Tag Archives: Possession

Polish Horror Series #4 – Demon

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It’s not a new question, but what exactly makes something a horror film? Does it need a supernatural monster? Do there have to be jump scares? Does it need to show us horror, make us feel horror, both, neither? Does it need to actually be scary, or if it rather has the feeling of a mournful, anxious, mad dream, can it make the cut? I tend to cast a wide net, and while there are some thrillers, for example, that I’m not particularly keen on looking at through a horror lens, who am I to object if someone else wants to do so?

Today’s film is one that I’ve been impressed by for years and which is I think sadly underseen. One could argue quite fairly that it isn’t a horror film at all, but I would disagree.  If anything, I think it has perhaps suffered from people coming to it expecting a certain kind of spooky possession flick (perhaps its name doesn’t help in this regard) and instead finding an art house drama, but I think the horror is there.  A horror of remembrance, of terrible guilt uncovered – of what exactly – it may not actually specify, but the degree to which pains have been taken to cover things up, to consciously forget an irreparable pain and loss, and make a life atop the bones is surely the stuff of horror. It may not scare, but it surely haunts.

Demon (2015)

Like a mix of Wyspiański’s Wesele and Ansky’s Dybbuk, with a dash of the Jedwabne Pogrom on top, Marcin Wrona’s final film (he sadly committed suicide while promoting it) is a delirious, surreal, lingering meditation on the sins of the fathers, on the weight of past wounds that can’t be healed, on the drive to forget and the need to cling to what has passed and cannot return. A young man, Peter/Piotr comes to a village in Poland from London to marry his girlfriend Żaneta and fix up the old house she has inherited from her grandfather.  The night before the wedding, working on the property, he uncovers a human skeleton, thus stirring up a painful mystery of the past – whose home had this been before and what happened to them? How exactly did Żaneta’s grandfather come to possess this land? What isn’t being talked about?

The next day, Piotr is behaving very strangely – throughout the ceremony and the party that follows, he keeps seeing a dark haired, possibly dead, young woman whom he calls “Hana” (having seen the name written on a doorframe in the grandfather’s house, tracking a child’s growth). He has fits which are diagnosed as epilepsy, tries to get information out of Żaneta’s father who rebuffs him, and inquires with the priest about seeing the spirits of the dead. Finally, in a climactic seizure, he is possessed by the ghost of Hana, a young Jewish girl who had lived in the house long ago.  Żaneta’s father does everything within his power to keep a veneer of normalcy on the proceedings and save face within his community, but when Piotr/Hana disappears and cannot be found, all descends into drunken chaos and the next morning brings a sense of broken devastation. Piotr’s car (its driver having never resurfaced) is deposited in the water of the quarry that Żaneta’s father operates, the house is demolished, and all is forgotten once more.

The sparseness of the story is a strength here. There is very little to the plot and yet, a sense of mystery prevails, adding to the emotionally conflicted atmosphere of the whole. While we generally follow Piotr throughout, we are not privy to his inner life, and when his behavior shifts, we are initially unsure of exactly why. Similarly, the world of the film is somewhat inscrutable. In its opening, as Piotr is taking a ferry to his destination, he sees a woman in her nightgown screaming inconsolably and trying to walk into the water, her arms restrained by others who try to pull her back on shore. Who is she? Why is she screaming? Is this another possession? Is it just the presence of grief? We don’t know, but it sets a tone for what follows.

But it isn’t only gloom and sadness at this wedding. There is also a strong element of the absurd, of a desperate mania suffusing the event. From the start, in the behavior of the guests, in the music, in the rituals of the wedding party, there is a folksiness that is, in the beginning, simply fun and lively, and oh so specific. This is not a general presentation of ‘wild party,’ but the idiosyncrasies of both culture and character give it all a real life which is both appealing and intimidating – Piotr is a complete outsider. He knows his bride and her brother (with whom he worked in London) and no one else, and under the best of circumstances, it could be daunting to come into this kind of insular, intense community, where he doesn’t quite speak the language (though as a foreigner living in Poland, I think he does very well, and I wonder what we are supposed to surmise of his family background).

