MY MOVIE SHELF: The Exorcist

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 100 Days to go: 67

Movie #340:  The Exorcist

When I was growing up, I heard several people say The Exorcist was the scariest movie they’d ever seen. I stayed away from it, probably for that reason. When I did finally see it — fifteen or twenty years ago, now — It was more like the most bizarrely hilarious movie I’d ever seen. This is what happens when something is vastly overhyped. It had lost any ability to really scare me and instead played out like an exercise in absurdity.

To be honest, in the years since I first saw The Exorcist, I’ve forgotten everything about it except for vague bits and pieces of the crazy possession parts. I remember them, and I remember thinking how over-the-top it all was, and that’s about it. Tonight, I took advantage of my diminished memories and really tried to watch it with fresh eyes. It’s a lot better than I remember.

The possession is still really cheesy to my jaded, more modernized perspective, but it’s easy to see how terrifying this would’ve been in the ’70s. Jumping beds and spinning heads and projectile vomit were effective special effects back then, and the kind of really obscene, vile language — especially paired with religious imagery, like when she’s stabbing her vagina with a cross, screaming for Jesus to fuck her — coming from a young teen girl (Linda Blair as Regan) was nothing short of jaw-dropping. It would definitely leave an impression on people. It would likely cause nightmares. I could see how frightening this movie would’ve been upon its release.

But that’s not actually all there is to it. Ellen Burstyn is great as Regan’s mom Chris. She has to carry the entire film on her shoulders — all the terror, all the fear for her child, all the uncertainty and the dawning revelation of what’s going on and the fight to get Regan help — and she carries it off wonderfully. She really feels at ease in the skin of this woman — successful, independent, loving, and worldly — and when things start to go badly for Regan, you can see the stress of the situation starting to wear on her, in her eyes and her posture. Her very bearing is diminished, held up by sheer force of will to help get her daughter better. It’s a fantastic performance, without reservation.

The other primary performers — Jason Miller as Father Karras and Max von Sydow as Father Merrin — also hold their own. Father Karras has a storyline all his own for much of the film about the death of his mother, because of which he’s very much a tortured soul having a crisis of faith. Max von Sydow was a million years old even back then, and in fact it’s remarked how old Father Merrin is. He’s the wise old priest of great faith and confidence, and the two of them together are quite convincing as they tend to Regan’s demon.

The plot isn’t really entirely solid, as it meanders around for a very long time before you get to the exorcism part, with three or four different narrative strands early on that don’t seem to fit together or bear any real relevance. It’s kind of a double-edged sword, because while the movie definitely benefits from setting the stage of normalcy and slowly building the degree to which Regan is possessed over time, it also suffers a bit for it. I mean, the title gives away the fact that Regan’s possessed, so the characters in the movie all taking forever to get there themselves comes off as both reasonable and tedious. By the same measure, there’s really no explanation as to why this demon, supposedly out for revenge against Merrin, has picked this girl in this city, thousands of miles away from where Merrin was in Iraq at the start of the film. And there aren’t any solid connections made as to why or how Chris winds up contacting Karras (or why Karras isn’t the one to contact Merrin, seeing as the demon mentions him by name). The ending is also surprisingly abrupt, with one priest killed off-screen and the other violently possessed and hurled out a window, which apparently saves the girl. Then again, with everyone in the theater no doubt distracted by the insanely scary goings on up until that point, they probably weren’t too concerned with a minor thing like the plot.

Of all the movies in this collection, The Exorcist was definitely not one I expected to enjoy at all, but I find myself having gained a certain appreciation for it. What it does, it actually does pretty well. I might even watch it again sometime.

MY MOVIE SHELF: How to Make an American Quilt

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 229  Days to go: 234

Movie #148:  How to Make an American Quilt

Finn (Winona Ryder) is the worst. She’s the worst of the worst. And as wonderful as How to Make an American Quilt is, one of the best parts is how all the other ladies repeatedly call Finn on her bullshit.

