Post by hibernicus on Mar 14, 2011 11:10:35 GMT
I went to see THE RITE on Friday and I must confess it was a terrible let-down. (Don't read any further if you want to see it, but I wouldn't advise it.) Basically it's a theologically illiterate tenth-rate rip-off of THE EXORCIST. The only bit that was any good was Anthony Hopkins' performance as the old exorcist, which was a nice portrayal of an old bachelor who has let himself slide in many areas (shabby dress, scruffy rooms etc) but is surprisingly competent and kind under it all. (When he gets possessed, of course, it's pure horror-movie ham - though one nice touch is that the mysterious inscriptions he writes on the walls are in Welsh - his character is Welsh - which leaves more to the imagination than if they were in Latin.)
My objections are as follows:
(1) In THE EXORCIST Fr Karras is a professed Jesuit who is having a crisis of faith, connected with guilt over his mother's loneliness and decline into senility. The protagonist in THE RITE is a young man whose father is a small-town mortician and who signed up to seminary with the intention of getting an university education and then dropping out before he takes his final vows. When the main action of the film takes place he has been ordained deacon and has notified the dean that he intends to leave.
In other words, this is someone who has quite cynically lied his way into seminary, even to the extent of taking minor orders (the film appears to suggest that diaconal ordination takes place after four years - in fact it takes place after five or six, a year before priestly ordination; the film also seems to suggest that deacons have not yet taken vows of celibacy, when in fact they do so, and of course ignores altogether the fact that a deacon cannot just leave but must be formally laicised. The film is somewhat muzzy on a deacon's powers - at one point a woman dying on the road after an accident asks the deacon to "bless her" and he recites a blessing which may or may not be one of the prayers for the dying. It is not clear from the film whether he is trying to administer extreme unction or not, but he does not seem to make any attempt to absolve her, or even to say an Act of Contrition. Meanwhile, as Steven Greydanus points out, a priest who has been injured in the accident and cannot walk, but is fully conscious and who knows that the deacon is not a priest, is lying a short distance away, but he makes no attempt to offer conditional absolution as might be expected in these circumstances).
When the devil is trying to put pressure on his weak points during the exorcism scenes, the character's chastity is impugned and he is accused of having left his father to die alone - but no mention is made of the fact that he has committed simony, sacrilege, embezzlement and deliberate and sustained falsehood.
This is fairly clearly meant to serve a dramatic function, in that the film assumes that the audience will have little religious commitment or knowledge and will be better able to relate to a character whose mindset is almost entirely secular than to someone with a definite albeit uncertain religious commitment. I must say however that while it is credible that Fr Karras in THE EXORCIST might rise to the challenge, this character is so hopelessly compromised that I would expect him to wind up possessed about thirty seconds after he started to attempt his first exorcism.
The Dean, having received our hero's attempt at resignation, tells him that he thinks he will make a fine priest and persuades him to attend a course to recruit exorcists which is being held in Rome. His principal instrument of persuasion is the threat that if the deacon does not go the seminary will convert his scholarship into a student loan and force him to pay the full cost of his third-level education! Exorcists are supposed to be experienced priests of proven character and holiness - here we have a deacon whom the dean knows to be undergoing a crisis of faith (though he doesn't know the half of it) being sent under duress, apparently on the expectation that meeting the devil will strengthen his faith.
While THE EXORCIST is ultimately schlock and its argument that if the devil exists God must exist is open to question, it does at least raise the point that the Devil is trying to confront Karras - and, by extension, the audience - with all that is vilest and most degraded and disgusting in life in order to drive him to despair. THE RITE does not address this point at all effectively - its version of exorcism is much more a straightforward face-off like a boxing match, and the various horrors are just there for effect.
When the deacon goes to Rome for the course, about half the places in the class are taken up by nuns, even though (as the dialogue in the film itself indicates at one point) exorcism is a specifically priestly ministry.
I also note that the seminary attended by our hero in America is full of students wearing full-length cassocks and nuns wearing the old-style habit with a wimple. I would be surprised if any but the most conservative seminaries were like this - I suspect the film-makers are playing on their audience's image of Catholicism, rather than anything you'd be likely to find in mainstream American seminaries.
