In previous ramblings on this website that merely illustrated how fundamentally I misunderstand the Exorcist…I think...I have yet a few more comments to make. Still, it’s somewhat ironic that I was momentarily distracted from my Exorcist rantings by none other than…the Devil…The Satan, though I am by no means finished with him. Before long, I found that the power of the subject compelled me to double back. I suddenly remembered that I was left with a very big problem when it comes to my interpretation of Exorcist…and, as I saw it then, it was the problem of…time. Time was something that kept my interpretation from running like clockwork. I identified a vision, and a dream, in the movie. The dream is, or so I understood it, that of Karras, whereas the vision is that of Merrin. I also suggested that the vision at the beginning of the movie was something that really occurred at the end of the movie…in the last few minutes of the ritual, when Father Merrin, who had just hit his head against the wall, contextualized what was really happening based on his past archaeological experience excavating a site in ancient Nineveh.
This is Merrin’s Pornographic Statue. This was seen in a vision? I say…yes. This is not a real statue, and the exaggerated phallus is nothing like the normal Pazuzu statue…
The reason why the exaggerated phallus is completely wrong is that Pazuzu was not a fertility deity; he was, in fact, the mortal enemy of Lamashtu. By the time he became involved, an Assyrian’s wife was giving, or had given, birth. So, he had nothing to with the conception of the child. We know that Merrin had a prior run-in with demon possession…an African boy many years before. We know it took a while to complete, and the bishop tells us that the experience almost killed him. One will find repeatedly the claim that the African boy was possessed by Pazuzu. Merrin defeated the demon. And then…well, I’m not sure just what is supposed to have happened. I have read one commentator’s opinion that in defeating Pazuzu, he was then “put to sleep,” presumably by being sent back to the ruins of ancient Nineveh. How did he get there? And why do demons sleep? Did Merrin accidentally wake up his old enemy when he dug up the Pazuzu head? That would be quite a coincidence. Then Pazuzu, spoiling for revenge, somehow made his way to Washington D.C., presumably entering Regan via the Ouija Board, content to hang around, hoping that Merrin would be called in by the Church to carry out an exorcism, giving Pazuzu another crack at defeating the Good Father. Of course, the most likely scenario is that Regan would have been placed in a mental hospital. It was one in a billion, or so, that the bishop would agree to an exorcism...or the family, and even Karras, who did want the exorcism, was convinced that it really wasn’t needed. As for the question of Regan being hospitalized, a subject that I will go into in much further detail at another time, I don’t think that I ever really reckoned with the fact that Regan’s bedroom had become a padded cell, with all items other than her bed and the little desk beside the bed, having disappeared. Then we have the IV drip, and other trappings that clearly suggest a hospital room. I have also maintained that within the Artificial Reality of the movie, we see things that did not happen…seeing through the eyes of others…mainly Chris and Karras, but also…Merrin. It dawned on me that this….
And this…
And…
Are simply too over-the-top. I would say that if she actually had trauma to this extent she would be in a…hospital! But I’ve begun to believe that, within in the Artificial Reality of the movie, we are seeing these scenes through the eyes of someone. There are two scenes that I think link up very well; one is at the very beginning of the transformation, and the other is shortly before the exorcism is to begin.
In this scene, Regan is mumbling to herself. This happens again in this scene:
These are the two scenes where Regan is staring off to the side, mumbling to herself. But I was struck that the horrible facial trauma that we see in intervening scenes is not present in this scene. And here, we also lack the decided blue complexion presented to us as the result of an extreme cold in Regan’s room…although apparently, only at night. So I wonder whether the wound pattern seen above is more likely the correct one, and thus we are seeing a far more exaggerated one in the other scenes. I was also struck by how much the facial wounds at the very beginning of the transformation, stepping slightly farther back, are similar to the wound pattern seen after the unspecified amount of time had passed after the completion of the exorcism. It can’t have been long, seeing how Sharon presents the St. Joseph medal to Chris shortly before the end of the film. The beginning…
This scene is particularly interesting. Karras is trying to kill Regan…
It’s probably just me, but her face looks a whole lot better than it did seconds before. Now the end…
Of course, if the facial wounds really looked like we see them looking, the scarring would be terrible, and require plastic surgery. Yet these are healing just fine. So the ending looks somewhat like the beginning, as it were.
Father Merrin…Father Time. We know what the Ouija board that belonged to Regan looked like, it is, in fact, the variation of the Talking Board.
But since this essay is all about time…
Still, I don’t suppose that Father Merrin wanted a Ouija Board for Christmas. Where was I? Oh, yes…Merrin’s vision and Karras’s dream. One of the problems is the presence of the clock…the same clock, in both the vision and the dream. The sequence of shots…
This is the clock pendulum, cabinet and glass, with the distinctive Bethlehem star pattern, located dead center. We see this moments before we learn that Merrin is in the archaeologist’s office. And we know that the pendulum is swinging.