And everyone in it is so well drawn, so present and physical and earthy – sometimes ridiculous, sometimes threatening – from the new father-in-law who does not approve of this too short courtship (and moves to immediately have the marriage annulled once, now possessed, Piotr is deemed defective), to the doctor who makes such a big deal of being sober, but is the town’s biggest drunk, with the heart of a morose poet, to the friend of Żaneta’s brother, who seems dangerously into her and has it in for Piotr immediately (it’s even possible that he kills him, but nothing is certain), to “the professor,” an old, Jewish school teacher, doddering in his age, but also carrying a gentle sadness, the only remaining Jewish person in this town, which is implied to have had a thriving Jewish community before the war.

As the evening develops, and Hana’s emotional and spiritual grip on Piotr takes hold, the winds rise, rain pours down, the vodka flows like a river, and the revelry of the whole mad town of guests builds to a fever pitch. Generally, many of them don’t even seem that interested in the wedding itself, and the fact that the groom is practically frothing at the mouth is only a temporary oddity—they are caught in their own tempest, their inebriation echoing the storm outside in a feedback loop of pathetic fallacy, echoing a drive to live now, forget the past, and deny tomorrow. It is animalistic and corporeal, edging past what might conceivably be deemed ‘fun.’ When the sun rises, after all is done, they stumble across the fields of the village, at one point crossing paths with (even literally bumping into) a funeral party, the solemnity of the latter in such stark contrast to the absent respect of the former. And isn’t the lack of respect for what has come before, for the dead, at the heart of the ghost story?

The films follows a rather odd trajectory, the second act building in emotional intensity as first Piotr loses himself, and then Hana, speaking through him, is confronted with the disappearance of all that she ever knew. And then suddenly, they are gone. Really and truly – we never see either of them again. Everything unravels, but not in the hot explosion the previous rising action would have suggested, but rather the listless, slurring, drunken blackout that everyone has coming. Some go searching for Piotr/Hana, and at night, the streets are filled with fog, illuminated by searchlights, and it is beautiful and sad. The professor reminisces aloud about all that is gone, the world and community of his youth. These ghosts now walk the streets-we don’t see them, but the presence of absence is felt. The following morning, Żaneta’s father implores the guests that “we must forget what we never saw” – that there was no wedding – (there literally is no groom, after all), they were never there, he was never there. This is all just a dream that all will soon wake from and then everything will be clear.  The accusing bones are once again covered with dirt; the world now is the only world that is and there is no reason to ever question how it came to be that way.

This is an interesting spin on the idea of the haunting. In an American context, we have endless tales of “Indian Burial Grounds,” of the original genocidal sin of America, the blood staining the land and dooming endless generations of nice enough, middle class white people to unpleasant interactions with newly acquired real estate which they never could have afforded if not for the stink lingering from past crimes and which they now can’t afford to leave, no matter how the walls may bleed or the flies may buzz.  In the European context, history is long, and regardless of where you step, you will find yourself on land that was, at some point, stolen bloodily from someone else. And yet, relatively recent history (WWII, the Holocaust, etc.) looms especially large, certainly in Poland, a country which felt the effects of this history as few places did. Trauma still inhabits the land, and even if those holding property now did nothing unethical to acquire it (though some did – without casting any aspersions on the whole, some individuals will always be selfish and cruel), the murders of former owners linger, haunt. And at the same time, there is a vibrant, modern life going on, which needs to thrive and can’t exist constantly beholden to the past, to sadness.

I think Demon dwells in these contradictions, in this tension between the forgetting which is necessary to live and laugh and move forward and the memory which is a vital responsibility, often shirked. It is not a scary movie, but I would consider it horror. More significantly, it’s a stunning little picture, and it’s a shame that Wrona will never make another.

One Exorcist Too Many

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So, I had all sorts of ambitious possible plans for this post: maybe watch a set of the Polish horrors I’ve collected that don’t have subtitles and give my first impressions based on my imperfect understanding of the language, perhaps dig into a series of short stories that had been instrumental in my getting into horror about 25 years ago and examine my particular journey, maybe explore the differences between some book and its filmic adaptation, but somehow I just haven’t had the power. Certain geo-political events occurring in the country next door have been weighing heavily on me and it’s been difficult to focus my mind towards personal projects such as this; it’s been difficult even just giving full attention to anything really.  The other day, I watched the first thirty minutes of three different films I’ve been really wanting to watch before giving up on each (two of them, I’m sure I’ll return to).

