The Devil in the Details
Logic and faith suffer from some mass hysteria in the admirable but flawed "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." (Film Review)
The Upside: A movie with ideas...
The Downside: ...that it doesn't know what to do with.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a scotch-tape hybrid of two movies that work well- it's just that they don't work well together. On one hand it wants to be a courtroom drama, incorporating the "true" story of Emily Rose, a nineteen year-old college student who died after becoming afflicted by either a rare form of epilepsy or by demonic possession. On the other hand it strives to be a straight-out horror flick as it goes through the well-trodden Exorcist steps of gruesome imagery, potent religious symbology, and all-around things-that-go-bump-in-the-night creepiness. Director Scott Derrickson has termed the film the world's first "courtroom horror movie," but such ambitious boasting falls flat because he's involved two separate themes that not only seem ill-suited for the same package, but actively work against each other for the entire running time.
Like most movies with the "Based on a True Story" brand, I get a queasy feeling trying to connect the events of the film to those of real life, especially after a Google search I did on Emily Rose produced over ten pages of hits regarding the movie, absolutely none with factual information about the real girl. Even Sony's promotional website tries to gloss over the facts- it's section about "Emily" is nothing but still photos of actress Jennifer Carpenter and obviously mock-up newspaper clippings. With this kind of shoddy scholarship, it becomes difficult to get a handle on how to interpret the events in Exorcism, especially when the film holds both the certainness of blind faith and the possibilities of optimism as equally valid, rather than contradictory, points of view.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose should have either been a courtroom drama or an on-the-rocks horror movie. I think the first one would have produced the superior result, but the latter, while admittedly sacrificing some respect, would not have plagued us with the "if" or "if not" questions I found Exorcism repeatably attempting- and failing- to grapple with. The story isn't as much about Emily as it is about Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom), a Catholic priest who was given sanction to perform the Rite of Exorcism on the young Emily after her erratic behavior that included Hell-bent hallucinations that began while she was studying abroad grew more macabre, manifesting itself in screeches in strange tongues and literally trying to rip the walls of her room down with her bare hands. Emily died after the failed exorcism, leading to Moore's arrest for negligent homicide. It was argued that Emily's condition was a mix of psychosis and epileptic grand mal seizures which could have been treated with medication. After the exorcism, Moore convinced Emily to break off the medication, soon after which she fell into a coma and died.
The courtroom half of Exorcism tries to grapple with the question: did Father Moore's placement of spiritual healing over that of medical cause Emily's death? The argument seems to run both ways: an anthropologist who testifies in Father Moore's defense argues that Emily's medication actually did her in- it "numbed" her to the effects of the exorcism, causing it to fail. And as Moore points out, Emily was still undergoing treatment at the time of the exorcism.
The reason this works is because for every step the story takes in one direction, it adds appropriate counter-balance. During the courtroom sparring between the self-professed agnostic defense attorney, Erin Bruener (Laura Linney in rare form), and the devout yet skeptical prosecutor (Campbell Scott), every instance of seemingly miraculous or demonic happenings to Emily, such as speaking in tongues or the stigmata she suffers near the end, is provided with a logical, reasonable explanation. Nothing happens that can't be explained away, and vice-versa, nothing happens that also couldn't have broader, more spiritual implications. Here, the trial is less about Father Moore's actions than it is about the elusive quality of certainty in both so-called "facts" and in faith.
If The Exorcism of Emily Rose had stuck to this, it might have endured, but I find myself getting up on the same worn soap-box I used during a recent review of the summer bust The Island. No one is trying to sell Exorcism as a courtroom drama- every commercial has been steeped in the lion's share of frightful goings on- like the moments where the faces of everyone Emily encounters shrivels into portraits that would give Edvard Munch shivers. "Dark forces are surrounding this trial," Father Moore warns Bruener, who not-so-coincidentally begins waking up in the middle of the night to strange sounds or appliances that start, or stop, working on their own.
Like everything else, this alone wouldn't have been bad. In fact, the pure horror elements of Exorcism are solid, definitely better than the creakiness of The Skeleton Key. But why do horror movies like The Exorcist work? It's because there is no ambivalence- in The Exorcist we fully accepted the existence of God and the Devil, angels and demons, if only for the sake of the story. The Exorcism of Emily Rose, with its conflicting maybe-maybe-not courtroom trial and its oh-yes-definitely chiller angle, comes off like a spiritual adviser who tries to get you to accept total belief and maintain an open mind all at the same time. It sounds clever, but it is hard to bend your mind around.
It is a shame, because much of The Exorcism of Emily Rose works very hard to be above-par. Linney makes for a believable falling agnostic (I especially liked the touch where she uses a book by astronomer and noted atheist Carl Sagan as a bedside coaster). She manages to avoid the temptation to overact in rhythm with the film's more out-there vibes and keeps Bruener as a sensible woman who is coming undone through nothing but the Aristotle principle of realizing that her knowledge consists of knowing nothing at all. Equally good is Scott, the prosecutor; a church-goer and Sunday school teacher who also believes that while the laws of God may guide our souls, the laws of the land must guide our actions. The script is also a little more adept, a little more winkingly knowledgeable about the weaknesses of the human conscience (at one point Brueger discovers that a man she defended and got off has killed again) than a movie that is at least sold as another Exorcist wanna-be should be.
The legal and ethical issues surrounding the affair of Emily Rose also get murky, mostly due to the lack of definition I described before. In 1998, Pope John Paul II approved the distribution of De Exorcismus et Supplicationibus Quibusdam, the text meant as a kind of "guidebook" on not only the Rite of Exorcism, but the appropriate circumstances for its use. Reflecting some more modern sensibilities (the Rite has not been altered in any form since 1614), the proclamation conceded that behavior that, in the past, had often been blamed on demonic occurrences were more than likely symptoms of physical or mental ailments, and that an exorcism should only be practiced after all such avenues have been exhausted rather than working in contrary to them.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose fails- but it doesn't fail because of a lack of heart. In fact, there might be too much here. Too much ambition. So much drive it basically falls apart under the burden it creates for itself. It's good when a movie tries several ideas at once- it's just bad luck that Exorcism tackles some that go together like acids and bases. It's possible to admire The Exorcism of Emily Rose for nothing but it's spunk, how it at least tries to raise some questions of morals, ethics, and faith in a medium where such ideas are more often dodged than braced. In that way The Exorcism of Emily Rose isn't a bad movie- just an incorrect one. C+
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