The Talkies: Exorcising Good and Evil
Bowman, James
by James Bowman has fulfilled all the requirements for the post by being the child of an incestuous priest and a non-believer, one Peter Kel- son (Ben Chaplin). But here the church is...
...trick of The Blair Witch Project could JAMES BOWMAN, our movie critic, is on the world...
...one's head turning around or levitating in an attempt to bring her back to con- Yang underlines the parallels between above her bed it produces an effect of ter- sciousness...
...At about man@home.com...
...Nowadays, nothing is real...
...But here the church is powerless to stop him and, in the end, the evil one is foiled by little Winona Ryder with a big handgun...
...In the older little girl in The Exorcist...
...These include that we are used to movies like Stigmata But I guess the point is that no one the latest Adam Sandler vehicle, Little really believes that he was there to begin and Dogma, is the spectacle of Catholic Nicky, which I think I shall probably not doctrine and belief being treated by Hol- with, or cannot imagine him as anything bother to see...
...of Satan comes as no news to me...
...way from the cosmic drama of The Exorthey go back to old-fashioned cinematic "So I'm pretending...
...Alternatively, him, "You look honest...
...Brendan Fraser has made such evidently loves everybody...
...entertainment capital of the world, under intended victim in the Dudley Moore Maybe the film's imitators have since role--the perpetual wide-eyed innocent of made us too well-acquainted with its tricks which Mr...
...Eventually, cheap imitation of Mr...
...Ota and woof, as we experience it through the and a wink at the outset--and surrender work of these marvelous actors...
...The American Spectator 9 December 2000~January 200I...
...whose sunny, Californian skies God selfcreel as this in mind...
...N.J.'s wife, Min Min (Elaine Jin), retreat, where life among the Buddhists you repeat the trick, the less real it looks...
...N ducing us to its characters, showing them He and Mr...
...Here he is due on a certain American editor of the Times Literary date, at a certain time, to possess the body even more disappointing...
...By the inevitably of photographic reality...
...rise to and that are now so tired and unbedoes in u u the Movie of the Month...
...my youth," he tells her...
...There you ed "Movie Takes" are available on TAS Online 61 is treated seriously...
...Things turned cinematic evil in the past and hit upon a Meanwhile, the company in which out the same or not much different" and new way to make it look real...
...Blair witch of the summer before last...
...If the movies are ever to escape Nearly three hours in length, the film from the prison of postmodernism, the N.J...
...that cosmic evil had been robbed of its Berlinger, in which Satan's dirty work is \Vhen the younger priest asks him why, Grand Guignol effects not to make it performed by (we suppose) that famous the formidable Mr...
...they ask...
...Taking solace another confession to make: "While you ed mannerisms that had been employed in her religion, which is Buddhism, she were away, I had a chance to relive part of by the special-effects artists to represent goes on an extended retreat...
...William Peter Bla...
...cist but also from the special effects it gave realism, as the Taiwanese Edward Yang "What's wrong with a little acting...
...In fact, he has nothright spell, the right conjunction of prophetic circumstance to spring his evil The Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is Supplement...
...The comatose old lady thus her tentative and abortive romance with ror just because the expectations that we becomes the mute witness, along with us, Fatty and her father's with Sherry as it bring with us to the movies are always and to a series of confessions that are often develops on a business ~rip to Japan...
...is badly upset not only by her mother's turns out to have been "just like talking to That's why the original Blair Witch Project condition but, oddly, by the fact that she my mother, only with the roles reversedwas such a phenomenal success: It found finds she has nothing to say to her--her me as mother, them as me," N.J...
...Jian (Wu Nienjen) we lish relations with an old girlfriend, some- at www.spectator.org...
...or maybe the obscene rantings of young a cinematic specialty--that the imagery Nowadays, at least judging by Lost Miss Blair when she was possessed by the of horns and tails and pitchforks and the devil have lost some of their power to fiery furnace are only "special effects" tors, the devil has nothing so delicately shock since we have learned to expect designed to scare him...
...But I think recent Ninth Gate, he is a mere automa- that the film isn't funny, but its humor what has robbed the Prince of Darkness of ton, waiting for the right incantation, the turns rather insipid without an underlyhis power to scare us is also a general ing sense of the seriousness and reality of Exorcising Good and Evil In postmodern Hollywood nobody knows the difference...
...ital, professional, and personal...
...His teenage daughter Ting Ting version of it?--and even the gruesome ily-moony daughter, precocious son, (Kelly Lee) is fascinated by the love life of end of a gentle "Wiccan" girl who argues obnoxious brother-in-law-before his her more sophisticated friend, Lilt (Adrifor the benevolence of witchcraft is not life is thrown into a series of crises, mar- an Lee), and when Lilt discards a particenough to save the picture...
...Lost notice the same decline of seriousness Not only are the priests (Max Von Souls by )anusz Kaminski does the whole about the devil in the remake of Bedaz- Sydow and Jason Miller) who carry out Exorcist number over again, and there is the exorcism on the little girl who is inex- zled...
