One of THE most excruciatingly difficult cinematic experiences out there. It probably wasn't beneficial for my mental health to watch this and Under the Skin in the same evening. I hated Vanessa Redgrave's character so much that I might honestly hate Vanessa Redgrave now, haha. Kidding, kidding, but wow, what a deplorable human being Sister Jeanne was (albeit a product of her environment). Then again, what character in this film wasn't a deplorable human being and an abuser of their faith - aside from maybe Urbain Grandier during the latter half of the film (as well as his wife, though her role was relatively minimal)? I've always thought it to be true that, while religion isn't an inherently bad creation,…

Given any chance to do so, and any means, we shall make a hell of our own earth, with our own lives, our own bodies and the bodies of others. We are the devils. All dogma contains within it necessarily its own blasphemy, all orthodoxy contains its heresies. A union of church and state produces something that is neither, but far greater in both appetite and execution than either. A thirst so powerfully strong, it gave more than it could give, the air turned to ash, the streets choked with bodies, bodies themselves run through with pestilence, riven with war and torture, a chalice of deprivation overflowing, and yet this is never enough. More and more fall so that more…

***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***

Cardinal-Duke of Richelieu and of Fronsac (1585 - 1642) was a French clergyman and statesman that ultimately became a cardinal in 1622 and the chief minister of King Louis XIII in 1624. During his rise to power in both the Catholic Church and the French government, he looked after the destruction of domestic factions. This ultimately led him to apply a corrupt establishment that transformed France into a centralized state. He advocated for the destruction of fortified cities and with a government of their own in order to seize total control of France under the vision of Church and State being unified while crushing the Protestants that rebelled against the…

"...find some good man. [pause] They exist."

Do they? Finally crossing this movie off my list: I was waiting for a full uncut domestic release or a 35mm screening, and the latter came first. I don't care what was cut, 35mm was the way to see it. The Derek Jarman design of this movie alone warrants its inclusion in the pantheon of debauched, excessive masterpieces such as Holy Mountain, Fellini Satyricon, Caligula, Passolini's Life Trilogy, to name a handful.

I was expecting this to be sacrilegious, but what I wasn't expecting is that despite all of the superficial offenses, at the core is a damnation not of religion but of men and their corrupt institutions. So corrupt are men, church…

Set in France in the 1700s, Ken Russell's notorious "The Devils" is beautifully made but assumes such an intimate facility with French history, that I was completely lost as to the all important political machinations going on.

Oh, to be sure, the film does a fine job of setting up Richelieu and something something town with fancy walls and some Lord died and left a priest in charge and that makes some syncophantic lieutenent royalist nuts and he wants to tear down the fancy walls and some nuns want to fuck the priest and the priest fucks whoever he wants and gets himself married too. All that plot stuff is moderately clear, but it's the relationships and interactions of everyone…