美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Exorcist' Director Makes A New Movie About Exorcism (It's A Documentary)

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

When "The Exorcist," based on the novel by William Blatty, came to theaters in 1973, it captured the public's imagination or, more accurately¹, our nightmares.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE EXORCIST")

MAX VON SYDOW: (As Father Merrin) Let your mighty² hand cast him out of your servant.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Exorcisms aren't just the stuff of horror movies. Hundreds of thousands of Italian Catholics reportedly request them each year. But when William Friedkin directed the iconic movie, he hadn't seen one. It took him four decades. During a meeting with Father Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, Friedkin had a chance to change that.

WILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I asked him if he would ever allow me to witness an exorcism, which is never done. It's not an entertainment. It's not for show. But he had a wide berth³. And a couple of days later, I got a email from the head of his order saying, OK. Father Amorth will allow you to witness an exorcism on May 1 of 2016 at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Friedkin took a small camera with him. And that footage became the central scene of his new documentary called "The Devil And Father Amorth." I asked Friedkin to tell me about the woman whose exorcism he watched, 46-year-old Cristina.

FRIEDKIN: She was an architect and a very attractive, intelligent, soft-spoken, wonderful woman. And when she came into the room, I wondered, what is she doing here? She seems to me to be totally together. And then during the exorcism, she completely unraveled.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE DEVIL AND FATHER AMORTH")

CRISTINA: (Vocalizing).

FRIEDKIN: She spoke⁴ in a voice that was completely different from her own. She had what I would say was an unnatural⁵ amount of strength for a woman her size and age. And her entire personality had altered.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What was it like to be in that room?

FRIEDKIN: Terrified. I was scared, seriously scared. I was two feet away from them as I am from you. And I was terrified. Gradually, my fear turned into empathy for her. She was in seemingly unnatural and total pain.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You then go off and talk to brain surgeons and psychiatrists⁷, and you show them the footage that you took. Tell us what they said.

FRIEDKIN: Well, I expected they would debunk⁸ it and give me a medical or psychiatric term for it.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But they don't.

FRIEDKIN: The brain surgeons all said they don't know what this is. These were guys who have done over 5,000 brain surgeries each. So I took it to them. And they all to a person said, we don't know what this is. It's not epilepsy. It's not a lesion in the temporal lobe⁹. We would not know what to remove from her brain to solve this. And the psychiatrist⁶ told me, to my astonishment¹⁰, that psychiatry¹¹ now recognizes it as something called dissociative identity disorder¹² - demonic possession. The doctor who is the head of the UCLA Hospital said to me in the film, just because we don't know about something doesn't mean it didn't happen. There are many things like radioactivity that we knew nothing about for the longest time. And maybe someday, they'll find some medical or other term for possession. I don't know.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So when you look back at the horror film that you made that was a work of fiction and the actual exorcism that you witnessed, how do you reconcile those two things?

FRIEDKIN: I don't have to reconcile them. One is a work of fiction. The other is not. It is what I saw. But Blatty's novel and film is what people think about when they think about an exorcism. There's no doubt of that. And I don't know that that ever happened anytime, anywhere. And I tend to doubt it.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I have to - because I have you here, I have to say that I saw "The Exorcist," of course, when I was a very young child. I think I was about 6 years old. My siblings¹⁴ showed it to me.

FRIEDKIN: Wrong.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wrong - it scarred me. It scarred me in ways that still exist.

FRIEDKIN: I'm sorry. And I mean that.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know, I'm Catholic, so it really sort of touched something deeply terrifying. And I'm curious why you think the idea of demon¹³ possession scares us in that way. Even for people who don't believe in it, it's still something that really affects people.

FRIEDKIN: Because it's at the height of the supernatural, things we don't know or understand. We don't understand anything, really. No matter what your religion or lack of it, we don't know anything about the eternal truths. Is there an afterlife? Is there a heaven or a hell? People can have faith and belief, but we know nothing - not the pope, not Bertrand Russell or the greatest thinkers really know the answers to these questions.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You said that you found this exorcism deeply frightening. Is it something that - of what your nightmares are made of, having given so many nightmares to others?

