The Catholic Church performs thousands of exorcisms every year, and that number has been increasing since the third millennium began. It seems more and more people believe themselves to be possessed of evil spirits with a Satanic source, and place the blame for their troubles on those, eschewing a medical explanation. One such priest who is a much in demand exorcist is Father Cataldo, based in Sicily who sees countless victims of this belief every month, so many that the Church are struggling to keep up with the requirement and are seeking to recruit more dedicated priests to the cause. After all, Father Cataldo is getting on in years and may have to retire soon...
Which might be a good thing, as this troubling documentary illustrated without saying as much in so many words, the director Federica Di Giacomo preferring to let her footage speak for itself rather than guide the audience with a voiceover. Whether that was not to lead the viewer into any one conclusion or whether she did not have the guts to call out what looked from many angles like the Church exploiting a belief in demons that had been fuelled by pop culture and superstition instead of a genuine supernatural threat remained unclear even to the end credits, but it did present a point of view, intentionally or otherwise, that had one feeling critical of the practice of casting out the spirits.
Di Giacomo settled on three or four "characters" who were suffering from what in other countries not so wedded to this sort of religion would be termed mental illness, but here were pinning the blame for their issues upon The Devil himself. We saw Father Cataldo obsessively bring Christianity into every conversation, even blessing the car he is in so it does not crash, and being fussed over by a small crowd of admirers as if he was a celebrity, wishing him to bless various objects and even members of their family. It's like a contest to see who can be the most devout, with garnering any attention whatsoever from the priest as the next best thing to getting noticed by God Almighty.
As expected, the camera followed Father Cataldo into his place of worship where he held meetings for prayer and more blessings, sort of a prelude to his more hands on approach for the exorcisms. We saw those as well, which may have been an invasion of privacy if the afflicted had not obviously been very happy for the attention; once again, the fly on the wall documentary proved to be the elephant in the room when you had the impression that no matter how sick the supposedly possessed were, they were not above putting on a show for those watching who had seen all those horror movies featuring exorcisms and were tempering a performance in the light of those. You were given cause to ponder how many of them were familiar with the work of Linda Blair, one aspect of what made this disturbing.
The disadvantaged Di Giacomo's film crew followed admitted they had had psychiatric treatment, but thanks to that not being guaranteed a cure within a short space of time, or in some cases ever, it was plain they had grown frustrated and turned to God, after all it was a lot more exciting to say you were besieged by demons than saying you had depression or psychosis. That the Catholic Church was seizing an opportunity here was bad enough, but what made it all the more upsetting to watch was that it was blatantly obvious the exorcisms simply did not work, as time and again the same faces returned for treatment from the priest and time and again they would not come away satisfied. It made a bleak joke of the wish for succour that religious faith can bring, and elicited all sorts of complicated matters about its place in society and if there were the best intentions behind promoting it for practices such as this. For that reason you might want a stronger editorial voice, though you were hard pressed to imagine anyone coming away from this thinking exorcisms were a great idea, unless they were already sold on them in the first place.
[DELIVER US (LIBERAMI/LIBERA NOS) is in UK cinemas now and on DVD 30th October #DELIVERUSFILM]
