The Exorcism of Emily Rose

This one's real.

This is another reasonably recent (2005) movie with a Catholic theme. Although fictionalized, it is based on a true story. And it raises troublesome questions.

The real Emily Rose was Anneliese Michel. She starved herself to death, believing herself possessed by demons. The priests who tried to exorcise her, at her request, were convicted of manslaughter for not forcing her to undergo conventional medical treatment against her will.

A Catholic exorcism.

The fundamental question raised here Is whether the “scientific” explanation of and treatment for a life and death situation should be privileged above all others, superseding the individual’s religious beliefs.

To my mind the answer is obviously not. This is a violation of freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, and freedom of religion. It is the establishment of scientism as state religion. But in the real world, the answer arrived at in the court was, yes, it should. Religion is fine only so long as you don’t really believe it when it comes to the crunch.

St. Francis Borgia performs an exorcism.

In that sense, the film is deeply troubling. It is not, in the end, deeply troubling in the sense of a conventional horror movie. There are jolts, certainly, but these do not become the real centrepiece of the film. It is in the genre of the courtroom drama rather than the horror film.

It raises another yet more troubling possibility, which concerns me generally. What if our modern theories of “mental illness” are completely wrong, and all other societies that have ever existed are correct in seeing such phenomena generally as the work of spiritual forces? And what if the anthropologist in this film is right that modern psychiatric medicines actually prolong the illness and prevent healing?

St. Benedict's exorcism.

After all, the statistics, as noted in another recent post, suggest precisely that?

Then what evil are we doing when we make the real cure illegal?

Like all good Catholic films, it has proven far more popular among audiences than among critics. Rotten Tomatoes critics give it 44%--a bit higher than others, but it is ambiguous enough that it can be read as anti-Catholic—while audiences give it 65%.

Exorcism by St. Exupere.

It does get some things wrong. The weird stark Dorothy-in-Kansas home life of Emily looks far more Calvinist than Catholic; Catholics are big on beauty. So does her mother’s reported fear of Emily dancing in college. But if you want to see what a real exorcism looks like, I hear this film is pretty authentic.

It says a lot about redemptive suffering.