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 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,…

"...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…

***TOP 146***

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…

Filmmaker Ken Russell pulls no punches in this blistering film based on real events that took place in the town of Loudun in the 1600s. Oliver Reed is almost a force of nature in his performance as Father Urbain Grandier, a flawed man of the cloth who is both filled with a worldly lust for power and the pleasures of the flesh, and finally able to see the error of his ways and truly repent. The performance is electric, almost jumping off the screen. You really see the evolution of the man from arrogant womanizer to penitent victim of a conspiracy between the church and the state and finally to martyr. Grandier's popularity and the power that the now deceased…