In a time like this, I think it’s rather hard to get into something new or challenging, and it can be a comfort to just return to something familiar, so finally, that’s what I did. Now, after last week’s explication of my dislike of the exorcism film, this movie may seem an odd choice, but it could be argued that today’s film was never actually intended to feature an exorcism, and while I’ve only seen it twice before, it’s richness of character offers a kind of idiosyncratic, puzzling, atmospheric, and weird warm blanket, so let’s take a look at…

The Exorcist III (1990)

William Peter Blatty’s follow up to The Exorcist is a deeply flawed, deeply compromised film. The initial concept is already pretty strange, it features some extraordinarily random elements that can really leave you scratching your head, and following an overwhelming degree of studio interference, its ending strikes a discordant tone with the rest of the film and forces the introduction of a character and storyline that have nothing at all to do with the film around them. In Blatty’s original book and script, there hadn’t been any exorcism at all. The studio saw the first cut and was like, “how can we sell a movie called Exorcist III without an exorcist or exorcism in it?” Blatty was like “Well, I didn’t write a movie called Exorcist III, I wrote a movie called Legion, but fine, I’ll add one” – 4 million dollars later – increasing the budget of the film by almost 50% – there is a really tacked on, totally out of place, special effect laden exorcism and an exorcist who doesn’t interact with a single other character, and just shows up out of nowhere to perform said tacked on exorcism. It is gloriously weird.

But the thing is that, in spite of all of this, it is still such a personal, specific, and unique production – and somehow it really works. It just has so much character and the characters (excluding Father Morning, the random exorcist) themselves get so much room to breathe, to feel, to have significant relationships with each other, that it grounds everything else that happens in the film, however odd it may be. It has endless atmosphere, from its muggy, spooky nighttime scenes on the streets of Georgetown, trees buffeted by the summer wind, to the cold, institutional vibe of the hospital setting in which so much of the film takes place. The story is interesting and different – a strange murder mystery more than a possession story (though possession is an important element). And it is scary, featuring what many consider the best jump scare in horror cinema (it is pretty great).

 In short, the story follows Lieutenant Kinderman (George C. Scott), a friend of Father Karras (the exorcist who died at the end of the first movie). Fifteen years have passed since both his friend’s death and the execution of ‘the Gemini killer,’ a serial killer whose case he had worked years back. And now, a series of mysterious, religiously themed murders, bearing signs of the Gemini killer pull him into an emotional, personal investigation in which he seems to find his dead friend alive and possibly possessed by a serial killer in the mental wing of a local hospital. By the end of the film, dear friends have been murdered, his family has been threatened, and he has to make a terrible sacrifice. It is affecting and intense, and for all of the heightened drama, the performances are so nuanced and solid that it never becomes melodramatic – really, the emotion lands.

And this commitment to character is present from the get go. Much of the first act splits its time between Kinderman investigating the gruesome and mysterious murders and establishing and exploring his friendship with Father Dyer (Ed Flanders), another old friend of Father Karras’s. We see them meeting on the anniversary of Karras’s death, each convinced that it’s his duty to cheer up the other every year on this sad day. They go to a movie together and talk about candy. They go for a cup of coffee and debate how a good god could allow such suffering. Kinderman complains about his mother-in-law, specifically how he can’t go home because she has a carp swimming in the bathtub, and he hates it (making me wonder at her ethnicity as keeping a carp in the bath for the couple of days before Christmas is a very Polish tradition). The fact that this sometimes genuinely scary film allows so much time for such a quirky rant (he really hates the fish) speaks to its investment in character. And it pays dividends – I believe in these people and their very sweet love for one another, and I feel for them when truly horrific things happen. And the film is so patient in letting the actors really do their work.

That patience is also key in this film’s success as a scary movie. Blatty has a good eye and is willing to let the camera sit, utilizing the long hospital hallways to great effect. As mentioned above, there is at least one great scare here and it works because so much suspense can be built when you’re willing to have so little happen for a few minutes. I won’t describe it in detail as it was spoiled for me before I first saw it, but it is a study in great horror film-making. If you’ve already seen the movie, I recommend this fascinating break down from the Rue Morgue Magazine Youtube channel of why the scene plays so well.

