Abstract
Reviews the film, Requiem, directed by Hans-Christian Schmid (2006). This award-winning (for both its star, Sandra Huller, and the film itself) German film is based on the case of Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old German woman who died in 1976, probably of starvation (she weighed 68 lb. just before her death) and exhaustion, after 67 exorcism rites. Huller's nuanced performance chills the spine far more than Hollywood special effects because she has enough versatility and depth to show how close the angelical and demoniacal sides of humanity are to each other. Requiem closely resembles both thematically and stylistically the 1971 film Family Life (Loach & Mercer, 1971), which was influenced by the antipsychiatry movement. That film depicts a teenage girl's psychological collapse after being forced by her family to undergo an abortion and electroconvulsive therapy. Requiem has the same type of no-frills, undertone filmmaking, which actually highlights the horror of the events chronicled. The director meticulously reveals the gradual disintegration of Anneliese as it becomes evident that her attempts to go to a university and carve out an independent life become literally a life-death struggle against a repressive family and a religion willing to destroy her to maintain their sense of propriety. (Less)
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