Exorcist II: The Heretic

Seemingly the deliberate stylistic inverse of its William Friedkin directed predecessor, John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic is built around dream states and somnambulic suggestion rather than documentary-style staging and methodical plotting. Immediately, faults are apparent in this sequel: there are enormous, unannounced leaps in both distance and behavioural intent; the film repeatedly thwarting any audience member who expects successive scenes to have connective tissue between them. This is especially troublesome given that Heretic takes great strides away from William Peter Blatty's concept of Jesuit priests as a last line of defence against satanic possession. Heretic, in fact, deliberately turns its nose up at Catholic interpretations of theology. The American branch of this church is portrayed here as a corrupt and moneyed institution that toils beneath gauche effigies of their departed prophet. The appointment of Richard Burton's Father Lamont to investigate the first film's exorcism even plays like a pointed act of obfuscation, given how obviously oafish he is.  

The Cardinal who issues Lamont's orders is also happy to damn the sainted sacrifice of Max von Sydow's Father Merrin (Jason Miller's Dr Damien Karras isn't even mentioned) if it suits the church's current political objectives. Chosen for his familiarity with Merrin's more abstract teachings, Burton's sozzled-looking Lamont is, as it turns out, a pale imitation of the men who killed themselves saving Linda Blair's Regan. The prologue exorcism that he attempts to conduct ends with the afflicted woman burning to death while this priest dithers uselessly, unable to steel himself in the face of the babbling unknown. In Boorman's film these priests are often just men, cursed with indecisions and desires that contradict the vows they have made with their God. Celibacy is clearly the biggest sticking point for Lamont: the priest and Louise Fletcher's Dr Tuskin flirt awkwardly to no clear outcome, while the entire finale revolves around Lamont's literal desire to physically inhabit a young woman's body. Over and over again we are assured of this priest's uselessness, that Merrin's extraordinary power came from his strengths as a person rather than his allegiance to any particular sect. 

Finding himself at odds with his superiors, Lamont - actually attempting to conduct a proper investigation rather than reverting to whichever judgement is politically expedient - journeys around the world, retracing Merrin's steps. He finds himself in a mountain-top church in Ethiopia. To even set foot in this house of prayer, revellers must climb up a tall, vertical passage that has been carved into the rock. The path is well worn but treacherous, an act of supplication that must be performed before worshippers can speak to their God. Although Christian, this church couldn't be more different from the ostentatious power displays that Heretic aligns with Lamont's gilded faith. It's secretive and remote, chipped into the Earth itself. Unlike Catholicism, which is unduly obsessed with depicting Christ in his death throes, this Ethiopian orthodoxy seeks to represent the human man who brought mankind the word of God. So rather than a blue-eyed, bone white figure writhing on a cross, the images of Jesus here portray his sun-like brilliance in terms of someone who actually lived in this region. The frayed relief that flickers - breathes - when a breeze passes through this space has olive skin and massive brown eyes. Not so much a westernised Christ then, but Jesus as a Palestinian Jew. 

Although never explicitly clarified, Boorman's intent here seems to be illustrative and strangely, in the context of the feats performed in The Exorcist, equitable. Holiness, and the attempt to communicate with higher powers predates the founding of the Roman Catholic church by millennia. Why then should they have the only solution to the foul and ageless beasts who crawl from the pit? The war for humanity's soul rages on a cosmic timeline, frustrations and their solutions should therefore by mapped in ways that defy any specific epoch. Heretic isn't always precisely (or even clearly) communicating these ideas; the film repeatedly besmirches its central conceit of mankind as a constantly evolving vessel of (potential) divinity with strange, pseudo-scientific explanations. The Synchronizer gadget that allows third-parties to tune into the thoughts of Regan and, by extension, the squatting demon Pazuzu, isn't much more complicated, in practice, than the Washington-based Ouija board that first attracted this horror. Both mediums facilitate a kind of group hypnosis, one that makes their users open to the power of suggestion. In Boorman's film though, the application of these devices is either leaden or outright baffling, asking audiences to believe that repetitive chanting of the word 'deeper' (rather than, say, a detailed description of the expected scene) can conjure up a fourth-dimensional space so potent that it can trap unwary trespassers.  

Heretic's finest qualities are speculative then, or even metatextual. The wealthy, showbiz adjacent life this young adult Regan enjoys in lower Manhattan could just as easily be that of a Linda Blair fresh off a blockbuster movie. She has a personal assistant-cum-disciple in Kitty Winn's Sharon and her days are filled with the kind of bewildering theatrical performances beloved by teenage drama students. Her presence at Dr Tuskin's sliding door facility even allows Regan the opportunity to dip in and out of charitable work. Although Regan's cosseted existence is thanks to her film star mother, the lack of financial tension could just as easily be ascribed to the Blair's recent, real-world successes. That Boorman's film is, in some part, about using psychotherapy techniques to dredge up memories that this woman has pointedly forgotten also seems to indicate an intertextual conversation between the first two Exorcist instalments. Boorman attempting to exorcise the experience of having seen (or, in the case of Blair, having starred in) the first film by ascribing meaning and detail where none were previously inferred. So, instead of revelling in the base and repulsive cruelty required to so thoroughly debase the body of a child, Boorman, and screenwriter William Goodhart, reimagine their heroine as a being of incredible, other-worldly value. Couched in the language of seventies New Age nonsense, Regan is recontextualised as a nascent prophet so important that the forces of evil have despatched an Old Testament pestilence to extinguish her flame. The boorishly male Lamont then is fit to be nothing more than her burly protector while Sharon, Regan's lovelorn former tutor, is the fallen Apostle who has, unlike Judas, failed to halt the rise of this new messiah.