While most of the interference from the studio sticks out like a sore, poorly thought out thumb, one thing really works. Originally, Blatty had cast Brad Dourif as “patient X” (who may be Father Karras and/or may be the Gemini killer) and he gives a blistering showcase of a performance, all of which was filmed for the original cut. However, the studio really wanted Jason Miller (who had played Karras in the first film) to have the role and ordered all of the scenes reshot with him instead. Sadly, Miller was struggling with alcohol at the time and had trouble with the long, intense monologues, so Blatty found a strange but effective solution – he used both. It is startling the first time we cut from Miller to Dourif, but after a moment, we adjust and we get the sense that Kinderman sees the possibility of both men before him. He sees his friend. He sees the killer. He doubts them both and they are both present. Even what is seen with his own eyes cannot be taken as objective truth. It is very, very strange, but the effect is uniquely compelling. And I think it may be the one improvement over Blatty’s original cut – it is good to see Miller’s face. It helps us to see the man, the old friend who is suffering here, who we know to be dead. And it is so important to use Dourif’s performance as it is award worthy in its histrionics.

In 2016, Shout Factory released a director’s cut of the film using newly rediscovered footage. They were able to reconstruct Blatty’s original vision, and by all accounts, it’s great. But I haven’t seen it. And while I would love to do so one of these days, on Friday, when I wanted some comfort food, it was such a pleasure to return to this deeply flawed version. Somehow its imperfections increase its charm. I feel I can see Blatty’s intentions beneath the studio mandated surface, and I somehow also really enjoy some of the strangeness resulting from those mandates. In what he had wanted to film, there is already some deeply weird stuff (I haven’t even mentioned the heavenly dream sequence with Fabio the angel, a Jesus statue whose eyes open in shock when it gets windy, the old lady crawling on the ceiling, or the head of the psychiatric department who is clearly crazy himself), and I feel the studio demands probably add to the oddity, thus contributing to the overall, distinctive surreality of the whole affair. I expect the director’s cut is a better film, but I kind of love this one, warts and all.

And following up on my previously discussed distaste for the possession-exorcism narrative (of which, The Exorcist is certainly the ur-example), besides the fact that the exorcism scene herein can be ignored as a totally alien addition, the possession story is so specific and has such a different character than that of any other possession film I’ve seen. Notably, the possessor is not a demon, but a man, though one who was a monster, and his interlocutor is not a man of god, not a priest or an exorcist, but rather a detective and a friend. Kinderman’s horror is not anything to do with the dawning realization of devilish evil – he knows evil already. He sees the horrors humans do to each other every day. He experiences them himself. We have little impression that he ever had a rosy view of humanity, whether in seeing children brutally murdered, or in seeing his own police officers half ass a particular investigation because the victim was a black boy. In the end, he manages to save his friend, but at a cost, and we never really see him turn to a higher power for help. There is a clear supernatural element to the possession, but this is a human story and it turns on human acts.

In its inherent humanity, in its total weirdness, in its expertly crafted tension and release, this is a film that it is easy to return to, to dwell in for a time, to have a laugh and shed a tear with. And for me, it really gave some comfort during a trying time.

An Exorcism Exception

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So, while I love a wide variety of horror content across all sub-genres and media, one kind of story tends to rub me the wrong way: the possession-exorcism (though just last week, I did write about an interesting take on the subject). Sure – they can be really creepy, there are a couple of classic examples that are really great, well made movies, and it is a very, very popular theme, but it almost always turns me off. They often leave an aftertaste of proselytization, seemingly advertisements for the Church, Catholic or otherwise (in recent years, the Warrens led Conjuring films have been notably unpleasant examples, though they primarily present as hauntings).

Now, there are other kinds of films dealing with demonic or diabolical elements or religious imagery that don’t do this. I think it is because, while they may contain religious elements, they are not about (or even particularly in support of) religion the way an exorcism film can be. Van Helsing holding up a cross to ward off a bride of Dracula I can accept as a simple trope of Vampire fiction without feeling like it’s supposed to teach me to let Christ into my heart. Films can directly feature the Devil as an antagonist, but somehow Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate, reveling in his bombast, or Black Philip in The VVitch asking if Tomasin wouldst like to live deliciously, don’t make me feel uncomfortable, as if I’d made the mistake of inviting in two polite, well-dressed chaps who want to give me the good news. I mean, sure, I generally want horror to make me uncomfortable – but not that way.

