Movie Review: The Devil & Father Amorth

The Devil & Father Amorth ** / *****

Directed by: William Friedkin.

Written by: William Friedkin & Mark Kermode 

 

The great William Friedkin is now in his early 80s, and hasn’t made a feature film since 2011’s Killer Joe – but I wouldn’t count out another great film from him before his time is up. He is, after all, a director who many have written off several times, only to rise again with another gem of a film. The Devil & Father Amorth though is not that film. It is a small and slight film – it runs barely over an hour, and feels padded at that. Friedkin is still enough of a showman that he wants to give the audience their monies worth, and yet the film kind of feels like a couple half-baked ideas crammed together when neither was enough on their own.

 

The film is a documentary about Father Gabriel Amorth – a Catholic Priest in Rome, who died a few years ago at the age of 93. For decades, he was the Church’s chief Exorcist in Italy – apparently performing thousands of exorcisms himself, which sounds like a lot until you realize two things – apparently 50,000 people a year in Italy seek out exorcists, and priests often have to perform one exorcism after another after another on the same people. The big hook that Friedkin tries very hard to sell the audience on in this film that for the first time, Father Amorth will let him film an actual exorcism.

 

Before we get there though, Friedkin spends some time with his own history of exorcisms – visiting the locations of his infamous 1973 classic The Exorcist, shows interview clips with the late William Peter Blatty talking about the real life case that inspired the novel, etc. We then meet Father Amorth – who Friedkin says is the “most spiritual man he ever knew” – yet that doesn’t come across very well in the film - he’s very quiet, and we don’t get much of a sense of anything about him. We actually learn more from his assistant than we do from Father Amorth himself.

 

Anyway, eventually we get to the main attraction – the ninth exorcism of an Italian woman named Cristina. Friedkin makes a big deal about Father Amorth would only let Friedkin himself – no crew, no lights – into record the exorcism, but that’s an odd request considering that the room is full of at least a dozen of Cristina’s friends and families there to help – including several (male) family members who hold her down at Father Amorth recites his prayers. Cristina certainly does appear to have something deeply wrong with her – whether it’s demonic possession or mental illness, who can say for sure? Friedkin interviews some medical experts after the exorcism to get their take, and they seem extremely careful not to completely dismiss the idea of demons – but they don’t embrace it either. Their explanation runs something like this – even if we cannot explain it now, doesn’t mean there isn’t a scientific explanation for it – we just haven’t discovered what it is.

 

The exorcism in the film is strangely anti-climactic. I didn’t really expect something out of Friedkin’s other Exorcist film – I didn’t expect to see levitating, head spinning, vomiting or masturbating with crucifixes, but there really isn’t anything too dramatic here (perhaps this is why Friedkin padded the movie to even get it to its 69 minute runtime – the footage itself isn’t that great). I do wish Friedkin had addressed the sounds she was making during the exorcism – they sound, quite frankly, fake – not in that she is putting on a performance, but more like the sound that talented sound department people come up with.

 

The biggest single flaw in the movie though comes at the end. Up until then, I think Friedkin had mainly played fair – and was willing to question the validity of these things. For example, he knows that growing up in a culture like Italy – where demonic possession is something many believe in, means you’re much more likely to be diagnosed with that than if you were in, say, America. But in the final moments of the film, Friedkin expects the audience to believe that he and his producer drove two hours, to a small town in Italy, to meet once again with Cristina – who isn’t in the field Friedkin thought they were supposed to meet in, but rather, inside the church. When they go inside the church, Friedkin says they see things he cannot explain – and Cristina threatens his life while possessed. Why is Friedkin telling us this, instead of showing us? Because he wants us to believe he forgot to bring his camera into the church.

 

I mean, come on – Friedkin’s putting us on here right? I don’t know how much of the film is a put on, and how much Friedkin really believes, but this last twist is too much for me to believe almost anything in the film. As a documentary, then, the film fails. And as entertainment, it fails as well- it just isn’t all that interesting. Nice try though Friedkin.

Dual Movie Review: Cruising (1980) & Interior. Leather Bar. (2014)

Cruising (1980)
Directed by: William Friedkin.
Written by: William Friedkin based on the novel by Gerald Walker.
Starring: Al Pacino (Steve Burns), Paul Sorvino (Capt. Edelson), Karen Allen (Nancy), Richard Cox (Stuart Richards), Don Scardino (Ted Bailey), Joe Spinell (Patrolman DiSimone), Jay Acovone (Skip Lee), Randy Jurgensen (Det. Lefransky), Barton Heyman (Dr. Rifkin), Gene Davis (DaVinci), Arnaldo Santana (Loren Lukas), Larry Atlas (Eric Rossman), Allan Miller (Chief of Detectives), Sonny Grosso (Det. Blasio), Ed O'Neill (Det. Schreiber), Michael Aronin (Det. Davis), James Remar (Gregory), William Russ (Paul Gaines), Mike Starr (Patrolman Desher), Steve Inwood  (Martino), Keith Prentice (Joey), Leland Starnes (Jack Richards).

