Directed by William Friedkin
Written by William Peter Blatty
Starring Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Jason Miller
Release Date December 26th, 1973
Published October 10th, 2023
The first image you see in William Friedkin's The Exorcist is the sun, bright, orange, dawning a new day. This is followed by an image of a sweltering desert in Northern Iraq. On the soundtrack is Arabic music. What does any of this tell us about the rest of the movie we are about to watch? I would argue, it tell us nothing. The sun doesn't have any meaning related to the rest of the movie. Nor does a sweltering desert. Perhaps if I reach beyond logic, I could argue that the sun and the desert reflect the heat of Hell? Maybe? But that is a very big stretch.
An archaeological dig is occurring in this northern Iraqi desert. Numerous men swing pickaxes and other implements intended to break rock and remove dirt. Why? We can assume it has something to do with ancient religion, an attempt to uncover something lost to time. Here, William Friedkin lingers over the images of Iraqi men with their tools, the dirt, the heat, is this a representation of what hell is like? What does it mean that Friedkin's stand in for Hell is located in a Muslim country? What does this have to do in any way with a child who later stab herself in the crotch with a crucifix?
An elderly white archaeologist is called to come to a place where some small items have been found. The old man goes and when he reaches into the cave where these small items have been found, he finds one more, a small idol with what appears to be the face of a dog or a dragon or something. We don't know who this old man is at this point, but we stay with him as he goes to a café and has some tea. He's shaky, he takes pills for what I assume is a heart condition. He appears shaky though whether that is due to having found this idol thing or because he's very old and has been working in the hot sun all day, is unclear.
The shaky old dude leaves the café. He walks around the corner and sees three blacksmiths hard at work, rhythmically pounding away at a piece of hot metal. One of the men turns to the old man and reveals a cloudy eye. The old man, our seeming protagonist wheezes, and the scene ends. Cut to a ticking clock. The old man mumbles 'Evil against Evil.' Finally, we learn that the old man is a priest as the other man in the room refers to him as 'Father.' The clock on the wall stops and the man says he is sorry to see the old man leave. Father tells the man that he has something he must do. The old man goes back to the archaeological dig site, he locates a statue, one that resembles the small idol he found earlier. A man kicks some rocks, dogs fight, Father stares at the statue, we fade to the sun which ends the scene and takes us to Georgetown, Virginia, USA, the setting for our story.
Why does William Friedkin's The Exorcist begin with this prologue? What have we learned? Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) was in Iraq. He found an idol and stared at a statue. The idol and the statue are related. By the rules of storytelling then, this demonic figure that Father Merrin found must be related to the possession of young Regan O'Neill (Linda Blair). There is one, relatively inane visual scene that links Iraq and the idol to Regan and Georgetown. Following the offscreen death of a filmmaker who was directing a movie Regan's mom was working on, a Police Detective (Lee J. Cobb) finds what looks like an idol just like the one Father Merrin found in Iraq.
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