Word: exorcist
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...first heard about a Vatican-sponsored course on exorcism for priests, journalist Matt Baglio was intrigued by the idea of this ancient ritual taking place in the modern world. In his new book, The Rite, Baglio follows American priest Father Gary - sent to Rome to train as an exorcist - and his apprenticeship with Father Carmine. Baglio talked to TIME about belief, skeptical priests and the particulars of the exorcism ritual. (Read "The Exorcist," one of the top 25 horror movies...
...church doing this class? Is it just a p.r. stunt? But then I saw that a lot of the course work itself was very theologically and historically based. None of it was practical, which is why Father Gary had to eventually go out and apprentice with a veteran exorcist, Father Carmine. The course would bring in experts - experts in satanic cults, experts in criminology, they even had a psychiatrist come in to talk to the priests about the differences between the various mental illnesses that could be confused for demonic possession vs. what the church says is actually demonic possession...
...homily. The priest is allowed to bring in other elements if he wants to - the renewal of the baptismal vows, for example. But at the core of it are the exorcism prayers themselves, which are composed of the imperative and the depreciatory. The depreciatory involves the exorcist entreating God - "God, come down and bless this person." The imperative is the command, "I command you to leave this person." If you were to do the whole thing from start to finish, it would take out about an hour. But none of the priests that I followed in Rome do it like...
...Smith, whose career spanned a vigorous half-century and who's still around at 86, gave Dustin Hoffman his simian, centenarian face in Little Big Man, puffed Brando's cheeks in The Godfatherand turned 13-year-old Linda Blair into a puking, head-swiveling demon in The Exorcist. Imagine any of these films without Pierce's or Smith's contributions, and your mindscreen plays a much more ordinary movie. No sleepless night for the kids, either...
...then with growing intensity succumbs to his madness with results you can perhaps imagine, though not, I think, with the creepiness that Friedkin, working from a script Tracy Letts adapted from his own play, enthusiastically realizes. He's a director used to working on a larger scale (The Exorcist, The French Connection) who has not had much luck in the movies lately. But, boy, he's good working on this miniscule scale. Those imaginary bugs quickly become more real than any paranoid nightmare. Better still, the movie becomes a kind of object lesson in how powerful, devoutly believed madness...