Interior. Leather Bar.
Directed by: James Franco & Travis Mathews.
Written by: Travis Mathews.
Featuring: Val Lauren, Christian Patrick, Brenden Gregory, Brad Roberge, Robbie Acklen, Osbaldo Daniel Alvarez, Andres Barcelo, Samantha Barrows, Nick Buda, Seana Carroll, Collin Chavez, Jol Devitro, Julie Diaz, James Franco, Brianna Getrost, A.J. Goodrich, Jonathan Howard, Caleb James, Anna Kooris, Michael Lannan, Eva Lauren, Loc Le, Tatiana Leipet, Tyson C. Lenard, Travis Mathews, Matthew McKelligon, Joel Michaely, Chervine Namani, Adrian Pena, Ben Phen, Liz Phillips, Jake Robbins, Scott Schwenk, Jay Sosnicki, Lane Stewart, Iris Torres, Rob Vincent, Keith Wilson.

In 1980, William Friedkin made Cruising with Al Pacino. The production was beset by protests from the gay community, because they feared that it would portray them badly – as nothing but perverts. The film is set in the world of S&M, leather bars in New York, where a serial killer is finding and killing his victims. The police Captain in charge of the investigation, Edelson (Paul Sorvino) wants desperately to solve the case, so he gets a “rookie cop” Steve Burns (Al Pacino, then in his late 30s, so far too old) to go undercover in this world because he “looks like the victims”. Burns isn’t gay, and is uncomfortable with his new assignment. When he descends into this world, it’s like descending into hell. The film had to be radically cut after Friedkin finished it – 40 minutes in all were said to be trimmed to get a R rating – but those 40 minutes apparently had little to do with the plot, and were about the world of the leather bars. Was their hard core fucking in those minutes? We’ll never know, the footage was never released, and many believe the studio destroyed it. It came and went a commercial and critical failure, and then was mainly buried by the studio – who didn’t release it on VHS until 1996 and not on DVD until 2007. But it has become a cult film – many among gay viewers.

In 2013, James Franco and Travis Mathews made Interior. Leather Bar which was marketed as a film that “reconstructs” those lost 40 minutes of Friedkin’s film. That marketing is a lie. Interior. Leather Bar is actually about Franco and Mathews making those 40 minutes – and their lead actor Val Lauren, who is not “playing Pacino” but is “playing the same character Pacino played” and his discomfort with the project. Like Pacino, and the character he plays, Lauren is not gay and is uncomfortable descending into this world. In his first meeting with Franco and Mathews, he confesses that he “doesn’t understand” the project or its vision. But he’s a longtime friend and collaborator of Franco’s – so he trusts his vision. The whole shoot of those lost 40 minutes seem to happen all over one long day – a day in which Lauren grows increasingly uncomfortable with what he’s watching. How much of Interior. Leather Bar is staged, and how much is real? It plays like a behind the scenes documentary, but there is enough evidence to suggest that the whole thing is staged.

Getting back to Cruising, it is at best a flawed film for Friedkin. The original protestors were somewhat right about the film. The identity of the killer (if he really is the killer, or should I say the only killer) does represent kind of the worst sort of “killer Queen” stereotypes that upset gay viewers to this day. Yet, it is also true that Friedkin never really does any moralizing about the clubs themselves. There are two blatantly homophobic cops near the beginning of the film, but they are portrayed as such. Sorvino’s Edelson is more than sympathetic to the victims and wants to find the killer. There are gay characters – like Pacino’s neighbor – that don’t fit into the stereotypes we normally associate with gay characters (at least completely). Friedkin’s camera captures what was happening in the leather clubs, but doesn’t make it look sick or disgusting and doesn’t judge the people in them. This is mainly why the film has become a cult hit among gay viewers – it’s one of the only films of its era that addressed gay characters at all – and almost works as a look back to a more carefree, hedonistic time in gay culture – before AIDS came along and ruined it. There are certainly elements to the film beside the “killer Queen” angle that come across as slightly homophobic – the giant black man in a leather G-string who is apparently on the NYPD payroll just to beat gay people during interrogations for example – but it almost seems accidental. I believe Friedkin when he says he never saw the film as about gay culture, but rather a murder mystery set in gay culture. And if the film is dark and nihilistic, offering a very bleak view of humanity, well’s that’s perfectly in line with the filmmaker who made The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, To Live and Die in LA and Killer Joe. He has never been the cheeriest of filmmakers.