So what is it about this story? Why does it have this particular effect on me? On one level, a possession film is so often about someone in denial about the “truth” – that radical evil is real and that we are helpless against it without faith, specifically faith in “the Lord.” The story is all about this horrific realization on the part of a protagonist, whether the mother of the demoniac in question or a priest who has lost his faith and must regain it to prevail (both from the Exorcist), who only after accepting this knowledge has a chance of casting out the evil presence.  Scientific methods may be used to try to diagnose the problem, but they will all fail until the only remaining solution is that of the holy man with a cross. And oddly enough, I feel the filmmakers often may not even intend such a message or experience – they are just trying to tell a scary story and are thus leaning on certain generic conventions, but in so doing, the resultant film can have the vibe of a church basement Halloween Hell House – where they are having great fun creating horrible things (because that is, of course, fun), but it is all in service of scaring the visiting kids away from sin.

Maybe I’m overstating it, but it’s the feeling I get personally.

So if I’m so put off by possession narratives, why am I even writing about them? Well, because I have an exception here – a book that takes the story in a really different direction and delivers a totally distinctive tone. And sometimes, when you find a really good book, you just want to go door to door and tell people about it.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2016) by Grady Hendrix

First, I have to say – it is very hard to impossible to really get into what I think is so great about this novel without explicitly discussing the ending, and I feel it features a turn that really can be spoiled. I’ll give a fresh warning before I get to that part and if you think you might like to read the book, do yourself a favor and go pick it up before finishing this text. It’s a really quick read – the first time I did so, I tore through it in one sitting on a flight from Warsaw to NYC, only pausing for meal and bathroom breaks.  

Ok, so this is the story of Abby, whose best friend, Gretchen, gets possessed by a demon, which in turn, must be exorcised. By the end it is. Hooray. Simple, right? But where it is special is in the relationships between the girls.

We start when they first become friends on Abby’s tenth birthday party: an E.T. themed event at the local roller rink (spanning the years 1982-1988, 80s pop culture looms large in this story, very much the air that these friends breath, the idiom they speak – sometimes in shouting misheard Phil Collins lyrics, sometimes in playing Madonna dress up and getting in trouble with one religious mother who does not approve of the material girl, or in this case, just needing E.T. everything). Gretchen, the new girl in class, is the only one to show up, rather than going to a much fancier party being thrown by another kid she doesn’t know; somehow kismet strikes and they really click, thus starting a lifelong friendship. The book takes its time with this utterly non-scary but equally foundational episode, and then carries on taking its time with the next 5 years of the girls’ lives and friendship. I was surprised on re-reading it to find that this only makes up about 50 pages of the book – it had felt like so much more; really getting the connection between them, from running jokes to secrets shared, to embarrassing details of parents’ lives uncovered.

Then, when they’re 16, Gretchen gets possessed and everything goes wrong. The horror elements come quick and hard in this middle stretch: ominous, shadowy figures in the woods, owls bloodily slamming into windows, the feeling of a hand on the neck when no one’s there, creepy voices on the phone at night, beloved pets murdered, white fleshy worm things vomited out. Hendrix pulls no punches in delivering revulsion and shock. But he manages this while at the same time maintaining a somewhat blackly comic tone (I’ve read comparisons to Heathers). But the worst thing is in no way supernatural, but rather just the simple horror of your closest friend changing, betraying your secrets, becoming cruel, becoming someone you can’t trust, someone who hurts people, who is downright evil, and whom you somehow still love. Friendship and love necessarily entail vulnerability, and Abby has no walls to guard her from Gretchen’s malice. She doesn’t need much convincing to believe her friend is possessed by a demon.

So she finds herself an exorcist and now’s a good time to go pick up the book if you think you might like to read it. I’ll wait.

…

Ok, so here is where Hendrix’s book really distinguishes itself from the exorcism pack (and I’ll describe it even though you hopefully just finished reading it). Abby finds an exorcist, Brother Lemon – an earnestly absurd Christian weightlifter with whom she kidnaps, in order to save, her friend. In the process of the exorcism, the demonic presence reveals itself and we get all the typical supernatural spookiness and fluids. Now, Lemon knows all the steps but has never done this before and comes close to killing Gretchen before Abby stops him. He leaves in disgrace and Abby, alone with her friend and something else, has to finish the job.

