The Devils (Russell, 1971)

The Devils (Russell, 1971)
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"Most religions believe that by crying, "Lord, Lord!" often enough, they can contrive to enter the kingdom of heaven. A flock of trained parrots could just as readily cry the same thing with just as little chance of success. "

I’m starting to love Ken Russell. His films are visually weird and he creates over the top film worlds that are both absurd and terrifying at the same time. “The Devils” is an outstanding film showing us the side effects of a powerful religion. In his film, it is 17th Century France and about the Catholic church, but it could be any religion anywhere that has its hold on people and is able to abuse its power as it sees fits.

The film will offend a lot of Christian viewers, but due to its arguments (no religious person should feel offended if there is an attack on misuse of religion) but due to its imaginary. Nuns running naked in a church, fondling themselves, and writhing on the statue of Jesus Christ. I can’t imagine them NOT getting offended. In one scene, a nun has a dream about Jesus Christ on the cross, but in her dream, Christ changes to a naked priest, one she lusts after, and as he comes towards her, she licks his chest and the famous open wound that is always prominent on images of Christ on the cross.

It’s that sort of film, Russell moving forward without any control and reservations, and Russell is brilliant at this, creating visual scenes that will be memorable.

Let me talk very briefly about the plot. The film starts by saying it is based on true events, the story of Father Grandier and his opponents attempt at politically destroying him by claiming he is in pact with the devil. Russel’s film is obviously not a perfect retelling of a non-fictional event (he is too over the top for that), but there is still some truth in the film. Such a thing did happen and eventually the Father was “proven” by the court to have been in pact with the devil, and infesting nuns with demons, and was sentence to burn at the stake.

Reading up on this incident, I found that one of the evidence in the court was a letter with the pact SIGNED by Father Grandier and the evil. It was in backward Latin, and let me copy and paste the translation for you.

“We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.
He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.

Bound in hell, in the council of demons.

Lucifer Beelzebub Satan
Astaroth Leviathan Elimi
The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.
Baalberith, writer.”

When we read things like this, a lot of us will look with amusement at our past and assume we have moved away from such superstition and silliness. But we haven’t really. Such misuse of power is not dangerous due to its superstition but due to their ability to influence mobs. It would be as easy today to destroy someone using the help of the public. Instead of showing false evidence as treaties between man and devil, they could as well show between man and the country’s enemy, whether it being terrorists or any other nation. We blame our leaders, whether political or religious leaders, but we have to blame ourselves. We give them to power that is needed to exercise it, and we are as complacent in it as they are. People are fooled easily, while the actual content has changed, the methods still remain the same. Those people in the 17th century were no different than us.

4/5