In other words, telling the truth has value in and of itself. But I think that your point is a really good one: What is the intended, desired effect of a film like this on the audience, and how do you leave them with something more than just despair and fear? In the last paragraph, I wrote that it was appropriate that the film premiere in Italy, because it was heavily influenced by two great Italians, Dario Aregento and Dante. SD: Dante understood that gothic storytelling can be a tremendous vehicle for spiritual and theological passion.
And, you know, he was very theologically and religiously obsessed, that guy. And there was a higher purpose to the story than just scaring them. He wanted to take the audience into a spiritual and theological place, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And I love that. But I felt that this was the opportunity to help provoke the audience into asking the right spiritual questions.
Once you begin to propagate your own point of view as a director, you begin to turn the audience off, even if they agree with you. And to the degree that he forces those opinions into his movies, his movies become, I think, for the most part, less interesting.
He forced all of the issues onto the table in such a way that you [had to] engage the questions the film was asking. And people argued about that movie. People had varying different opinions about that film.
He understood that you could combine beauty and terror; you can combine aesthetic ambition with this genre. Horror films tend to be dark, gothic, or even ugly or uninspiring. As a Christian, that speaks to me, because I find the cross to be the ultimate merging of beauty and terror. A man … nailed to a plank. The blood imagery. At the same time, it is transformed by its meaning — and by its artistic representations through history — to become something profoundly beautiful.
The great potential of the horror genre is [in] that combination of aesthetic richness and meaningful subject matter… and spiritual significance. We are, ourselves, evil. I just think that all of that swirling around together in a good film is a wonderful thing to experience, [and audiences can be] enriched because of it — spiritually and aesthetically, and cinematically enriched. SD: Part of the answer is And I think that is where the starting point needs to be. That is, I believe, our Christian duty [as artists] — is to create great cinema, and to write great novels, and to create great music.
I believe that God is glorified by excellence. It was made out of spiritual passion, yes, but it was a demonstration of the highest order of excellence in the realm of painting. And I believe that that skill and craft, as it is increasingly excellent, is increasingly glorifying to God.
God is a creator and he made us to be co-creators with him. Insofar as we do that, we will inevitably impact culture. How could I change the culture?
And the result was that she wrote classic stories. Is it there? Can you find it in there? Sure, I guess so. That person standing there should just look and recognize that God breathed through this man and gave the world some of the greatest form and style ever put on canvas. That is as glorifying as the content of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is an attitude toward the world that I think is [ laughs ] pretty destructive.
And the movie borders on reckless violence. But all I can say is I love those films. I think that they are such masterful demonstrations of form and style, that they are almost completely redeemed by it. I know that I think revenge is bad. And what style! And what beauty! And, boy, I can just feel the creative passion and the excellence in that work! I take away something very rich and beautiful from it, and I feel better as a human being for having that experience.
That is a place that, that few Christians are living. My favorite films are films that embody both. I can make a good argument those are the best ones. He just never wanted to let one outweigh the other; he just wanted them both to be supreme at all times. You'll be sorry. You've probably seen this before: a soul corrupted by Satan, a priest waving a crucifix at a snarling woman.
The film "The Exorcist" shaped how many see demonic possession. But this was an actual exorcism -- and included a character not normally seen in the traditional drive-out-the-devil script.
Read More. He was part of the team that tried to help the woman. Fighting Satan's minions wasn't part of Gallagher's career plan while he was studying medicine at Yale. He knew about biblical accounts of demonic possession but thought they were an ancient culture's attempt to grapple with mental disorders like epilepsy. He proudly calls himself a "man of science. Yet today, Gallagher has become something else: the go-to guy for a sprawling network of exorcists in the United States.
He says demonic possession is real. He's seen the evidence: victims suddenly speaking perfect Latin; sacred objects flying off shelves; people displaying "hidden knowledge" or secrets about people that they could not have possibly have known. She threw a Lutheran deacon who was about pounds across the room," he says. That's beyond psychiatry. Gallagher calls himself a "consultant" on demonic possessions. For the past 25 years, he has helped clergy distinguish between mental illness and what he calls "the real thing.
Gary Thomas, one of the most famous exorcists in the United States. The movie "The Rite" was based on Thomas' work. Gallagher is a big man -- 6-foot-5 -- who once played semipro basketball in Europe.
He has a gruff, no-nonsense demeanor. When he talks about possession, it sounds as if he's describing the growth of algae; his tone is dry, clinical, matter-of-fact. Possession, he says, is rare -- but real. Some critics, though, say Gallagher has become possessed by his own delusions. They say all he's witnessed are cheap parlor tricks by people who might need therapy but certainly not exorcism.
And, they argue, there's no empirical evidence that proves possession is real. Still, one of the biggest mysteries about Gallagher's work isn't what he's seen.