...To start with, his mother-in-law (Tang ularly earnest boyfriend--called Fatty (Yupang Chang) because he is so thin-natural evil on the screen is that the Ruyun), who lives with the family, suffers Ting Ting tentatively takes him up and movies are really a hopelessly realistic a stroke and is confined to bed...
...But for all the Cook himse]f as an excruciatingly cool humor of the piece, there was yet a whiff Miller pointed out in the Weekly StanBeelzebub...
...muses: "Is anything real anyseems to waste the first hour just intro- more...
...They look to a been this law of diminishing dickering with the Taiwanese maker of a O ne reason for the rise of post- Japanese partner, Mr...
...Nor do they scare us...
...It is also, like most confessions, self-dramati- time that Min Min returns from her scary because it looks real...
...s The Exorcist seems fihn, the Church is as potent a presence to have coincided with a spate of new as its great adversary, and almost as shockmovies in which the devil is supposed to ing as the Satanic manifestations, now be a principal character...
...Ota's product, have the very savor of real life, not just in audiences will have seen everything, so who cleverly goes under the name of its moral ambiguity but in its very warp filmmakers have to give them a nudge Ato...
...It's all just think the point is to make us despair-to Do you suppose she took her name from see ourselves as animal and ugly, to reject movies...
...has a way of cutting through the accumulat- own life seems so empty...
...It seems hardly worth the trouble to bring the Enemy of Mankind onto the stage at all if he is to be disposed of like a clumsy burglar...
...Bowman's regularl 7 updatbeing introduced to the middle-aged the same time, he is tempted to re-estabbusinessman N.J...
...Elizabeth Hurley's Satan can put Linda Blair, who played the possessed cist has grown less scary over the ?:ears...
...by James Bowman has fulfilled all the requirements for the post by being the child of an incestuous priest and a non-believer, one Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin...
...It's a long in person because, his colleagues inform the pass of verisimilitude...
...very quietly suffers through his mid-life crisis, we are anmsed by the antics of his recently married ne'er-do-well of a brother-in-law, A-Di (Chen Xisheng), and his shrewish wife Xiao Yah (Xiao Shushen) and the boyish escapades of N.J.'s small son, "fang Yang (Jonathan Chang), who may be the cutest kid on The problem with presenting superWhy did they ever seem so...
...As in Roman Polanski's him...
...N.J...
...You cannot tell a lie...
...especially when the latter tells him, "You James Bowman ~elcomes e-mail at JamesBowreturns of special effects...
...is chosen to deal with Mr...
...Obviously the of the designated Antichrist, the one who 60 December ~ooo/January 2ooi 9 TheArnericanSpectator not be brought off a second time, but the new director, Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood The most shocking thing about The Exorcist today is that Catholic doctrine Hill), seems to want to go through the motions of re-creating the illusion of reality-by pretending that the film is a documentary about the phenomenal success of the original BWP (which was real enough) and announcing in a title at the outset that "this is a fictionalized re-enactment of events that occurred in the aftermath of The Blair Witch Proone called Sherry Breitner (Ke Suyun), a Taiwanese woman married to an American, who obviously meant a great deal to him and who now comes back into his life, reproaching him for having abandoned her 30 years ago...
...The first time you show some- family members are called on to talk to her father is in Japan...
...They do not scare language nearly as bad from 12-year-old ing at all in mind...
...But his flirtation with reality only leads to adolescent profundity-which is real, your own experience or the video spend a long time with him and his fam- earth...
...But the more zations...
...In addition, there is The Book dard) an explanation for the little girl's of brimstone about his portrayal, a hint of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 by Joe possession that is worth taking seriously...
...is a senior executive suddenly seems in danger of going bust...
...Ota hit it off, however, in a variety of settings that seem to have nothing to do with one another...
...It doesn't mean girls at any suburban mall...
...ject...
...After are like me...
...You'd never get an idea of that subtlety in One thing you notice is that The Exor- an}: movie emanating today from the Souls, the latest of The Exorcist's imitawhat it is ostensibly mocking...
...As N.J...
...You Is~vood with respect...
...lievable...
...Von Sydow replies: "I seem less scarily immediate but more so...
...I realized if I had a second chance, I wouldn't need it...
...dogged realism ofYi Yi is the way to go...
...That Sandler is the spawn more than a glorified poltergeist...
...Various begins a romance of her own while her medium...
...Ota (Issey Ogata), He too has learned, as Min Min says, modernism in the cinema has to bait them out, while at the same time that "things aren't really so complicated...
...Cook's Lucifer in 1967 was witty, another retread in Harold Ramis's ver- urbane, and charming, as we should plicably possessed by the devil impressive sion of Bedazzled, the great classic of in their personal goodness and sanctity, expect a devil genuinely practiced in the 1967 written by Peter Cook and starring the?, offer in this new version (as John J. arts of temptation to be...
...on the campy devil act anytime she chooses, but she obviously doesn't take it any more seriously than we do, informing her the possibili b that God could love us...
...decline in our capacity for belief in good T he recent re-release, with additional footage, of William Fried- and evil-and you've got to believe in kin's film version of 1973 of one to believe in the other...
Vol. 33 • December 2000 • No. 10
