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The Ninth Configuration
William Peter Blatty’s The Ninth Configuration is a clever, theological drama disguised as a black comedy. This realization initially surprises us, since Blatty also wrote The Exorcist, which is probably the most disturbing horror film ever made, and he insists that The Ninth Configuration is that film’s “true sequel.” Because Blatty is the brainchild of both films, he’s free to give this sequel any tone he wants, no matter how sharply it contrasts with the grisly horrors found in its predecessor (compared, perhaps, to John Boorman, who probably didn’t have that right when he made the altogether unscary and incoherent Exorcist II: The Heretic). The question is, how does this film work to build off of the original’s themes? The answer: Quite efficiently. Blatty has stated that his Exorcist films are not supposed to be like the Rocky films, with the same priests fighting more powerful demons every time, or vice versa. Instead, they are intended to be films about various crises of faiths. As The Exorcist III also showcased, Blatty’s idea of a sequel is someone else’s idea of an expanded universe. He’ll take relatively minor characters from one piece and turn them into the chief protagonists in another. In this case, it is the astronaut in The Exorcist, who was told by the demon-possessed Regan, “You’re going to die up there.” His name is Captain Billy Cutshaw (played by Scott Wilson here and Richard Callinan in the original film), and in a scene directly referencing that brief moment in The Exorcist, he laments that his fear is indeed dying alone in space. We also periodically see the stone demon that menaced Max von Sydow in The Exorcist as a set decoration, indicating that the same evil that tormented the little girl in the first film is the same one that riddles the characters here with doubt and hopelessness. The demon’s approach is certainly more subtle in this film, but its mission remains the same, as established by von Sydow in The Exorcist: “I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as animal and ugly, to reject the possibility that God could love us.” Same idea here, but an entirely different battle. The Exorcist has been described as a game of Chess between God and Satan, with the Chess pieces being the souls of the humans involved. In The Ninth Configuration, the human characters are seemingly bored with playing Chess with Satan and have decided to directly challenge God to play against them. They have set themselves up as their own Chess pieces, but Satan is still clearly in control of all of the key players; he riddles them with such self-doubt and depression that the attack is just as psychologically traumatic as any literal demonic possession. I am hesitant to reveal what these traumas are, as so much of the film has to do with twists that I should not divulge. The film concerns a military psychiatrist Col. Vincent Kane (Stacy Keach) who is transferred to a psychiatric ward somewhere in New England that holds inmates who have gone crazy and ditched the army. The ward itself is something out of a nightmare: It is a towering, gothic castle transported brick-by-brick from Germany (hence the stone gargoyles that look like the demon from The Exorcist), and its very gloominess seems to attract a thick, gray mist that constantly engulfs it, blocking it from the rest of the world. This is certainly not a very realistic setting for an insane asylum, but Blatty knows how to utilize it to create some great cinematic images. As the film takes place during the Vietnam War, it is Kane’s job to figure out whether the inmates are really mentally disturbed or are simply faking it in order to avoid combat. We are given clues that seem to indicate both scenarios, and they are as perplexing to us as they are to Kane. These inmates include astronaut Cutshaw, who went berserk just moments before liftoff and now spends his days rambling about the non-existence of God; Lt. Frankie Reno (Jason Miller, who also played Father Damien Karras in Blatty’s two Exorcist films), who is trying to direct Hamlet with a cast of dogs (“We need a basset hound for Hamlet!”); Lt. Bennish (Robert Loggia), who thinks that he is an alien from Venus that has crash-landed on Earth and is waiting for a “transmission”; and Major Nammack (Moses Gunn), who believes that he’s Superman. Kane’s “sane” staff includes medical doctor Richard Fell (Ed Flanders) and Stg. Krebs (Tom Atkins), who have been working with the patients for so long that they could probably check themselves in and fit in seamlessly. Kane’s approach to therapy is certainly unorthodox: He prefers to indulge the men’s fantasies in an effort to get them to open up to him. This way, they will either A) work out their problems and cure themselves, or B) reveal that they are imposters. He therefore dresses up his staff as various bizarre characters to help the inmates live in their fantasies, much to their chagrin and the patients’ delights. This approach is perhaps a little too weird: As the film progresses, it occurs to us that Kane is not without deep emotional problems himself, among them post-traumatic stress syndrome from the war and the emotional baggage that he carries concerning his twin brother, a serial killer aptly nicknamed “Killer Kane.” It soon come to our attention that the therapy he offers his patients is seemingly more for his own mental well-being than theirs (it is also no coincidence that it was the military that decided to make him a psychologist, and he is not particularly excited about the position—much like Karras, the priest-made psychologist in The Exorcist, who is dragged kicking and screaming into Regan’s Satanic bedroom). The first two-thirds of The Ninth Configuration plays like a black comedy, in which Blatty almost gently records the interaction of various patients and doctors as they drown in the despair and pessimism that surrounds them. Sometimes these interactions are wacky and absurd; in other occasions, they borderline philosophical. This aspect of the film is what resembles The Exorcist the closest—we are given likable characters and, like in that film, we watch their layers stripped down more and more until there is nothing left but desperation and agony. The film’s