The Devils

UK ‘X’ Certificate Cut  “We laughed as we roused the animal and now, it’s devoured us” No film has ever, or will ever, come close to obliterating the hypocrisy of organised religion as well as The Devils does. No film has the righteous anger and scope of brutality to exorcise these hypocrisies quite like this. Russell claims this is his only political film, this isn’t true by a long shot, but none have explored politics so vehemently. Russell invokes decades of his own oxymoronic religious dalliances and spews them onto the screen; it constituted “the last nail in the coffin of [his] Catholic faith.”  The imagery is as evil and infernal as the themes. Two eventual spouses catching a glance through the fetid smoke of decomposing corpses. Sister Jeanne licking the wounds of a hallucinated Grandier as Christ. Grandier’s final burning visage, scorched not only by the flames but by the obliviousness of the public.  Oliver Reed gives one the greatest performances of all time. While his Gerald in Women in Love was pent-up, conformational and class-based rage, his Grandier is free flowing, imperfect and beautiful to watch. He commands the monolithic Derek Jarman sets messianically, a performance out of time amongst sets out of time.  There is no goodness to be found in The Devils. It’s pure damnation, of every kind, conjured for a visual medium. Russell made a few masterpieces but none of them transcend the generations thematically in quite such an incendiary way.