After The Omen (1976), which was
released just two years after the sardonic U.S. President, Richard Nixon, had
resigned in utter disgrace from the presidency amid much economic and political
pessimism in the 1970s generally, moviemakers got busy on stories involving
demon-possession. The 2015 film, The Vatican Tapes, begins
as an apparent demon-possession case and thus seems not to stand out among
other such films, but towards the end of the film, when the demon-possessed
young woman suddenly breaches the bounds of the sort of supernatural feats of
which demons are capable, the true significance of her case emerges with
stunning clarity. For that which possesses and kills the young woman is none
other than the Anti-Christ, and that figure is in a wholly different league
than demons.
The middle of the film is
taken up by Angela, the possessed person, doing battle with the staff in a mental
hospital. Even in that context, the powers of that which is possessing her are
impressive. Beyond being able to speak in an ancient tongue, Angela is nearly
omniscient with respect to the personal life of her psychiatrist, Dr. Richards,
who undoubtedly begins to intuit that Angela’s case may not be psychological in
nature. When Angela’s chants result in other patients killing themselves and
each other, Richards, and undoubtedly the staff, have had enough; Angela must
go, and quickly. The lesson for us is that religion is not simply a special
case of psychology, as Sigmund Freud theorized. The domain of religion is
distinct and unique—sui generis. Angela’s forced departure from the
mental hospital makes clear that something other than mental illness is going
on, and psychological treatments are not capable of redressing the distinctly spiritual
dynamics of possession by a spiritual entity.
It is appropriate, therefore,
that Cardinal Mattias Bruun takes the decision to house Angela on the premises
of the archdiocese, and it is not long before Bruun, assisted by Father Lozano,
performs an exorcism on Angela. At that point, both priests, Angela’s dad,
Roger, and Angela’s boyfriend, Pete, as well as the audience of the film,
suppose that all that is necessary is for the priests to extract a demon from
the young woman so she could be free of it. When the Cardinal strangely becomes
intent on strangling Angela if necessary to get the demon out and actually kills
the young woman, which quite naturally infuriates her father, Roger, both priests,
Roger, and Pete are stunned when they look around and see Angela not only
apparently alive, but standing and very alert. “I am the Anti-Christ,” she
explains. The Cardinal tells the other people in the room that Angela is no
longer there; she is still dead. Then, when the Anti-Christ has the wounds of
Christ and is levitating in the air with arms stretched out as in being on a Cross,
literally all hell breaks loose, with that entity unleashing a mighty explosion
that kills all of the men there except for Father Lozano, to whom the
Anti-Christ tells, “Tell everyone that I am here.” The Anti-Christ has arrived, so the end-times
are not long in coming.
Then the film shifts to show the
great publicity that the Anti-Christ is getting for performing astounding
medical miracles on people, who are naturally very appreciative. Then a line
from the Bible is shown, that reads in part that the Anti-Christ will be like a
false-prophet, misleading many people. To lie is of course in the very nature of
evil, and thus of the Anti-Christ, who appears to be compassionate. Also,
that the entity has Angela’s body gives off the impression of being a beautiful
young woman. Yet in a close-up, as the entity is being interviewed on television,
no smile appears; instead, a sort of mischievous facial expression centered in the
mouth’s look can be glimpsed by the astute viewer. A compassionate heart cannot
be completely faked.
It is just such an expression,
without any supernaturalism, that comes closest to evincing the entity’s evil
nature. Like the other exorcism films, The Vatican Tapes relies so much
on supernatural “tricks” that the viewers of the film could come away from the
film with the faulty impression that the supernatural is endemic to the religious
domain. Just as religion doesn’t reduce to psychology, however, so too religion
is not the same thing as the supernatural. This distinction may be more
difficult to make than that which exists between religion and psychology, for
so much that is religious has been portrayed in scriptures as well as films as
valid because of some supernatural event.
In the New Testament stories, for example, resuscitating Lazarus really gets people’s attention; Jesus must be the Son of God, it is realized, because he has done something supernatural. In a religion of the heart, however, in which the divine is self-emptying love, religious truth or meaning comes not in performing impossible miracles, but, rather, in preachments and compassionate acts, especially to rude people, detractors, and especially enemies. Samuel Hopkins, who was Jonathan Edwards’ protégé, wrote a book precisely to argue that the Kingdom of God “just is” such humane compassion. The powerful spiritual dynamic that is unleashed between two people when such compassionate love is acted upon is not supernatural at all. In fact, such difficult love can be viewed as an expansion of human nature, rather than anything supra-natural. So the various films involving the exorcism of a demon do us a disservice even as they entertain, and The Vatican Tapes pushes the supernatural happenings to such an extent as to sensationalize religion even at the expense of religion as a distinct, unique domain.