Finally, I endorse Steven Greydanus' point that, given that (as is stated in the Matt Baglio book on which the film is based) the majority of apparent possessions turn out to be people with non-supernatural psychological trauma, it would have been better if the film had portrayed at least one such case.
All in all, a pretty bad let-down, a piece of dumbing-down reminiscent of the Association of Catholic Priests!
My objections are as follows:
(1) In THE EXORCIST Fr Karras is a professed Jesuit who is having a crisis of faith, connected with guilt over his mother's loneliness and decline into senility. The protagonist in THE RITE is a young man whose father is a small-town mortician and who signed up to seminary with the intention of getting an university education and then dropping out before he takes his final vows. When the main action of the film takes place he has been ordained deacon and has notified the dean that he intends to leave.
In other words, this is someone who has quite cynically lied his way into seminary, even to the extent of taking minor orders (the film appears to suggest that diaconal ordination takes place after four years - in fact it takes place after five or six, a year before priestly ordination; the film also seems to suggest that deacons have not yet taken vows of celibacy, when in fact they do so, and of course ignores altogether the fact that a deacon cannot just leave but must be formally laicised. The film is somewhat muzzy on a deacon's powers - at one point a woman dying on the road after an accident asks the deacon to "bless her" and he recites a blessing which may or may not be one of the prayers for the dying. It is not clear from the film whether he is trying to administer extreme unction or not, but he does not seem to make any attempt to absolve her, or even to say an Act of Contrition. Meanwhile, as Steven Greydanus points out, a priest who has been injured in the accident and cannot walk, but is fully conscious and who knows that the deacon is not a priest, is lying a short distance away, but he makes no attempt to offer conditional absolution as might be expected in these circumstances).
When the devil is trying to put pressure on his weak points during the exorcism scenes, the character's chastity is impugned and he is accused of having left his father to die alone - but no mention is made of the fact that he has committed simony, sacrilege, embezzlement and deliberate and sustained falsehood.
This is fairly clearly meant to serve a dramatic function, in that the film assumes that the audience will have little religious commitment or knowledge and will be better able to relate to a character whose mindset is almost entirely secular than to someone with a definite albeit uncertain religious commitment. I must say however that while it is credible that Fr Karras in THE EXORCIST might rise to the challenge, this character is so hopelessly compromised that I would expect him to wind up possessed about thirty seconds after he started to attempt his first exorcism.
The Dean, having received our hero's attempt at resignation, tells him that he thinks he will make a fine priest and persuades him to attend a course to recruit exorcists which is being held in Rome. His principal instrument of persuasion is the threat that if the deacon does not go the seminary will convert his scholarship into a student loan and force him to pay the full cost of his third-level education! Exorcists are supposed to be experienced priests of proven character and holiness - here we have a deacon whom the dean knows to be undergoing a crisis of faith (though he doesn't know the half of it) being sent under duress, apparently on the expectation that meeting the devil will strengthen his faith.
While THE EXORCIST is ultimately schlock and its argument that if the devil exists God must exist is open to question, it does at least raise the point that the Devil is trying to confront Karras - and, by extension, the audience - with all that is vilest and most degraded and disgusting in life in order to drive him to despair. THE RITE does not address this point at all effectively - its version of exorcism is much more a straightforward face-off like a boxing match, and the various horrors are just there for effect.
When the deacon goes to Rome for the course, about half the places in the class are taken up by nuns, even though (as the dialogue in the film itself indicates at one point) exorcism is a specifically priestly ministry.
I also note that the seminary attended by our hero in America is full of students wearing full-length cassocks and nuns wearing the old-style habit with a wimple. I would be surprised if any but the most conservative seminaries were like this - I suspect the film-makers are playing on their audience's image of Catholicism, rather than anything you'd be likely to find in mainstream American seminaries.
Finally, I endorse Steven Greydanus' point that, given that (as is stated in the Matt Baglio book on which the film is based) the majority of apparent possessions turn out to be people with non-supernatural psychological trauma, it would have been better if the film had portrayed at least one such case.
All in all, a pretty bad let-down, a piece of dumbing-down reminiscent of the Association of Catholic Priests!