She starts by following his playbook, reciting prayers and such. It’s kind of working, but she doesn’t believe these words. They are empty symbols for her, and finally, unable to abandon her friend, determined to go down with her if she has to, she finds the words that are true: the misremembered lyrics of a Go-Gos song that played at her 10th birthday party, a litany of singers or actors or shows or jokes or games they have watched or told or played together. The power of Christ might not compel this demon to leave, but maybe the power of Phil Collins can. The power of all the little references and memories, things they have loved and laughed over, secrets they have entrusted one another with. These are authentic things. Absurd and silly and seemingly inconsequential, and real. It is an amazing, exciting, moving sequence.

And it manages to make this the rare exorcism that works for me by basing it on something I can actually believe in. Faith may be necessary for the procedure, but faith need not be religious. Abby acts out of faith, not only in her friend, but in the very concept of Friendship, actualizing not only the love between them, but Love, itself: making out of the frivolous detritus of childhood, icons of power. This was the second time I read it and while the middle section of horrible events lost some effect without the element of surprise, the climax landed just as hard as it had the first time, on a plane, trying to both stifle guffaws and ugly crying – cause that’s kind of embarrassing sitting next to a stranger.

Grady Hendrix has been a really enjoyable discovery for me in the last few years. This was the first book of his that I’d read, but since then I’ve worked through the rest of his available output (some are sadly out of print) – covering a range of horror topics, but all with a kind of light touch – not necessarily comedy, but something humanistic and, for lack of a better word, fun. Whether exploring a haunted Ikea in Horrorstör, a Faustian heavy metal parable in We Sold Our Souls, following middle aged housewives hunting the undead in The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, or most recently, delving into the life changing trauma of being a survivor in The Final Girl Support Group, he offers interesting and entertaining spins on well-worn ideas, that come alive in character without sacrificing the horror. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is no exception.

Polish Horror Series # 3 – Mother Joan of the Angels

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So I am continuing my journey through the horror output (or more frequently, as is the case today, horror adjacent output) of this country in which I’ve made my home (you can check out the first two films here and here). It’s an interesting process, bringing a number of films to my attention I might never have otherwise encountered, and today’s entry really justifies doing a project like this. I’m sure some English speaking cinephiles will know this one (I read that Scorcese is a fan), but I had never heard of it until I started this series and asked some Polish friends for recommendations. The world is so wide and there is so much to discover when you start digging in any one place. As a caveat, this can only barely be considered a “horror movie” but it is pretty amazing. If you want some gore, check out last week’s entry on Zombie. So, without further adieu,…

Matka Joanna od Aniołów (1961)

While Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s film may not exactly be horror, it does include enough elements to justify consideration here: mass demonic possession, a double axe murder, a surreal, uncanny setting that feels out of place and time, the lingering horror of witch burnings, and an intense struggle with the demons within – with the dark drives that one may be drawn to, defined by, and drowned in, losing all sense of self.  Also, it dovetails so perfectly with another not-quite-horror-but-still-dealing-with-witch-trials-and-mass-possession classic, Ken Russell’s 1971 The Devils. They are both based on the same historical event, the witch trials of Loudun, France in 1634, with The Devils culminating in the burning at the stake of Father Grandier and Mother Joan being directly preceded by this event. Only in this case, following the novel by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, the action has been moved to Poland, removing the political issues inherent to France at that time (Richelieu and such), and thus shifting the theme to something both more personal and spiritually allegorical.

And what a visually striking piece. The cinematography is so stark, so spare; the blacks are deep and inky and the whites almost hurt the eyes. The landscape surrounding the convent where all the action takes place seems somehow lunar – rocky and sandy, devoid of life, pitted with craters. It feels like we are out of the world – in an other space where these questions of self and desire and good and evil and love and life can play out, free from the minutiae of living. References are made to a forest, but it is never seen, never felt – and it seems almost impossible to imagine someplace green and dark and wet from the vantage point of this barren space. I suppose that is fitting for the convent – a place that is meant to be a retreat from the world.

