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matrixrefugeeI'd been wanting to see this, and I missed it at the cinema in Lowell... but the Loews at the Loop Mall in Methuen was still showing it, and so the three of us, my folks and I went up there to see it. I've heard nothing but good things about this movie, from everyone I know who's seen it, and I agree with them 100%
***** out of *****
Plot in a capsule (Besides the fact that it looks like an episode of "Law & Order" if M. Night Shyamalan had written and directed it): Inspired by an actual exorcism which took place in Germany in the 1970s, an agnostic lawyer (Laura Linney) is called upon to defend a priest (Tom Wilkinson) accused of "negligent homicide" after a possessed girl dies following an attempt to deliver her from the grip of the demons. Prosecution tries to write off Emily's condition as purely medical -- for that matter, the DA in this story is a Protestant who continually stands on the letter of the facts instead of allowing room for the possible... dare we say, things that require faith? I found that particularly interesting, since I've heard cases of Protestant ministers trying to expell demons and not having any success, until a Catholic priest was called in to handle the matter. ...But oddly enough, defense manages to maintain an open mind, considering the possibilities that maybe what happened to the victim was something just out of the reach of medical science, and calls in an anthropologist specializing in studying religious experiences to testify to the evidence of physiological data relating to spiritual experiences, both positive and negative. This was nothing really new to me: I've heard of a study which a neuropsychologist did, by having people of different religious persuations, different faiths, pray or meditate while undergoing a functional MRI: there's a spot at the junction of the temporal lobes which gets stimulated and starts showing a lot of activity when a person prays, a spot which this doctor termed "the God Spot". Now, this doesn't discredit the reality of some Higher Power: grace builds on nature, after all. A doctor called in by the prosecution points to an EEG which revealed activity on the victim's left temporal lobe, which might have indicated epilepsy, but I suspect that doctor was only seeing what he wanted to see, and wasn't looking for all the possible answers.
I also give credit to the directors for toning down their portrayal of demonic possession: It gives you just a teeny bit of a sense that maybe, just maybe this girl's sufferings were purely physiological... But not enough to tip the balance that way completely. It makes for a tighter drama that way. It's about spiritual warfare, something which too many Christians have lost sight of. I don't know where we lost sight of it, but we used to be the Church Militant. Unfortunately, we've become the Church Cozy-Around-the-frickin'-Table ((Whoops, Constantine's starting to front here...)). That, my friends, is what the enemy wants us to be: people who've unwittingly comprimised with evil by doing utterly jack about it, by acting like all we've got is what's down here, and only giving lip-service to the hereafter or to the preternatural and the supernatural. That's worse than living like an animal, if you ask me. There's more to living the faith than going to church every Sunday or even every day: it's gotta permeate everything you do. I don't mean that you have to be like those anNOYing fundie types who spout a Bible quote for every third sentence. I mean you have to realize, to quote John Constantine, "Heaven and Hell are behind every door, every window." Ee have to see the numinous in everything, as much as we can, or else we're just living on the surface, when the All Mighty wants us to dive in feet first and get ourselves soaked with it. Evil is real, and it's not just in the nasty shit that humans do to each other. That's just the human level: there's a level below that wants us to do that, since it wants to defile the image of God that is in the human race. They can't get at Him, but they can get at us. Some of us have to fight against it actively, but others, like Emily Rose in the end, have to let it hit them full force and knock them down, so that other people won't have to be broken by it and possibily lose the battle. It's called sacrifice....
I'm ranting again, but hey, would you want me any other way?
***** out of *****
Plot in a capsule (Besides the fact that it looks like an episode of "Law & Order" if M. Night Shyamalan had written and directed it): Inspired by an actual exorcism which took place in Germany in the 1970s, an agnostic lawyer (Laura Linney) is called upon to defend a priest (Tom Wilkinson) accused of "negligent homicide" after a possessed girl dies following an attempt to deliver her from the grip of the demons. Prosecution tries to write off Emily's condition as purely medical -- for that matter, the DA in this story is a Protestant who continually stands on the letter of the facts instead of allowing room for the possible... dare we say, things that require faith? I found that particularly interesting, since I've heard cases of Protestant ministers trying to expell demons and not having any success, until a Catholic priest was called in to handle the matter. ...But oddly enough, defense manages to maintain an open mind, considering the possibilities that maybe what happened to the victim was something just out of the reach of medical science, and calls in an anthropologist specializing in studying religious experiences to testify to the evidence of physiological data relating to spiritual experiences, both positive and negative. This was nothing really new to me: I've heard of a study which a neuropsychologist did, by having people of different religious persuations, different faiths, pray or meditate while undergoing a functional MRI: there's a spot at the junction of the temporal lobes which gets stimulated and starts showing a lot of activity when a person prays, a spot which this doctor termed "the God Spot". Now, this doesn't discredit the reality of some Higher Power: grace builds on nature, after all. A doctor called in by the prosecution points to an EEG which revealed activity on the victim's left temporal lobe, which might have indicated epilepsy, but I suspect that doctor was only seeing what he wanted to see, and wasn't looking for all the possible answers.
I also give credit to the directors for toning down their portrayal of demonic possession: It gives you just a teeny bit of a sense that maybe, just maybe this girl's sufferings were purely physiological... But not enough to tip the balance that way completely. It makes for a tighter drama that way. It's about spiritual warfare, something which too many Christians have lost sight of. I don't know where we lost sight of it, but we used to be the Church Militant. Unfortunately, we've become the Church Cozy-Around-the-frickin'-Table ((Whoops, Constantine's starting to front here...)). That, my friends, is what the enemy wants us to be: people who've unwittingly comprimised with evil by doing utterly jack about it, by acting like all we've got is what's down here, and only giving lip-service to the hereafter or to the preternatural and the supernatural. That's worse than living like an animal, if you ask me. There's more to living the faith than going to church every Sunday or even every day: it's gotta permeate everything you do. I don't mean that you have to be like those anNOYing fundie types who spout a Bible quote for every third sentence. I mean you have to realize, to quote John Constantine, "Heaven and Hell are behind every door, every window." Ee have to see the numinous in everything, as much as we can, or else we're just living on the surface, when the All Mighty wants us to dive in feet first and get ourselves soaked with it. Evil is real, and it's not just in the nasty shit that humans do to each other. That's just the human level: there's a level below that wants us to do that, since it wants to defile the image of God that is in the human race. They can't get at Him, but they can get at us. Some of us have to fight against it actively, but others, like Emily Rose in the end, have to let it hit them full force and knock them down, so that other people won't have to be broken by it and possibily lose the battle. It's called sacrifice....
I'm ranting again, but hey, would you want me any other way?
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 06:47 pm (UTC)I loved this movie. I posted the really story of Emily Rose at my journal if you want to read that.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 10:32 pm (UTC)