Retrospective: The Devils (Patreon)

Ken Russell is a genius. It takes nothing less than an act of divine inspiration to take a character who knocks up his student and make you not only feel sorry for him but like him by the end of a movie.

Casting Oliver Reed helps. That man could make a John Logan script sing. Ken Russell was no trouble for him. He makes Urbanier every inch the Adonis he needs to be. The conspiracy against him only works if Urbanier is a smokeshow. His heart is too big. He smokes more different than anyone. His bitch is too bad. So they take him out.

Urbanier, dalliances with schoolgirls aside, is the only model of pastoral vicarship in Loudon. He does what believes is best for his flock, and does his best to keep them safe and warn them against the encroaching Church even as he burns to death. He's Loudon's failed Messiah, a man whose flock dissipates well before he draws his last breath.

Russell embraces the carnal, corporeal side of Catholicism through Urbanier. Urbanier doesn't see sex as a straightforward roadblock to meeting Christ, although he feels on some level that it does. He sees it as a way of getting closer to Jesus. Would that all Theologies of the Body were this cool. Naturally Vanessa Redgrave has to take him out. I took would fuck this man's charred femur.