The Rite *

Director: Mikael Håfström

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Colin O'Donoghue

Marta Gastini, Ciarán Hinds, Alice Braga, Toby Jones

Chris Marquette, Rutger Hauer

In a world that, now more than ever, steers away from the path of religion, it's curious to see how Hollywood has remained utterly fascinated with the rite of exorcism. The Catholic "procedure" of extracting Satan out of a possessed victim has spawned film classics (and their preposterous sequels) and urban legends among other things.

Considering that only 23.9% of the American population is Catholic, we could say that exorcism fascinates the remaining percentage so much because it's not really threatening to their faith.

Then, if only Catholics can be possessed by the devil, why do people still want to see movies about them? Why not do more serial killer or evil alien movies?

True, Catholicism is still one of the most popular religions on the planet (with over a billion believers spread over more than 150 countries) but perhaps what still drives people to movies about exorcism is how they've become sensationalist metaphors for, well, fighting their own demons.

The Rite is the latest installment in the "exorcism as coming-of-age" school and continues the tradition of imposing Oedipal theories in a religion that's already known for its worshiping of the father figure.

In this case, undertaker Michael Kovak (O'Donoghue) decides to escape from his father (Hauer) by enrolling in a seminary school and leaving before being ordained. When the time comes he's persuaded by his mentor (Jones) to give priesthood a try by going to Rome and becoming an exorcist. Said persuasion is mostly blackmail but we understand how anyone would want to stay away from a house filled with dead bodies and Rutger Hauer...

Michael leaves to Rome where he continues his skeptical attitude about faith until he meets Father Lucas (Hopkins), an Irish hermit, part Hannibal Lecter part Saint Francis of Assisi, who specializes in extracting demons from people, whether by tricks or "actual" exorcism.

Most of the movie centers on the case of Rosaria (Gastini) a pregnant Italian teenager who vomits bloody nails and speaks in foreign languages. While Michael suggests a shrink, Lucas sprinkles the child with holy water and reads Bible passages.

Their opposing points of view are then tested when the movie takes a twist so obvious you can't help but roll your eyes. Suddenly Michael finds the perfect opportunity to use his recent experiences, to, wait for this...exorcise his own demons.

Suddenly the movie is no longer about devils, nails and creepy cats but about Michael finally getting rid of his issues with his father basically by replacing him with another father figure.

The movie could've explored the psychological implications this strategy has had to help religious fanatics shy away from their problems by exchanging figures from their own lives for omnipotent symbols they don't need to deal with on a human level.

And The Rite doesn't even work as a scary movie either; other than the "sudden scare", the film lacks conviction in the terrifying traits of its screenplay. What should've been atmospheric is blasphemously cheap, what should've been creepy results crappy.

Hopkins adds unnecessary gravitas to roles that from now on should be called "Oscar winners hamming up their acting chops to regain notoriety" and O'Donoghue, while pretty, lacks presence as the protagonist.

The Rite as a whole is a movie that's more confused about its own beliefs than its own characters. Does it want to be scary? Prescient? Campy? An acting showcase? A biopic? A criticism to Catholicism? A praise of Catholic faith?

Whatever the answer is, the film truly lacks spirit.

Blindness *1/2

Director: Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael García Bernal
Alice Braga, Yusuke Iseya, Yoshino Kimura, Don McKellar

"Allegorical poetic films never do work."
- Pauline Kael

In an unnamed city, in an unnamed country, an unnamed man (Iseya) suddenly becomes blind.
His wife (Kimura) rushes him to an ophthalmologist (Ruffalo) who assures him that they will find a cure, or at least an explanation, for whatever caused this.
The following morning the doctor wakes up and realizes he's gone blind as well. During the following days the disease, which becomes known as the "White Sickness", spreads among the population leaving the government no other choice, of course, than to quarantine all the affected and leave them to their own devices until they know how to handle the situation.
Unbeknown to most people is the fact that the doctor's wife (Moore) has inexplicably retained her eyesight and pretends to be blind in order to be with her husband.
She however seems to ignore Erasmus' famous saying and chooses instead to become some sort of slave in what slowly turns into a decaying microcosm.
The blind are left at the mercy of the military who fears becoming infected by the disease and are forced to live in inhuman conditions. Soon a dictatorship is formed in one of the hospital wards, where a man (Bernal) names himself king and takes over food distribution exchanging it for jewelry, money and sexual favors.
As the people adapt to this new life, we are left to wonder what exactly caused it, how will they survive and even more mysterious, what exactly is going on outside the hospital?
Adapted from Nobel Prize winner José Saramago's homonymous novel, "Blindness" is the kind of film that should come with a warning letting us know that allegories and metaphorical laziness are closer than they appear.
Within the pedigree it boasts, it has forgotten that at the core of any artistic experience is the need for identification.
People don't need to agree with art for them to take it as art, what they need is to feel that the author meant to say something and knew how to justify his message.
"Blindness" is so selfconscious of its own didacticism that it forgets to care about itself or the characters in it.
While the idea that anonymity encourages empathy seems to be effective, the problem is that the characters here aren't just missing a backstory, but an identity.
The actors play archetypes instead of characters and they do a bad job because the traits given to them have been so diluted for instant consume that they are left with nothing to work on.
The casting which tries to be all politically correct and United Nations like by having Asian, Hispanic, Black and White characters in the lead roles fails because instead of promoting diversity it encourages racial stereotypes.
Therefore we are left with an exotic Brazilian prostitute (Braga), a wise, weathered black man (Glover in a role that Morgan Freeman could've played in his sleep) and a slightly chauvinistic Asian man (Iseya) all subjugated by the opression of minorities in the hospital scenes and later left to be rescued by the almighty white characters.
Yes, it's true that the people in the film can't see what they all look like, but the audience can and despite cinematographer César Charlone's attempts to emulate the milky blindness of the ill, we remain esentially visual beings and the film's style remains esentially pompous going on humble.
Saramago's book was colloquial and his writing even vulgar to a point, but the way in which his pen spits the words (without even taking the time to punctuate) gave his story an urgency that Meirelle's lethargic interpretation completely misses.
We know all along that at some point of the film something within us is expected to click and make us go "Oh! This isn't so different from the world we're living in", but the moment never comes precisely because not even the director himself seems to have faith in the story he's telling.
It's true that allegories retain an implicit sense of ambiguity, but we must remember that even artistic symbolism springs from a precise sociopolitical and historical context of which this film seems to be unaware.
When referring to the doctor's wife one of the characters expresses how having a "leader with vision" makes them feel safe.
And while the term makes sense during these politically minded times (and almost seems to have been borrowed from some presidential slogan) the same can not be said of Mereilles who takes his film into emotionally drained, intellectually selfindungent roads where it's always the blind leading the blind.