The Devils

A staggering achievement in filmmaking and perhaps the year’s greatest, most impactful cinematic experience in theaters. Every element is so masterfully, so meticulously realized: the score, the editing, the costuming, the cinematography, the extraordinary set design, and the jaw-dropping performances from Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave. The Devils is, at once, modern and primitive. Brutally, horrifically sincere. Wildly, repulsively theatrical. There is religious hysteria, political corruption, sexual repression, and unrestrained, self-destructive hedonism. It examines the dichotomy between a man’s private, personal faith and organized, oppressive, hypocritical religion. What is sacrilege? And what is spectacle? Where does true, quiet devotion end and raving, sanctimonious fanaticism begin? Sister Jeanne’s fantasy of Father Grandier as a crucified, thorn-crowned Christ, descending from the cross before she kisses him, worships him, laps and greedily drinks from the large, bleeding wound at his side, is equally carnal/animal and audacious, an expression of both sexual desire and religious ecstasy. For all its absurdity and blasphemy, there is something tragic and profoundly human at its center. After all its glorious, suffocating excess and worldly, corporeal assaults, Russell leaves us with Madeleine, escaping a burning, demolished Loudun into a world without color, without life, without vitality nor humanity. It is empty. Haunting. Unbearable. The Devils is an immaculate, uncompromising masterpiece.