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I agree with you wholeheartedly, Mike. I think the effects are simple at best, but they’re nothing that take away from the dramatic points that they make. Simplicity obviously has its advantages and beauty as well. As long as anyone can tell what the effect is supposed to mean, it is up to the audience to believe in it. And that’s true for any visual effect, good or bad. I mean I was a bit taken back by the EFX at first, but they’ve totally grown on me since then and I love Storaro’s brillance as a cinematographer in creating a Northern Lights effect that covers the whole light spectrum. His obsession with colors is consistent throughout Dominion as seen in his other great works like Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor, and Goya in Bourdeux. The cattle eating the hyenas is fine to me. I get the point and thus it doesn’t really require a debate.
In conclusion, I agree with your statements. 🙂
Your coined “Getting the point/across” concept sums it up best. I couldn’t have said it better, except maybe with this analogy: Books have text, including scary books like THE EXORCIST, for example; just as we must accept the text as written during the experience of reading a novel, so too must we allow th e filmmakers to tell their cinematic stories to us as their movies unfold before our eyes. Plus, I have this to say:
The audience gets what it gets, just as films of old with so-so effects challenged the viewers to suspend their disbelief; easy to do if the film is otherwise solid enough (ie.20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), if it succeeds at telling the story it had set out to do. Schrader’s film, much success. Harlin’s, not much. Dominion was a better and more believable prequel/”origin story” for the exorcist, Fr. Lankester Merrin. It is what it is, and thank God it was nothing more; Morgan Creek, apparently were intent on some big special effects sequences… On the other hand, history unfolded very differently: Morgan Creek’s feeble mind changed itself, and they could’ve scrapped the film entirely, or gutted it and tarted it up. Instead, they re-made the film; good for Schrader, us, and all the fans… BAD for them. 😛 Old news, but worth repeating.
Oh, and THE EXORCIST, incidentally, required special effects of a different sort, and THEY got the point accross splendidly, despite the exceptional yet simple special effects, effects which still hold up today. And why…? TODAY special effects in major Hollywood movies REQUIRE the computer as a main tool.
New bottom line concerning the visual effects: Less (quality) is MORE. 🙂 Bigger or better effects actually made Harlin’s E:TB worse, ironically. Yeah, the better effects made very real the silly cartoon. It was a thoroughly believable piece of junk; literally, and in every sense. Worse special effects (a lesser emphasis on such, that is) would actually have made the film unbelievable, and as per my theories above, grounded it as taking place in th 1940s. Again, it looks like the modern day, and they’re dressed up in ’40s costumes.
I ramble, so I’ll be back… in time.
M.I.K.E.
Sorry, I have to disagree on this one. Bad effects are bad effects and distract from the narrative. Dominion’s African exorcism is the crucial faith-and-life crystalizing event for Merrin. It is in no sense less important and significant than the events in The Exorcist, and therefore it should have been fleshed out with state of the art special effects. We are dealing in Dominion with Father Merrin’s crisis, which is as central to Dominion as is Karras’s crisis in The Exorcist, and Merrin’s story deserved streamlined sfx as much as did Karras’s and Regan’s story. (I realize that time and money problems restricted the sfx quality, but that is not relevant to the argument I am making here.)
There is no “charm” in Dominion’s badly rendered hyenas, just embarrassment. Moreover, the excuse that bad sfx migh possibly imply an earlier way of film making, and therefore an earlier historical time period, is not valid, because the rest of the film is not shot in such a way. We know it’s 1947 because we are shown Nazi-occupied “Holland: 1944” and then told that a few years have elapsed, and we are shown people driving around in late-Fourties vehicles, rooms with fans instead of air conditioning, etc. None of these items is presented badly in the way the sfx are bad.
In short: if you are arguing that the sfx ought to make the film “look older”, then logically the entire film should have been shot “older” – it should have been in black and white, there should have been a lot of noticable reel-break spots in the film, the sound should not have been “Dolby”, the musical score should have been in 40’s style, etc.
But since the rest of the film was not “retro” _except_ for the sfx, it does not work in the way you suggest. In fact, the sfx become even _more_ obtrusive when considered as a (failed) attempt to artificially “date” the film.
Chew on this… my take on the quality of the film’s “bad” effects — I think they’re just fine.
This film is the PREQUEL to THE EXORCIST. THE EXORCIST is the SEQUEL to this (if Dominion is its prequel, right?). Had this been a sequel, “better” effects may have been required, no question.
Sequels theoretically are always going to be bigger and BETTER, and have better effects (look at THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, for example).
So, if Dominion’s effects look crappy, pretend the film was made PRE-1972 (before THE EXORCIST). Perhaps the effects were MEANT to look “crappy” and retro. Probably not, okay — but either way, it suits a prequel to The Exorcist. William Friedkin, or anyone else pre-1972 would have come up with similar-quality effects (more or less; maybe better, maybe worse!); it’d have looked about as “crappy”, face it.
Exorcist: The Beginning’s effects, by contrast, are so much better (mostly) than Dominion’s, it’s less apparent the film TAKES PLACE BEFORE the events in the 1973 EXORCIST film. And quite honestly, THAT Renny Harlin-directed film fails on so many levels, it’s other-wordly… a different planet. Schrader’s film is exceedlingly closer and more organically tied to its “sequel”, the 1973 Exorcist film by Blatty and Friedkin.
Bottom line: it’s best that Schrader’s film was so under-financed. Not only is the film available to buy and enjoy, but it’s the film that Friedkin, Blatty, ANYBODY with a brain would’ve and could’ve made BEFORE making a sequel… THE EXORCIST.
Thoughts? I’d love to hear them. Maybe I’m missing something. This is perhaps my favorite subject concerning Schrader’s film.
M.I.K.E.
“Good effects” for the hyenas, for example, can be found in EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING; hyenas are impossible, Renny Harlin and co. realized were correct, and literally tried too hard, and their “hyenas” looked more like the weasals in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
As for the exorcism, good reasoning, although, like with the rest of the film, Schrader gave the film a more old-fashioned, 1940s… feel; it was a must, considering how different the film’s narrative and cast/crew were compared to the original film it intended to prequel. Old-fashioned stuff: Things here and there — not everything — enough to give the illusion that we’re witnessing an older, less gritty and modern time than the 1970s. Harlin’s film, despite all of its silly components, feels like it could have taken place the day before or after thos events in Georgetown. Everything about it just seems gritty and modern, I’m sorry.
Anyway, agree or not, but Dominion’s effects suit that film moreso than E:TB’s effects suited E:TB.
Schrader and co. got effects that didn’t make you stare in wonderment and awe at how awesome and computer-generated they look. Sure, maybe we all stared, shaking our head at how limited and awkward they appeared, but at least we didn’t have to go FURTHER out to the story with the impressive, worldclass, but ultimately too-pretty-to-be-real CGI.
What we got with DOMINION, effectswise was the no-frills STAR WARS (A New Hope), in terms of achievment; points got accross and the story got told well. Harlin’s E:TB, on the other hand, was Star Wars Episode III; mind you, George Lucas’ narrative had fewer holes and remains a film that holds water (not hot air).
M.I.K.E.
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