Ken Russell's THE DEVILS (1971/2026 re-release)

 "I have a great need to be reunited with God."

Seeing this again (this time from a 4K master transferred immaculately you migjt say to film), it occurs to me that I may not have seen *all* of the "Rape of Christ" set piece before, and it is a great artistic good we see every flailing body of flesh and blood and hair and so on. But really that is not the most shocking thing in this film - that may not even be in the top 5 (mostly because the constant zoom ins and outs make it into kind of an almost adorably debauchery-packed relic) - rather it is when the wretched King has all of his "Blackbird" protestants running around and he just shoots one among many of them dead ("bye bye blackbird" he chortles). I mean... fucking Christ!

This had and always will have a power and incredible force to it because it is driven by a conflict between the Priest Grandier and the Baron (Reed is a towering inferno of conviction and ultimately the hero that the world around him doesn't deserve but should need, and Dudley Sutton is only outmatched in his fervor by Michael Gothard as Father Bare, one of THOSE PERFORMANCES where 55 years later I got spit from the screen on my face), and how the power of corrupt politicians never ceases to outmatch the goodness (is admittedly flawed but only through their basic human frailty) of men of the cloth.

The tone is pitched at such a high fervor, with the camera and the actors just trying at times to keep up with Russell's vision of sexual debauchery that you may miss that the torture on the nuns shocks far more than any of the nudity ever could (unless if you are the kind of person watching this who usually wouldn't in the first place). I am even more of the opinion that this film was, for lack of any other term, repressed by the studio that first released it not for its "shock value" but because it shows how efficiently, ruthlessly and completely a system of political connivance works. Maybe some in Hollywood saw a little too much of themselves in it?

And you might say to that "wait, Jack, what about Clockwork Orange the same year, that also shows the Powers That Be crushing a seemingly unstoppable force" and I would say a) Kubrick (and a bigger box office at the time, I think it was like #2 or 3 of the year it came out, wild right) and b) there is just something about how Russell commands all of his collaborators and they push themselves to making everything so in your fafe that you can't ignore the deep fissures that rattle everyone underneath.

It is closer if anything to the power that like Dreyer's The  Passion of Joan of Arc has (also ending with a monumental burning at the stake set piece); while each film pushes Form in a way that shows just how it can pierce into our hearts and minds, it is also in that it means to make universal as well as the most HARROWINGLY POETIC of what "Witchcraft" in society really means: the confession means much more to these fucking spiders in religous garb than any real connection to God.  

I especially love that the film is not necessarily even beholden entirely to its time period (a lot of 17th century clothes and sets, but Jarman also was influenced by... Lang's Metropolis, also about how easily people are pushed to believe in THIS instead of THAT).

And ultimately, I see this film being so timeless - yes even with all of its 1970-era long hair and garishness and the urgency to press all of the conventions of what could be permissible to the limits - because you still see people like the Baron and Father Barre and Father Mignon and so many who look for an excuse to do what they want in the guise of "hey, look at THIS HERETIC!" (Maybe we don't use that word, we say... "Woke-Mind-Virus'd" instead?)  

"I am about to meet God who is my witness!  And I have spoken the truth!"