The
newly released Shudder original documentary film Leap of Faith: William
Friedkin on The Exorcist from the outset looked like another Mark Kermode
documentary ala The Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist. In actuality the film is a one-on-one
interview with Friedkin in his home and as such as much closer to the 2017 documentary
Friedkin Uncut or the recent documentary De Palma.
Functioning
more as a career retrospective than going through much of what we already know
about The Exorcist, Leap of Faith is like having a cup of coffee
with the great director and encompasses his own influences, personal cinematic
obsessions and finally making some kind of Zen peace with what his most famous
and successful film does or doesn’t really mean.
Though
the film intercuts between scenes from various films throughout Friedkin’s
career, much of the film consists of the camera trained on Friedkin whose
memory is as sharp as ever and remains a formidable personality even in older
age. At one point Friedkin reminisces
about an interview he conducted with Fritz Lang where Lang reportedly said one
of the most influential things in all of Friedkin’s career.
As
with his commentaries included on the DVDs and Blu-Rays of his previous films,
Friedkin talks a mile a minute, at times leaping from topic to topic but never
losing the viewer’s interest for even a second.
That Friedkin admits some aspects of the film to him now are indeed very
flawed, clearly he understands the depths of the wake the film left on
unsuspecting moviegoers in 1973.
Leap
of Faith won’t
change anyone’s minds about where they stand with The Exorcist, a film which
is still profoundly disturbing yet asks almost as many existential questions as
an Ingmar Bergman film. Mostly it’s time
well spent with a legendary filmmaker with an encyclopedic knowledge of art,
film and music. That the process of
making the film cost him a few friendships including but not limited to the
great composers Bernard Herrmann and Lalo Schifrin, both of whom were
commissioned scores that ultimately were not used in The Exorcist, is
somewhat poignant to hear.
--Andrew Kotwicki
