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Old 10-09-2021, 09:55 AM
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TrueFaith77 TrueFaith77 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Villavic View Post
And William Friedkind said "It's just a stupid mess made by a dumb guy".
I could be wrong because Friedkin sometimes says silly things in Hollywoodese, but I find it hard to believe he would say that about John Boorman, director of Point Blank and Deliverance. John Boorman is a giant.

There’s lots to say about what’s great about Exorcist II. But at a high-level it’s just one of the rare works of genuine visionary mysticism in film, much less Hollywood film. Its concept of The Wings of Pazuzu is a timeless idea about how evil really works in society (armed with this concept, one can enter many even greater works of art like Altman’s Short Cuts). Equally the idea of the Good Locust is profound from a filmmaker expert in Arthurian legend.

Visually, the film is amazing: the glass cells expressing layers of consciousness (very Jungian), the graphic matches (Linda Blair drawing/Linda Blair dreaming) and psychic editing (Linda Blair tap dancing), the African dreamscapes, the apocalyptic climax. This is the essence of cinema—restoring silent movie aesthetics and enchantment.

From a Ledgie perspective, I intuit a not-fleshed-out connection between the appeal of Stevie Nicks’s “dreams” on the phenomenon of Rumours in 1977 and the rejection of Linda Blair’s Good Locust in 1977 (they look remarkably similarly pretty). Great artists tapping into the zeitgeist, addressing some primal need with primal myths, but one is palatable, the other rejected. One grooves within a popular idiom, the other embarrasses in its radical earnestness (and some undeniable flaws insignificant next to its achievements). A case for further study.
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