When the pendulum swings to the left, it creates the reflection of the Bethlehem star. When it swings to the right, there is no reflection…
The shot involves only the pendulum and cabinet…not the face. This is the face…
It is an Arabic clock-face, something that is not surprising given the fact that they are in Iraq. And it is 12:06 pm.
The clock is back, to the left.
Clock, clock-face, and pendulum. The pendulum is moving.
The pendulum has stopped, and Merrin has noticed it.
The pendulum is frozen, stopped as it was moving to the left. He then…
walks over to the clock. We can’t tell whether the archaeologist has seen the clock stop.
And now…Merrin must leave, there is something that he must do. Several scenes later, the old woman in the carriage…Lamashtu…nearly kills him. But! He stands in front of the Lamashtu plaque. We see the Pazuzu-figure peering over the top of the Metaphorical Plaque, and Merrin is saved. Lamashtu loses to Pazuzu yet again, and she will lose at the end of the movie as well. He hits his head against the wall…
Only Merrin sees…
Yes, the big, and exaggerated, Pazuzu statue appears again, something only Merrin can see. And we know that this is not happening, within the Artificial Reality, since Regan, her straps having broken, and been her wrists tied together, this being the scene that precedes the appearance of the Pazuzu statue. Following it, in the next shot, her wrists are tied together.
There’s no doubt that Merrin’s clock is significant. I know that the clock is important, in one sense, because it has an Arabic clock-face, and that means it couldn’t be anywhere else in the movie. That’s not to say that there aren’t other clocks elsewhere. Mother Karras has a clock:
But that’s clearly not it. She also has a partially hidden clock in the entrance-way to her apartment…
The sound lab at the university has one…
It looks like is 7:56…and the means 6, like 12:06. I will back up from this about minutes. Karras is listening to one of the two tapes he ultimately had in his possession. In an essay on the subject of the Sylvia Likens case, I pointed out that when looking at the Mattress photo, I found a small dot of light next to Sylvia’s right ear.
I blew that up by a significantly high factor…
and found what I believe is the reflection of an overhead lamp, something like, but certainly not the same as the article pictured below, but it serves as a good example…
suggesting that the photo was taken, at least in part, in the morgue, and we know that, according to Dr. Ellis, a police photographer was present during the autopsy. Ok…what’s that got to do with the Exorcist? Nothing, except…
What is circled in yellow is a point of light that suddenly appears to the right of Karras’s head, then moves up to the overhead light, down again, and disappears. An insect attracted to the light? I wonder if the guys who made the movie noticed it. And I also noticed this…
Top right…that is Russian and says…speak! I can’t see the rest of the phrase, which presumably is the word…russkiy, thus…speak Russian! Is that relevant? No, but I do enjoy finding other languages in the movie:
1. Tasukete!…Help me! (Japanese)
2. Jag talar inte mycket Svenska…I don’t speak much Swedish (Swedish)
3. Speak Russian! (Russian)
I can’t help myself…it’s almost as much fun as finding Paul Is Dead clues.
Chris has a strange red alarm clock…
But that’s not it. Regan has one…
But that’s not it either. But Chris also has…
a big clock!
Now let’s see the face…
Roman numerals, and regular numbers. Alas…it would seem that Chris can’t tell time in Arabic, or Russian, or Swedish…or Japanese. And all I can say about that is…bon jour!
It appears to be 4:06!
The clock is visible when Merrin is there…
Same as Merrin’s. And we know that the pendulum is swinging to the left because of the reflection of the Bethlehem star. In this scene, the clock pendulum swings several times in both directions before the scene changes. There is another important point to make…in Karras’s dream, the pendulum never stops, and the face of the clock is never shown. That means one thing…
THE CLOCK IS IRRELEVANT AS FAR AS KARRAS IS CONCERNED
I have resigned my position as resident Vomitologist and have now passed the test that licenses me to be a…clockologist! The appearance...
Oh, dear! Perhaps I resigned my previous position too soon! Well, Karras is on his own as far as that is concerned. Where was I? Oh, yes...the clock in Karras’s dream presents a big problem…to be in Merrin’s vision and in Karras’s dream, both men would have to have been in the same place where that clock was located. That’s not all. Both men must have seen the clock. And the even more problematic aspect…both men would have to have considered the clock so important that it appeared in the vision and the dream. So the conundrum remains? The most tempting inference is that the clock was located in Chris’s house. But we know it wasn’t, and, equally important, assuming that the chronology in the movie is linear…
KARRAS’S DREAM OCCURS BEFORE HE WAS EVER IN CHRIS’S HOUSE
And we know that Karras had never been in the Iraqi archaeologist’s office. So how can both men have seen the same clock? I suppose that one could suggest that Pazuzu entered both men’s minds and made them see the same clock. One could, but I hope that one wouldn’t. First, there was no demon. Secondly, Pazuzu is a good guy. Third, if there was a demon, he or she would have to be pretty powerful to pull off such a feat…a meaningless one, but a feat nonetheless. So I think that, if one believes the Spider-Walk actually happened, Regan could easily get out of the straps…it wants no straps! These considerations lead to only one conclusion.
End Part 1