The story centers on a priest, Father Suryn, who has come to help with the exorcism of the Mother Superior of the convent, Mother Joanna (the same part played by Vanessa Redgrave in Russell’s film). The impression is that as leader of the convent, the other nuns follow her lead and are only as possessed as she shows herself to be. Interestingly, I feel that the film never declared with certainty whether anything supernatural is actually happening here. Is Joanna, as she declares, possessed by eight powerful demons, and by extension, are the other nuns possessed as well? Is this a kind of mass hysteria? Is this a kind of liberatory performance, allowing these cloistered, repressed women the freedom to act out – to be wild, to be angry, to be silly? The film even seems disinterested in tackling these questions – I don’t think it’s really the point.

It doesn’t matter what is true – it only matters what people do in their present situations. Perhaps there really are “demons” but they are merely the oft-denied aspects of human nature which, under sufficient repression, must finally explode and reassert themselves. What the characters do with these impulses and how they interact with each other – torment each other – seduce each other – love each other – or rob each other along the way is really at the heart of the piece.

And there is real contrast between the main players here. When we first meet Father Suryn, as played by Mieczysław Voit, in a local inn across from the convent, he is shown against the backdrop of a collection of villagers and others who have travelled from afar to see the spectacle of the possessed nuns (though one bemoans the fact that they never take off their clothes and complains that they should have gone to see a tightrope walker instead).  All of them are so folksy, earthy, grotesque and funny – everything that he is not.  He slices his bread as thin as paper so as not to partake in gluttony and he seems to own only one possession, his cat o’ nine tails, with which he self-flagellates.  On his way to the convent the first time, he talks with the local priest who now cares for the illegitimate children of Father Grandier, a priest who really lived in the world. Near the ashen stake on which Grandier had been burned, a striking black structure standing out in this white expanse, Suryn asks the priest to pray for him before he must do battle with the “evil one.” Shrugging, the father makes a half-hearted sign of the cross and calls the kids to go home, leaving Suryn kneeling alone. His world is not one of dark spirits and grand meaning – there are children to feed and care for, and beer to drink.

Suryn continues to the convent and in this moment, we have a touch of horror. The place is ominous. He is clearly frightened. And the mood of the whole piece is tense and overpowering. And then he meets Joanna and there is a kind of spark. Intelligence flashes in her eyes – whether that of a good soul beset upon by evil forces, or an alien awareness housed behind her own, or the light of independence and defiance; she captivates him. Lucyna Winnicka is quite magnetic here in the title role, lightly dancing between a sweet young girl in need of help, a demonic, sweaty, rough talking visage of evil, and a powerful woman, certain in her powers, satisfied with her choices, defying the world, and proud of her apparent “sin.”

We then see her in relation to the other nuns who seem to model their on plight on hers. A key scene takes place about halfway through the film when some visiting churchmen (whose presence has preceded Suryn) lead an exorcism mass in the church. First we see in close up, one by one, the line of nuns making their way to the service – on each face, we can read different emotions – anger, sadness, fear, confusion, and one of them just keeps spinning in circles. They enter the church and spread out in a kind of phalanx behind Joanna, and it is an intimidating image.  The priests chase them around with holy water and they shriek and hide, all but Mother Joanna standing rebelliously before the altar, and one nun who has been unaffected by the possessions – Sister Małgorzata, to whom I shall return in a bit. The focus then shifts to Joanna. They pray at her; they tie her down and shove crosses in her face, commanding her various demons to vacate the premises. In turn, she gives no ground.

She occasionally plays along, at one point, leading the rest of the sisters in an odd dance of hysteria, in which you can so clearly see how they are watching her and trying to copy, however imprecisely, her movements. At one moment, she reaches her arms up as if in prayer, only to bend over backwards into a bridge, and a horror fan has to wonder if this moment was directly stolen by Friedkin for the Exorcist “spider-walk” twelve years later. At the end, a temporary peace is achieved as Joanna leads the others in prostrating themselves on the ground, lying face down, arms out in prayer. It’s an evocative image, but what has happened? Is this an act of submission or subversion – even in apparent defeat, exerting her influence over the other women of the convent?

Following this outburst, Joanna is separated from the other sisters and their condition seems to immediately improve. Much of the rest of the film consists in private scenes between Joanna and Suryn as he determinedly seeks her “salvation” whether this is something that interests her or not. It’s noteworthy to me that for a film this visual, I felt compelled to transcribe a lot of the dialogue as, even in translation, it is thought provoking and stirring. We get a sense of how this possession frees her, gives her life, makes her special:

“Who am I? A poor servant of the lord – who worships him in a remote convent? I am just a nun. Even though my father is a duke, our family is impoverished. He stays in the Smolensk marshes and nobody knows him. Who am I? A poor nun. And yet eight powerful demons possessed me.”

