What is the larger idea? Is there one? Or is it just shock for the sake of shock? Is it just the minor titillation of a small child saying 'Your mother sucks C**** in Hell' or smearing vaginal blood on her mother's face? Demanding of a priest that he 'f*** her?' Is this really all there is that makes people appreciate this movie? I simply don't get The Exorcist and I don't think I ever will get it.

To write this review, and thusly exorcise myself of ever watching The Exorcist again, I watched the movie three times, three consecutive days. I watched it just watching the first time. I watched the second time and took notes. I watched the final time as I wrote this review. I thought it might start to make sense on the third try but it just never came together for me. I don't find The Exorcist frightening or compelling. I do believe it is professionally crafted, I will stand by that idea. Beyond that, there is nothing I find particularly appealing about The Exorcist.

The film is profane and I think that may be the point. The demon's form of evil is to make the innocent into the profane. The demon takes something pure, a child and makes a mockery of it. That's an idea but to what end? To what purpose? What does the demon get other than being profane and torturing a family? If the end game was to draw out and kill Father Merrin, they could have maybe waited a week, he was apparently about to keel over at any minute anyway. So, what is it that the demon of The Exorcist gets out of possessing Regan? What do you get out of it?

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