I admit I was a skeptic. No, not about whether exorcisms are real or not, but about whether “The Rite” would be any good. I expected yet another sub-par rehash of Friedkin’s “The Excorcist” with the pea soup vomit and all the fixin’s. What the film turned out to be, at least for me, was a reserved observation of what happens when religion, faith and mental health collide.
The film focuses Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue) a skeptical young psychology major and doubting priest in training who is sent to a Vatican endorsed ‘Exorcism school’ in Rome, where he meets Father Lucas (Hopkins) a practicing Exorcist. Lucas’ down to earth and matter-of-fact treatment of the subject as well as the seemingly impossible things he sees leads to Kovak to re-consider his hard-line disbelief.
I was fortunate to interview Anthony Hopkins about the film and will have that interview up soon, but among other things he revealed that while working on his character, he asked the director, Mikael Hafstrom, if he could write a few lines of dialog for himself. The result was this speech he gives Michael in this clip. It is the admission that even as a full time exorcist, he also has crises of faith, but that he always comes out of them. Sure it’s foreshadowing, but I also think it’s a nice observation about faith itself and well put. And so it is the Video of the Day.
“The Rite” Possesses theaters January 28th, 2011
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Alex Dorn is the Video Editor for HitFix.com, follow him on twitter
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Father Lucas gets results
Close the door
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