A Dream of Demons

THE ORDER (2003)

A DREAM OF DEMONS

This film has been trashed by most of the critics. Yet the majority of the audience polls were positive. Brian Helgeland wrote it, produced it, and directed it. As a director, he has a short track record, rife with innovation, as in his film A KNIGHT'S TALE. I feel that he is a promising artist who is still searching for his cinematic groove. This script has been criticised as sophmoric and muddled. Yet this man wrote the screenplays for MYSTIC RIVER, L.A.CONFIDENTIAL, and A MAN ON FIRE. The fact that he cast three of his principal actors from KNIGHT'S TALE, Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossaman, and Mark Addy, has been panned. Yet this creative methodology, this artistic trust was never questioned when it was practiced by John Ford, Clint Eastwood, or Akira Kurosawa.

The cinematography by Nicola Pecorini is drenched in shadow and shafts of sunlight peeking through slits in crumbling mortar. It is a dark vision, but it never feels claustophobic. Pecorini, a camera operator for over twenty years, helped to pioneer the steadicam.This may be the first time that he functioned as the head lenser. Oddly, I feel like I am standing alone ona hilltop when I declare that I liked this movie.

Heath Ledger, as Alex Bernier, the young rogue priest, does a fine job of blending a tenacious faith with a rebellious spirit. He is treated by the Catholic Church as an eccentric pariah. After all he insisted on preaching in Latin, and always had his back to the congregation; part of his consciousness firmly rooted in medieval mysticism. His mentor Father/brotherDominic, played by Francesco Carnecutt, had died mysteriously in Rome, and the Church had labeled it as a suicide. Ledger was recruited by a powerful American Cardinal ( Peter Weller, as Driscoll; an actor who specializes in off-beat roles), to travel to Rome and seek out the truth of Dominic's death.

Ledger gathers his team together. He is joined first by Shannyn Sossaman, as the gorgous tragic painter, Mara Sinclair. Her role as Magdalene to his rogue priest is sometimes hard to comprehend. Perhaps part of the exposition had to be edited out for brevity of plot. She loves a man,"who can't love me back.". She, apparently, fell in love with him after she tried to kill him. Alex had performed an exorcism on her brother, and in a chaotic frenzy, she lost control and attacked the priest. This cost her a year's incarceration in a mental institution. She emerged clear-eyed, and ready to martyr herself for love. She seemed to be a bit psychic as well. She felt that something "terrible" was going to happen to Alex, and she wanted to be with him. It must have been interesting for this actress to construct a backstory for this character. In the film, she became available for Alex's seduction and carnal transcendence into actual manhood; and then she was sacrificed like a beautiful dove, forcing Alex to accept his fate.

Soon, Ledger is joined by his sole compeer, Mark Addy as Father Thomas Garrett. They are the last remnants of their Caroligian Order. They had been trained as demon hunters and exorcists. We see a few kind of lame encounters with demons. The special effects are unspectacular, and the conflicts remain muddled and peripheral. Addy attacks his role with verve, energy,and Irish charm; but his character is never allowed to become fully developed.

In the prologue, we are introduced to Benno Furmann as the Sin Eater, the "Other". This plot twist is clever.The Sin Eater is a renegade entity that can offer, for a price, last moment absolution and forgiveness, a guaranteed path to paradise, outside of the Church's jurisdiction. The metaphysical task of devouring sins seems to create immortality. Benno, as William Eden, had existed for more than 500 years, and now it was time for him to pass on the mantle.

Alex Bernier had been chosen as his successor from infancy. Every person, every circumstance in Alex's life was placed in his path by Eden. Benno's piercing calmness and intellect belie his dark powers. Was he good or evil, or just trapped between them ? Is what he performed a service, a farce, or a sacrifice ? Buddhists would have laughed at him, but Catholics, Protestants, and Jews riddled with guilts, opened their arms to him at the eleventh hour.

There is a manic subplot regarding a murderous religious coven that operated in the catacombs beneath the Vatican. They murdered priests, and they influenced papal politics. Our discovery that the natty Cardinal Driscoll, a firm candidate for Pope, was the hooded grand wizer of this band of zealous thugs, was yet another loose thread in the fabric of this patchwork plot. But Weller, too, had to accept the responsibility of his actions. When he was betrayed, exiled, disgraced, excommunicated, and facing death, he summoned Bernier. Alex, who at tha tpoint had accepted his role of Sin Eater, came to him.

There was a Marat Sade suicide scene, and we witnessed the Other refusing to accommodate the Cardinal; thus damning him, and forcing him to embrace the demons waiting for him in the darkness. I was left, in the final flickers of this film, angry at the behemoth bureacracy that appeared to be theCatholic Church (a symbol of all the secret socities and mammoth corporations that wield the power of this world), and a vague sensation that I had experienced a unique vision of man's journey.


Glenn Buttkus 2003