As a nun, she is already outside of the world, and possessed, she is free from any expectations or restrictions that would remain to her. She loves her devils, her freedom. She takes pride in them, in it. In this sense of liberation, I had another modern resonance, namely of Eggers’s The VVitch. I think Joanna perhaps “wouldst like the taste of butter.” In a later scene, she declares how “this possession gives [her] joy” and lashes out at Suryn who would seek to steal it away from her:

“You only want me to calm down, to become grayer, smaller, to be exactly like all the other nuns.”

Her plight is somewhat reflected in the story of Sister Małgorzata, the one nun unaffected by all of the apparently spiritual activity. We first meet her as she’s slipped out of the convent to visit the inn and gossip with her friend. She is joyful, in the world, and full of life, and she doesn’t need demons to be self-possessed. In the inn, she drinks some vodka with the villagers and meets a handsome visiting noble, here to view the local sensation. Coquettishly, she sings a sweet song about how ‘she would rather be a nun than to have a brute for a husband who would beat her black and blue with his stick because he thinks she needs a beating, no, she’d rather be a nun.’ But obviously, she wouldn’t. She is stuck here at the end of the world and craves love and life, and she feels she has found her way out in sweet flirtation with the nobleman. Sadly, by the end of the film he has had his way with her and escaped before dawn, leaving her “ruined.” Even still, she declares that she will not return to the convent. She does not want that, even after her recent love lost.

Love, or something like it, is also in the air for Joanna and Father Suryn. There is a clear attraction, a chemistry, between them. In one scene, having relocated their private exorcisms to an attic space, divided by white habits hanging to dry, they both whip themselves, scouring the flesh to purify the spirit, or possibly just finding physical and emotional release together in the only acceptable fashion available to them. Afterwards, they dress and exit the attic together shyly and sweetly, like first time lovers. Then Joanne takes it a step too far by trying to kiss the priest’s hand and he flees (his own desires as much as hers).

And there is much talk of love as we reach the climax of both the possession story and their emotional journey. (A warning – while this film is not primarily a vehicle for plot, this next part is certainly a spoiler) Claiming to be motivated by love (for her, for God, for “the good”), the priest takes her demons into himself (again, presaging the end of The Exorcist) and falls down the stairs. Everyone now knows that she has been freed of her affliction and that the demons now reside in a new host. To be sure that his new infernal residents will never leave him, Suryn goes on to brutally murder two servants with an axe while they sleep among the hay in the barn. The film doesn’t show us the actual violence, but rather the reactions of two horses who watch in terror. It’s an effective choice.

But what was this love? Did he really feel for her (maybe he did) or, for all that he had berated her for the sin of pride in loving the attention that she received thanks to her possessed state, has he demonstrated himself to be even more proud, claiming for himself the ultimate mantle of both suffering and heroism, and in the process, stealing from her that which she cherished most? There had been a real impression of connection between them, and in this act, he has robbed her of his intimacy and affections, as well as her freedom. Perhaps that was his intention – if he has the demons within (either spiritual or metaphorical), she cannot; she must be saved, whether she wants it or not.

Either way, we do return to some solid moments of horror in the killing, in Małgorzata discovering him holding the axe, and in a final moment of the Sister and the Mother weeping together as the churchbell (meant to call to lost travelers, wandering in the forest) rings, but while we may see the bell, the soundtrack is only their cries; no traveler is saved – all must wander still.

It is quite a piece, and one which lends itself to multiple readings. I feel I come to this from a modern perspective and in it see a story of frustrated liberation, of joy in defiance, of a claim of love which is actually greed. But I have read an interview with the director in which he indicated primarily a love story. How would this have been received in 1961 in Catholic Poland? (Apparently, the Communist authorities were fine with it, but the church decried it as ‘anti-clerical.’) Is it more of a horror story (or more of a love story, for that matter) if you actually believe in demons? In any case, the style feels so symbolic, so poetic, that it feels truly open for interpretation. We are free even if poor Joanna, ultimately, is not – free to find what meaning we will, or lack of meaning, as the case may be.