Mike Leigh’s debut behind the camera is far from being bleak. It is indeed, but it’s also hilarious, extremely witty, and admittedly quite political. On show is the aphasic awkwardness stereotypical of the postwar culture of the done thing—a ‘neurotic mantra,’ as described by Leigh1, that shaped the British middle class for about three decades through a code of social habits accepted as proper. Communication is the idea, or rather a projection of one, around which the narrative of the film orbits, and of course its characters. A professor, a communicator by profession, who can’t articulate his interest in a woman loses himself in aimless lucubrations on the communicative value of textile design. A hippie loner working as a duplicator for an indie magazine dreams of making a living with his music. A woman escapes her disastrous social efforts seeking a connection with the spirits instead. Another attractive woman, lone sherry drinker, would like to be a writer. Her invalid sister is ironically the only one in the bunch inhibited by her physical condition as opposed to self-conscious restraints or, again, the received notion of how she should behave. Meaningfully, the film opens on Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2—a classical tune poorly played on an old piano. But these characters are particularly representative of their time, not just for the social spectrum they portray. While the adults chronically fail to find themselves at ease and go about either sporting their clumsiness or criticising any unconventional behaviour, there’s a rather greasy youngster who sings of drugs and freedom, and whose shy ambitions are already mining a structure that’s become obsolete and, as we well know today, will bring his generation far.
1. From the introduction to the 40th anniversary edition of Abigail’s Party (Penguin, 2017).
The main irony of Ken Russell’s film of The Devils is how its ridiculous and unresolved trouble with censorship mirrors the atmosphere of the times it portrays, sadly proving that in four hundred years not much has changed. If Russell clearly intended to suggest that a certain human attitude is timeless, he probably couldn’t foresee he would have become a victim of that same ignorance. It is far beyond belief that any form of sanitisation should still exist and be applied to art. Man has rarely been as prudish and obtuse in history as he is today. Too bad for us, bound to watch near samizdat copies while dodgy butchered versions are still the only ones officially available, over five decades on.
Having read Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun long before seeing the cinematic adaptation, it took me a few iterations to appreciate the latter beyond its obvious virtues such as the glorious aesthetics, the masterful operatic structure, the brilliant performances, and the metaphorically algid brutalism of its architecture.
Ken Russell’s artsy take on the historical facts that seem to have fed the creativity of many over the centuries, it’s just the surface under which lies a more profound reflection. Here is the slight difference between the book and the film. Whereas the former delves with a sociological slant into the intricate intersections within the faceted culture of the time, the latter furiously focuses almost entirely on politics. Religion provides only a lame background. Even the theme of sexual repression, however apparently central, is explored without much conviction. ‘And so you must take up your little whip and start scourging your body. This is discipline. But pain is sensuality. And in its vortex spin images of horror and lust. […] Anything found in the desert of a frustrated life can bring hope. And with hope comes love. And with love comes hate.’ says Grandier to Madeleine referring to poor deranged Sister Jeanne.
Where fear and need for answers loomed over Huxley’s account in the binary sort of way that made God responsible for what was inexplicable and good, and Satan for what was unknown and felt potentially menacing, it is human greed for power and control—of any kind—what chiefly pulls the strings in the film. ‘You have seduced the people in order to destroy them!’ roars Grandier finding the city in foolish turmoil on returning after a brief exile. They have destroyed a film in order to numb any intellectual need of the audience, should shout we today, and again.