FRIEDKIN: I really don't have nightmares.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Lucky you.

FRIEDKIN: You're sorry to hear, I'm sure. The whole experience really scared me while I was there. But as I told you, my fear turned to empathy for her completely because Father Amorth died last year without having liberated¹⁵ her. And she has sought other exorcists. But he was in a class by himself.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That was William Friedkin, director of "The Exorcist." His new documentary is "The Devil And Father Amorth."

(SOUNDBITE OF MIKE OLDFIELD'S "TUBULAR BELLS")

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That music gives me chills still.

1 accurately   

adv.准确地，精确地

参考例句：

• It is hard to hit the ball accurately.准确地击中球很难。
• Now scientists can forecast the weather accurately.现在科学家们能准确地预报天气。

2 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。

3 berth   

n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊

参考例句：

• She booked a berth on the train from London to Aberdeen.她订了一张由伦敦开往阿伯丁的火车卧铺票。
• They took up a berth near the harbor.他们在港口附近找了个位置下锚。

4 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

5 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

• Did her behaviour seem unnatural in any way?她有任何反常表现吗？
• She has an unnatural smile on her face.她脸上挂着做作的微笑。

6 psychiatrist   

n.精神病专家；精神病医师

参考例句：

• He went to a psychiatrist about his compulsive gambling.他去看精神科医生治疗不能自拔的赌瘾。
• The psychiatrist corrected him gently.精神病医师彬彬有礼地纠正他。

7 psychiatrists   

n.精神病专家，精神病医生( psychiatrist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They are psychiatrists in good standing. 他们是合格的精神病医生。 来自辞典例句
• Some psychiatrists have patients who grow almost alarmed at how congenial they suddenly feel. 有些精神分析学家发现，他们的某些病人在突然感到惬意的时候几乎会兴奋起来。 来自名作英译部分

8 debunk   

v.揭穿真相，暴露

参考例句：

• let's debunk some of the most common falsehoods.让我们来揭穿一些最常见的谬误吧。
• Sequences of maps can also debunk misconceptions.一系列的地图，也有助于厘清错误概念。

9 lobe   

n.耳垂，（肺，肝等的）叶

参考例句：

• Tiny electrical sensors are placed on your scalp and on each ear lobe.小电器传感器放置在您的头皮和对每个耳垂。
• The frontal lobe of the brain is responsible for controlling movement.大脑前叶的功能是控制行动。

10 astonishment   

n.惊奇，惊异

参考例句：

• They heard him give a loud shout of astonishment.他们听见他惊奇地大叫一声。
• I was filled with astonishment at her strange action.我对她的奇怪举动不胜惊异。

11 psychiatry   

n.精神病学，精神病疗法

参考例句：

• The study appeared in the Amercian science Journal of Psychiatry.这个研究发表在美国精神病学的杂志上。
• A physician is someone who specializes in psychiatry.精神病专家是专门从事精神病治疗的人。

12 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

13 demon   

n.魔鬼，恶魔

参考例句：

• The demon of greed ruined the miser's happiness.贪得无厌的恶习毁掉了那个守财奴的幸福。
• He has been possessed by the demon of disease for years.他多年来病魔缠身。

14 siblings   

n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A triplet sleeps amongst its two siblings. 一个三胞胎睡在其两个同胞之间。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She has no way of tracking the donor or her half-siblings down. 她没办法找到那个捐精者或她的兄弟姐妹。 来自时文部分

15 liberated   

a.无拘束的，放纵的

参考例句：

• The city was liberated by the advancing army. 军队向前挺进，解放了那座城市。
• The heat brings about a chemical reaction, and oxygen is liberated. 热量引起化学反应，释放出氧气。