Review: The Devils: The Director's Cut

No film has loved God quite like Ken Russell's The Devils. It exalts His great priest Urbain Grandier by casting sex icon Oliver Reed in his part and making him the moral center of the film. He is of course an imperfect moral center — this is a man who sleeps with and impregnates his pupil (perhaps to break up the monotony of Latin lessons) and who has about as much humility as Lucifer himself. But he risks his life by running into burning buildings to defend his dying parishioners, defends the rights of his Hugenot neighbors who remained loyal to the Crown, and forgives the tormented Sister Jeanne for her (partially coerced) role in his humiliation, torture, and murder.

Yes, Father Grandier breaks his vow of chastity by sleeping with his pupil and marrying a parishioner. If only all our sins boiled down to mere antinomianism. He marries to experience love and joy, which he genuinely (and perhaps even rightly) believes will bring him closer to God. This act, of course, dooms him, as does his principled stand against the centralization of France. But what evil is more worth fighting than France itself? Father Grandier takes up his cross and comes to Christ through the agony he suffers for defending his flock and defying Cardinal Richelieu, the Prince of Darkness. The priest of Loudun chooses to serve God rather than the European Church, and he is punished. There is no greater love than to die for horniness.

The Devils is a story of desire and lust repressed to the point of implosion. When cracks form in the porcelain facades of French Catholics, the statist Church steps in, blasphemously claiming its violence in defense of its own power is for the greater good of God's children. Sister Jeanne, played by Vanessa Redgrave in one of cinema's most extraordinary performances, is the most confined character in a film defined by walls and entrapment. The moment she experiences true desire, she is broken, realizing exactly what she has missed in her cloistered life. The desire to fuck Oliver Reed's tibia is simply too great for the Christian mind to withstand. In The Devils, the way to God is through love and perhaps even fucking, and the statist Church obstructs the believer on their journey to Him. What better way to demonstrate the blasphemous power of the institutionalized church than to have Great Value John Lennon unleash tortured nuns inside a church, where they rape an enormous crucifix and fuck Christ's feet? Nobody can withstand the beauty of God on earth, and to witness it is to realize how futile our Church is. God is great, and Oliver Reed is the way to Him.