What sinks Cruising for me though is the central character played by Pacino, who is a character you never really get a handle on. The ending of the movie implies some things about him, that doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the movie. There is a darkness to him to be sure, but as much as the movie implies? Perhaps that what was what the missing 40 minutes really were – something that explains why Burns does what the movie implies (but never states). I can see any numbers of things that happened during that time making the ending make more sense. There are other problems with the film – Karen Allen as Pacino’s girlfriend for example is given nothing to do except to be there when he wants to fuck a woman to remind himself that he’s heterosexual – but it’s the confusion of the ending, that strains for profound ambiguity but doesn’t make it – that makes the film a somewhat ambitious (perhaps even honorable) failure.

Interior. Leather Bar is an interesting film, but in some ways has the same problems as Cruising – in that it wants

ambiguity and ends up with confusion. Watching the film, I was never sure what I was watching was reality or staged – which I think is part of the point of the film but one that I found increasingly annoying. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film that’s more about itself than Interior. Leather Bar is. Lauren admits he doesn’t know why the film is being made – and when he asks Franco, the director, he admits he doesn’t know either. Franco has a few monologues about how he doesn’t like how he’s been conditioned to except “normal” to be heterosexual, and expressing frustration that you can show pretty anything in a movie you want to – but not sex, which is the most natural thing in the world. He wants to make Interior. Leather Bar, with real, un-simulated sex, in part to show it as a beautiful thing. Lauren is unsure. What will this do to his career? Franco is a major star, so he can do whatever he wants. But will Lauren become just the star of the “Franco faggot film” and his friend on the phone calls it.

Watching Interior Leather Bar I couldn’t help but think that the whole thing was really just an elaborate joke on Franco’s part. He is a celebrity who has done his best to become anonymous but in the opposite way most celebrities do who crave it do- which is to be reclusive - Franco instead is seemingly everywhere, doing everything. You can never get a read on who the “real” James Franco is, which is how he wants it, and makes him an exciting actor to watch – because you never know what the hell he’s going to do next. He has been dogged by “gay” rumors for years – his entire Comedy Central Roast last year was basically 90 minutes of his friends calling him gay – and Franco decides to play with that in this film. He’s not “in” the film – just directing it. But he’s in the film as the director “James Franco” which may or may not be the real James Franco. Who knows? Who cares?

The film is interesting in many ways. It does contain some interesting material about all the gay stars of the films – basically unknown actors who show up for a casting call, some of which know Cruising, some of which don’t – and are willing to do whatever Mathews (who seems to be the only one directing the film within the film, as Franco recedes to the background if he’s on set at all) wants them to do – including a real life couple who actually do have sex on screen.

What is Interior. Leather Bar really about then? I honestly don’t know. Perhaps it’s about an actor confronting his own discomfort with gay sex, or about flipping the idea of what a film featuring gay sex is really about. Basically though, it’s about itself and its own making. Strangely, although the film itself plays like a making of documentary about itself, I would like to see the making of documentary about the making of Interior Leather Bar. But then again, perhaps that is what I already saw.

Movie Review: Killer Joe

Killer Joe
Directed by: William Friedkin.
Written by: Tracy Letts based on his play.
Starring: Matthew McConaughey (Killer Joe Cooper), Emile Hirsch (Chris Smith), Juno Temple (Dottie Smith), Thomas Haden Church (Ansel Smith), Gina Gershon (Sharla Smith).

Whatever you think of Killer Joe – and here is a movie that I think it is nearly impossible not to have an opinion on – you have to admit this: it goes for broke. In an era where most American movies play it safe, there is nothing safe about Killer Joe. It is the darkest comedy imaginable – a film about a family of cruel, dumb, violent, self-centered people who care about nothing about themselves. They are the very definition of trailer trash. They make the mistake of hiring an even crueler, more violent, more self-centered then they are to kill another family member to collect the insurance money. The problem is, he isn’t dumb like the rest of them – and his mistake is to overestimate the intelligence of the people he’s getting involved in – and believe me, he knows they’re idiots when he meets them.

The family is the Smiths. One dark and stormy night, Chris (Emile Hirsch) bangs on the door of the trailer the rest of the family shares wanting to be let in. When the door finally flings open, he is greeted to the sight of his step-mother Sharla’s (Gina Gershon) unclad nether regions, which is the last thing he wants to see. He needs to talk to his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church). Chris mother, Ansel's ex-wife, has screwed Chris over yet again – stealing the cocaine he got on credit from a drug dealer who now wants his $6,000 or Chris' blood. But Chris has an idea on how to get the money. From what his mother’s boyfriend has told him, his mother has a $50,000 insurance policy, and his simple minded, younger sister Dottie (Juno Temple) is the beneficiary. He has also heard about man – Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a Dallas detective, who has a side business of killing people. After all, what good is this worthless woman doing anyone?