Finn is engaged to Sam (Dermot Mulroney), but she needs “space” from him. Ostensibly, this is space to finish her Masters thesis — the latest in a series of Masters theses she has worked passionately on before discarding — but Finn is simply someone, as she herself notices with regard to her multiple theses, who no longer wants something once she gets it. “Whenever I’m about to finish, I decide to switch topics. I can’t help it. It seems the more I know about something, well, the less I wanna know about it.” She is never satisfied and never accountable. And she blames all of this — or at least the lion’s share of it — on her parents’ failed marriage and her mother’s breezy, noncommittal attitude toward romantic entanglements. Being someone, myself, who has, in the past, blamed a lot of her bullshit on any number of outside factors, I feel entirely justified in calling Finn out in this same manner. She is a flighty young woman, full of excuses and quasi-intellectual justifications for her attitudes, her opinions and her behaviors, and I really hate her. (Perhaps because I was her at one time, and I will own that.)

As much as I detest Finn, though, I really appreciate how three-dimensional she is as a character — how three-dimensional all the women in the film are. These women have strengths and weaknesses, past triumphs and long-held regrets. They’ve made brave choices and they’ve made mistakes, and they all have different outlooks on life and on love.

The plot of the film follows Finn as she seeks “space” from Sam to finish her thesis by spending the summer with her grandmother Hy (Ellen Burstyn) and Hy’s sister Glady Joe (Anne Bancroft), who have lived together in Glady Joe’s house since their husbands passed. The sisters are members of a quilting circle, led by the commanding Anna (Maya Angelou), who have come together to sew Finn’s wedding quilt, the theme of which is “Where Love Resides.” Each of the women have a different patch to sew to illustrate where love resides for them, and Finn visits each of their stories, told in flashback. She learns of loves lost, loves wasted, loves held together throughout time. She hears of great loves and loves that never were, and all these stories eventually give her insight into her own story and her own love life, her future.

There is the love of sisters, a strong bond that survives pain and loss and betrayal. There’s the love a mother has for her daughter, more solid and stronger than any bond she could have for the man who fathered that baby. There’s the love of excitement, the love of consistency, the love of someone who touches your soul the way no one else can. And there’s the love of a long-lost memory that no longer exists at all, as well as a love once lost that is found again. All these loves shape and mold Finn’s summer. First she uses them as an excuse to stray from Sam into the arms of sexy but horrible Leon (Johnathon Schaech), then she uses them to find her way back to him, and her story becomes yet another story of the quilt, built into the fabric, stitched together with shared experiences and emotions.

Sophia’s story, played out in the present by Lois Smith and in the past by Samantha Mathis, is perhaps my favorite and perhaps the saddest, though all the tales have aspects of joy and sorrow in them, be they Marianna’s (Alfre Woodard) one true love who she only met for one night and never got a picture of, or Em’s (Jean Simmons in the present and Joanna Going in the past) philandering husband whose “artistic” temperament both exhilarated and frustrated her throughout their marriage.

Kate Capshaw does a fine job in a small role as Finn’s mother, flitting into the picture to throw another wrench on Finn’s ideas of love and marriage, then chastising Finn for taking so much stock in what she has to say. She really brings home the idea of love being something that you’re maybe always figuring out and that it’s not a bad thing, it’s just what it is. Nobody’s perfect.

And Claire Danes is frankly hilarious as a young Glady Joe, whether she’s fighting with young Hyacinth (Roseanne‘s original Becky Alicia Goranson) or trying to talk intellectually with young Anna (Maria Celedonio) about racism and slavery.

I find myself somewhat unsatisfied by the ending of the movie, every time, in part because Finn is dragging her gorgeous new quilt through the dirt as she follows a crow, but also because I’m still not convinced Finn is ready to commit herself to Sam. But I do, however, feel like she could get there eventually, that maybe in ten years, the Finn who was 26 and flaky matures into a Finn who is 36 and comfortable and self-assured. Whatever happens, though, will become part of her story, part of who she is, just as their histories have shaped the lives and hearts of these women, these quilters. Just as my history has shaped me.

I was unhappy and unsatisfied at 26 too, but it’s more than ten years later and I feel so much more aware of who I am and what I want. I haven’t forgotten my past, but I definitely feel like I’ve learned from it, that I’m still learning from it. Ultimately, we’re all still learning.

“Young lovers seek perfection.

Old lovers learn the art

Of sewing shreds together

And of seeing beauty

In a multiplicity of patches.”