The Rite (2011)

The Rite arrives from 2011, a year in which a major studio could still release a possession thriller whose central question was whether a young man believed in God. Mikael Håfström's film follows Michael Kovak, a seminary student who signs up for the Vatican's exorcism course chiefly to escape a tuition debt, then finds himself apprenticed to a Welsh Jesuit with a flair for the theatrical. Anthony Hopkins plays Father Lucas with the relish of a man who has read the script and decided to enjoy it anyway. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops praised the picture for resoundingly affirming faith and the value of priestly ministry, which is a fair summary of its ambitions. It sermonizes, but gently, through candlelight and rain and the rattle of a possessed girl's throat. The message is delivered by mood, not by monologue.

Almost every contemporary cultural pressure point is absent here. The story has no interest in race, and its overwhelmingly European cast reflects the setting and little else. Alice Braga's journalist is the lone non-white principal, a reporter with a notebook and a byline, and the film never pauses to consider her. There is no queerness, no climate anxiety, no body politics beyond the physical horror of possession and miscarriage. The possessed girl's suffering is treated as spiritual affliction, not as commentary on anything.

A faint economic grievance flickers in the funeral-home business and the Church's willingness to convert a scholarship into a hundred thousand dollars of debt. This is plot machinery, not an indictment of capital. The film ends where it began, with a young priest hearing confession. It is a modest, sincere, occasionally dull piece of work, and it wants nothing from us but belief.