So, they meet with Killer Joe – who first stops by the trailer, and finds Dottie alone. I’m not sure how old Dottie is supposed to be – she refers to herself once as 12, but physically she is clearly older (Temple is really 21, although admittedly a young looking 21), but mentally and emotionally, describing her as 12 would be generous. He eventually meets with Chris and Ansel, and doesn’t like the fact that he'll have to wait until the insurance payout to get paid. However, he would be interested if they would give him a retainer – Dottie.

The film is based upon the first play by Tracy Letts – who also wrote the screenplay. Letts would later go onto win a Pulitzer Prize for his brilliant August: Osage County, which when I saw it on Broadway a few years ago, was the greatest theater going experience of my life (full disclosure – I don’t go to many plays). If the two plays share anything in common, it’s that they center on a dysfunctional family – although if the characters in August: Osage County could see the Smiths, they would feel pretty damn good about themselves.

Letts makes no attempt to hide his contempt for his characters or make them sympathetic in any way. In fact, he openly mocks them, mostly through Killer Joe who has a number of darkly comic lines that you cannot help but laugh at, because they're funny and true, and delivered by a pitch perfect Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey has remade his image in the past couple of years, taking on more challenging roles than the romcoms that he known for. Much like his brilliant work in Steven Soderberghs Magic Mike earlier this summer, McConaughey uses his natural charms in much darker way than in the past. He is great in every scene in this movie – as the cold psychopath who will eventually torment, humiliate, and beat pretty much every other character in the movie. But there are two scenes that are truly chilling – one is when he slowly, surely "seduces" Dottie out of her virginity, which is as chilling as anything in recent memory – and most likely the reason the film got an NC-17 rating in America, even though there is nothing overtly, visually graphic about the scene. Then there is another – undoubtedly the cruelest scene you will see this year – as after he breaks Sharla's nose, he completely humiliates her by making her perform fellatio on a piece of fried chicken. If that sounds ridiculous or comical, you have to see the movie to see just how it plays. McConaughey finds a new level of depravity behind those eyes I have often thought looked vacant in the past. This is one of the very best performances of the year so far.

Not to be outdone, the rest of the cast raises their game to match him. Emile Hirsch is an interesting choice to play Chris, but a great one. He has often played smart characters, who still end up getting in over their heads. Here, he is simply a guy who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, when in reality, he’s just as stupid as the rest of them – perhaps more so, since he cannot tell when he’s being set up. Thomas Haden Church gives his best performance since his comeback role in Sideways as the dim Ansel, who may be an idiot, but at least seems to know what is best for him at any given time – no matter who has to screw over. Gina Gershon lets it all hang out – literally and figuratively – in her performance, crafting an instantly hateable character in Shayla, who still doesn’t deserve what she gets. I doubt many actresses would sign up to do what she does in this film – let alone be able to pull it off. And then there’s Juno Temple as Dottie, who may seem sweet, naïve and stuck in a permanent state of arrested development, until, that is, you listen to just what she is saying. She may well not be as naïve as he appears to be – as she presents herself to everyone else in the film. And the final shot in the movie may just imply she isn’t quite as stupid as he appears either.

The film was directed by William Friedkin, who had two huge hits back in the 1970s with The French Connection and The Exorcist, and has spent the last 40 years doing dark thrillers and action movies, some of which are great (To Live and Die in LA, Sorcerer) and some of which clearly are not (Jade). He found new life teaming with Letts in 2007 to adapt the play Bug – starring a brilliant Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd, and is the most claustrophobic film this side of Roman Polanski's Repulsion. Teaming up with Letts again, the two have outdone themselves. The film is supposedly set in Dallas, but we see none of the wealth associated with the city, but just the broken down parts that are usually ignored. This is a world of low rent trailer parks, with barking pit bulls outside, sleazy strip clubs, dirty garages, off tracking betting establishments, and a closed pool parlor. I assume that most of the play was set in the family’s trailer – where most of the movie takes place – but while Friedkin certainly opens the play up a bit, it wallows in the same sort of poverty stricken wasteland. The cinematography by the great Caleb Deschannel, captures this in all its seedy glory.

To me, there is no denying that Killer Joe is a brilliantly written, directed and especially acted movie. You may well hate the film – there really is no way I could convince you otherwise if you did, nor could I blame you that after this review, you decide you don’t want to put yourself through the experience of watching this film. It is utterly disgusting and cruel from start to finish, without a single redeeming character. And yet, I couldn’t help but be drawn into this world of depravity and violence because it so was so vividly realized on every level. Friedkin, Letts and their cast goes for broke with Killer Joe – and they succeed brilliantly, even if most people still wouldn’t want to see the result.