action is primarily driven by dialogue, as characters test one another’s mental boundaries and patience. Sans Kane, the key player is the astronaut Cutshaw, and in the film’s most compelling scene, he and Kane argue over the theological question that the human race haves been pondering since the beginning of time—if there is a God, and if He is good, then why is there so much sadness and evil in the world? Kane believes in original sin and thinks that all evil things eventually shape us into one good thing; Cutshaw believes that God and religion are a big joke that someone invented one day, and grants that if Kane can think of one truly selfless act ever committed by a human being, then he will recant and believe in God. Kane is left speechless and so are we, and this is the point that Blatty is driving home: How many truly, selfless acts can we think of that we have experienced personally, for ourselves? If Jesus said that he will know his disciples by their selfless acts of love, and there simply isn’t any true love, how can God be authentic? What, then, can we determine about the state of the human race if true acts of goodness are so scarce? What, then, is the reason that we exist at all? The third act, which shifts into sort of hybrid between a murder-thriller, a horror film, and, ultimately, a drama, is a little more tricky to pinpoint. Genre-wise, it’s all across the map, and we realize that the first two acts were the curtains, created to be stripped away and unveil the twist the leads to the final, surreal revelation. As I write now, I realize that much of The Ninth Configuration follows the format that Blatty would use later in The Exorcist III, which concerns a police officer’s (again, a minor character from the first film) quest for faith by experiencing terrible horrors: Two acts of carefully constructed characters and dialogue, with the third act revealing a twist that draws a line in the sand and forces its characters to decide where they stand once and for all. In a way, there is an exorcism of sorts in Configuration's final scenes, in that the characters get their answers and are able to exorcise their fears, thus finding relief from the influence of sadness and doubt that wrack them. In other words, God shows up and accepts their invitation to Chess, and the demonic stone gargoyles that hover over them are revealed to be, well, less like demons and more like stones. The acting is the key factor to a film driven by dialogue, and all of the leads are right on target, if somewhat restrained. Keach is flawless as the disturbed psychiatrist; he speaks in almost passive monotone and with an icy stare on his face, but the blandness clearly masks a very troubled man who is about to explode in a fit of sadness and rage. As the demented astronaut Cutshaw, Wilson evokes madness stemmed from exasperation at God for not making Himself more clear. Miller as the Shakespearian dog-trainer reveals moments of pure revelation as he juggles a brilliant literary mind and nearly psychopathic drive; there is a scene in which he explains his insightful interpretation of Hamlet to a dog that is pure hilarity—a lesser actor would have fumbled this moment by chewing the scenery, but Miller’s deadpan delivery is nearly frightening in its absurdity. Flanders at the medical doctor is another standout; he has secrets that I won’t give away, and his performance demonstrates an underlining despair that makes you instantly aware that he is much, much more than he seems. Blatty writes the screenplay (from his novel Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane) and also directs. In my review of The Exorcist III, I compared him to M. Night Shyamalan for his ability to create action simply through showing people talk to each other. I’ve seen so many movies in which characters spout lines at each other that are clearly written by screenwriters; the dialogue is often witty and amusing, but scarcely the way that real people talk. As a writer, Blatty demonstrates a rare gift for capturing the profound in everyday conversation. As a director, he knows how to keep his camera still enough to simply catch the conversations and make them compelling enough to move his films forward. I cannot begin to imagine how he might have directed the frenetic Exorcist (directed by William Friedkin, a much more visual filmmaker), but his approach probably would not have worked. For its two sequels, more quiet films that require long scenes in which nothing happens except intimate discussions in small rooms, his subtle direction is certainly effective. Blatty calls The Ninth Configuration the second part of a trilogy of faith, the other films in the series being The Exorcist and The Exorcist III (as I have noted elsewhere, the “official” Exorcist II was a very unfortunate sequel and is best left forgotten; The Ninth Configuration fills the hole much better). By calling it a sequel to The Exorcist, Blatty allows us to see past the visceral terror of the first film and appreciate it not only as an expertly-crafted horror film but also as an essay about faith prevailing against evil. The mystery of spirituality, after all, is what truly resonates in The Exorcist and beckons us to revisit it again and again. Seeing through the evil and knowing that in the end, goodness always wins is the point of The Exorcist; the trick is enduring to the end to realize this. Like all good sequels, Configuration helps us appreciate the first film by expanding on its ideas and raising the stakes, all the while standing on its own as a compelling work. The Ninth Configuration, then, is a quietly absorbing drama, so totally opposite from The Exorcist that the biggest surprise comes when we ultimately realize how similar the two films actually are. A.K.A. Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane Click
here to read by review of The Exorcist. Cast: A Warner Brothers film. Written
and directed by William Peter Blatty. Rated R, for language and
brief but pervasive violence. Running time: 118 minutes (various
other versions run 90 to 140 minutes; Blatty's cut runs 118 and
is the version reviewed here). Original United States theatrical
release date: August 8, 1980. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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