It's how he's evolved. How does a "man of science" get pulled into the world of demonic possession? His short answer: He met a queen of Satan. A 'creepy' encounter with evil. She was a middle-age woman who wore flowing dark clothes and black eye shadow.
She could be charming and engaging. She was also part of a satanic cult. She called herself the queen of the cult, but Gallagher would refer to her as "Julia," the pseudonym he gave her. The woman had approached her local priest, convinced she was being attacked by a demon. The priest referred her to an exorcist, who reached out to Gallagher for a mental health evaluation. Why, though, would a devil worshipper want to be free of the devil?
She ended up relieving Gallagher of his doubts. It was one of the first cases he took, and it changed him. Gallagher helped assemble an exorcism team that met Julia in the chapel of a house. Objects would fly off shelves around her. She somehow knew personal details about Gallagher's life: how his mother had died of ovarian cancer; the fact that two cats in his house went berserk fighting each other the night before one of her sessions.
Julia found a way to reach him even when she wasn't with him, he says. He was talking on the phone with Julia's priest one night, he says, when both men heard one of the demonic voices that came from Julia during her trances -- even though she was nowhere near a phone and thousands of miles away. He says he was never afraid. How a scientist believes in demons. He also insists that he's on the side of science. He says he's a stickler for the scientific method, that it teaches people to follow the facts wherever they may lead.
Growing up in a large Irish Catholic family in Long Island, he didn't think much about stories of possession. But when he kept seeing cases like Julia's as a professional, he says, his views had to evolve. Some priests say those who dabble in the occult are opening doorways to the demonic. Being Catholic, though, may help. Gallagher grew up in a home where faith was taken seriously.
His younger brother, Mark, says Gallagher was an academic prodigy with a photographic memory who wanted to use his faith to help people. He taught us to give back. Gallagher's two ways of giving back -- helping the mentally ill as well as the possessed -- may seem at odds.
But not necessarily for those in the Catholic Church. Contemporary Catholicism doesn't see faith and science as contradictory. Its leaders insist that possession, miracles and angels exist. But global warming is real, so is evolution, and miracles must be documented with scientific rigor. More from 'The Other Side'. The Pope writes that "there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason.
The church's emphasis on faith and reason can even been seen in the birth of its exorcism ritual. The Rite of Exorcism was first published in by Pope Paul V to quell a trend of laypeople and priests hastily performing exorcisms on people they presumed were possessed, such as victims of the bubonic plague, says the Rev. It said the exorcist should not have anything to do with medicine. Leave that to the doctors. Learn about the true story that inspired the movie "The Exorcist".
Doctors, perhaps, like Gallagher. Gallagher says the concept of possession by spirit isn't limited to Catholicism. Muslim, Jewish and other Christian traditions regard possession by spirits -- holy or benign -- as possible.
Mark Albanese is among them. A friend of Gallagher's, Albanese studied medicine at Cornell and has been practicing psychiatry for decades. In a letter to the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine, he defended Gallagher's belief in possession. He also says there is a growing belief among health professionals that a patient's spiritual dimension should be accounted for in treatment, whether their provider agrees with those beliefs or not.
Some psychiatrists have even talked of adding a "trance and possession disorder" diagnosis to the DSM, the premier diagnostic manual of disorders used by mental health professionals in the US. There's still so much about the human mind that psychiatrists don't know, Albanese says. Doctors used to be widely skeptical of people who claimed to suffer from multiple personalities, but now it's a legitimate disorder dissociative identity disorder. Many are still dumbfounded by the power of placebos, a harmless pill or medical procedure that produces healing in some cases.
Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, arrived at a similar conclusion after he had an unnerving experience with a patient. Lieberman was asked to examine the videotape of an exorcism that he subsequently dismissed as unconvincing. Then he met a woman who, he said, "freaked me out. Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says he and a family therapist were asked to examine a young woman who some thought was possessed.
He and his colleague tried to treat the woman for several months but gave up because they had no success. The film "The Rite" is based on the life of the Rev. Gary Thomas, one of the leading exorcists in the US. Something happened during the treatment, though, that he still can't explain. After sessions with the woman, he says, he'd go home in the evenings, and the lights in his house would go off by themselves, photographs and artwork would fall or slide off shelves, and he'd experience a piercing headache.
When he mentioned to this to his colleague one day, her response stunned him: She'd been having the exact same experiences. The tragic case of the real 'Emily Rose'. If you want to know why so many scientists and doctors like Lieberman are cautious about legitimizing demonic possession, consider one name: Anneliese Michel.
Michel was a victim in one of the most notorious cases of contemporary exorcism. If you have the stomach for it, go online and listen to audiotapes and watch videos of her exorcisms. The images and sounds will burn themselves into your brain.
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