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Post by Reactionary Rage on Aug 10, 2023 10:25:13 GMT
I think i'm in the 0.1% that thinks that movie is unintentionally funny, and i fucking love Friedkin. My mate finds it funny and can't get into it at all. "It's a little girl saying "cock"!" etc. You have to give yourself to the movie. To submit to it. To believe. If you're one of these uber "rational" types who doesn't grasp this then it's easy to dismiss it. In this way modern audiences probably struggle more to relate to it and understand its supernatural power. But for me personally I've always felt that it taps into something deep within us, something ancestral and moving in a way that few other horror movies have ever done. It is light versus dark, good versus evil using theology and the symbolic world of our ancestors to explore this. If you can suspend your disbelief and enter that world then the movie will reveal its magic but it's a spell that can also be easily broken and demystified by some who reject these things outright from the off so they go into it in the entirely wrong frame of mind. Evil doesn't exist! etc But I think evil does exist, in our world and in man and in The Exorcist you have a symbolic representation of this and the battle that ordinary men, lowly priests in this instance, eternally fight. This is why IMHO the scene where an old, tired, Father Merrin turns up for one final battle bathed in ethereal light, as if God is truly on his side is, in its symbolic way, maybe the most powerful scene in all horror. The movie works because Friedkin took it seriously. He gave it that documentary quality that he brought to the French Connection as well as communicating the Blatty pov. In the end I think it's a deeply human movie but also a hopeful one.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2023 10:30:53 GMT
I first seen it at 16 so the first part is 100% true. Then any other chances I've had to see it, I've taken it more serious but still chuckle at some of it. I've read about the deeper thoughtful aspects of it and take it all aboard. I think it's more the execution that gets me laughing rather than the symbolism or meaning behind it. I also built it up too much reading all the press around it from when it was first released, like i wouldn't be able to sleep after watching it or something.
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Post by DayoRemix on Aug 10, 2023 23:39:29 GMT
Saw Exorcist when I was 14 on VHS..There were many years of hype around the film at that point and it didn't live up to any of it for me. We chuckled at it at 14 and with subsequent viewings, I learned to appreciate it as a well crafted drama. Still never did much for me on the thrills/chills side..Maybe if one is Catholic, this film hits some scary beats and the underlying philosophic questions are more compelling (?) With Friedkin, I much prefer French Connection, Sorcerer or To live and die in LA
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Aug 29, 2023 9:02:13 GMT
I watched Sorcerer last night. It was great! Typically visceral, punch-in-the-gut film making but with a metaphysical edge that lifted it into the realms of existential horror.
The bridge scene is jaw-droppingly well done and the final ten minutes are a surreal doozy.
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Post by harrylemon on Aug 29, 2023 9:34:11 GMT
I watched Sorcerer last night. It was great! Typically visceral, punch-in-the-gut film making but with a metaphysical edge that lifted it into the realms of existential horror. The bridge scene is jaw-droppingly well done and the final ten minutes are a surreal doozy. I watched it last week. Lots of zooming in shots, which don't happen as much these days. Loved it.
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Sept 5, 2023 9:38:57 GMT
I finally got round to watching Cruising last night. It’s interesting to read people’s thoughts on this movie, both at the time and these days as it’s gone under something of a reappraisal. Predictably there’s a lot of attention on whether Pacino’s character is gay or bisexual and whether Pacino becomes a killer himself as a consequence of his sexual repression. There’s also a lot of frustration regarding the lack of answers and conclusions. Reading reviews at the time some focused on this as being a major fault of the movie but I can’t help but feel they were somewhat missing the point. In this way Cruising reminded me of The Blow Up in that surely the ultimate theme and idea the movie riffs on is the elusiveness of truth and reality. We, the audience, are stumbling around in the dark like the police are. Just when you think you have an answer something contradictory appears. Yes there is a lot of hints and suggestion but they could just as well be completely wrong. How many killers are there exactly? Did the man they arrest cut up the bodies? Does Pacino kill Ted or did his boyfriend? This elusiveness is deliberate and it’s done in such a way that little is truly known. Friedkin even uses different actors for the role of the killer not just to emphasise there is more than one but almost to suggest some kind of psychological transference, as if the killer simply supernaturally moves from one body to the next, eventually, possibly, settling in Pacino’s as symbolised by the killers shades and the hat which Karen Allen tries on at the end. All of this is interesting stuff and it’s heightened by the films visual style that has a lurid, sickly decadence that communicates the same tangible sense of decay and degeneracy as Taxi Driver. Leaving aside the S&M stuff and the, er, near the knuckle (arf) scenes inside the clubs it’s the kind of movie that could only have come out of one time and place: New York in the 70s.
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Post by Charlie O. on Sept 5, 2023 14:49:11 GMT
There’s also a lot of frustration regarding the lack of answers and conclusions. Was this a Friedkin "thing"? Nobody knows what happens at the end of The French Connection, either, and there was a lot that was left open to interpretation in The Exorcist.
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Post by Stacy Heydon on Sept 5, 2023 15:25:14 GMT
There’s also a lot of frustration regarding the lack of answers and conclusions. Was this a Friedkin "thing"? Nobody knows what happens at the end of The French Connection, Doesn't the big drug baron escape on the boat?
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Post by Charlie O. on Sept 5, 2023 15:55:41 GMT
Been a while since I saw it, but my recollection is that Popeye's pursuing somebody, they both disappear offscreen and there's a gunshot...
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Sept 5, 2023 18:28:20 GMT
There’s also a lot of frustration regarding the lack of answers and conclusions. Was this a Friedkin "thing"? Nobody knows what happens at the end of The French Connection, either, and there was a lot that was left open to interpretation in The Exorcist.What was left open in the Exorcist?
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