Film review: The Devil's Advocate

[lethargic_man]

[Only contains the most minor of spoilers.]

I recently watched the film The Devil's Advocate, at bluepork's recommendation, and was highly impressed. Frequently portrayals of the Devil in books and films seem to get caught between the conflicting aspects of the Devil as tempter of mankind, overlord of hell, first of the fallen, and so on. (Disclaimer: I have not read (or seen) any telling of the Faust story.) The Christian conception of the Devil to me inherently makes less sense than the (most common) way temptation is explained within Judaism, not as the result of an external entity, but as the result of one's own יֵצֶר הָרַע, evil inclination.

In The Devil's Advocate, the Devil is not directly responsible for any of mankind's evil: all he does is facilitate people in their own destruction; and this is one of the reasons why it works so well IMO. You could almost take the Devil out of the film altogether and still have it work, using the morality, or lack thereof, of lawyers, and the choices a defence lawyer is faced with when their conscience tells them their clients are guilty, as a tool for exploring the moral dimensions of Man.

Conversely, the film reveals a weakness when it diverges from this portrayal at the end, when the portrayal of the Devil verges upon evil overlord. He describes, for example, the twentieth century as being almost wholly his. Whilst this does a great job of showing the Devil as evil and the fount of evil, he's supposed to be tempting Kevin Lomax to join him at this moment! What sane human would not be revulsed by such an admission?

Nevertheless, in general the film works very well, and I would recommend it highly.

Rather to my annoyance, I missed, on first viewing, the reference to the Devil taking Jesus up a mountain to offer him the temptations of the world, despite having seen another film (Jesus of Montreal) in which the "mountain" is realised as a skyscraper and the Devil as a lawyer. (I only got it when hearing the director refer to it obliquely in the director's commentary.) Probably there are other NT references in the film I am missing too.

Comments

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

All portrayals of Satan are 'accurate', in the sense that Christianity is a syncretic religion and The Devil is Ahriman, Set, Pan, Ba'al Zebûb, and any number of nature figures and trickster gods from local pagan practices that preceded the Christian missionaries.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I was talking of making sense, not of accuracy.

To give a related example, consider The Exorcist. Whilst the portrayal of the possession is pretty horrific, if you take a step backwards, it doesn't make sense. (The film-makers recognised that and put in a scene in which one of the priests says as much, and then the other replies, "It's to challenge our faith." And then the studio went and cut that scene, so it wasn't present in the original studio cut.)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I can't help wondering whether the bit in The Keep, in which an evil of Lovecraftian type pretends to be scared of and controlled by religious symbols from faith A but not faith B in order to induce a crisis of conscience in the character who is its most dangerous opponent, a devout follower of faith B, by "proving" faith A "right", is intentional commentary on this trope.

(Don't read The Keep. It is, other than abovementioned mildly clever bit, a bad book.)

[naath.livejournal.com]

Just like Crowley :-) (from "Good Omens")

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

It's fifteen years since I read Good Omens; my memory is a little hazy...

[naath.livejournal.com]

Crowley spends a lot of time marvelling at the things humanity does all by itself. Like Milton Keynes.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

As I remember it (and my copy appears to be at my parents so I can't consult it), it said Heaven claimed responsibility for Edinburgh, Hell for Glasgow, and both sides claimed Milton Keynes as a success of theirs.

Though that doesn't of course remove the validity of your point from the rest of the novel.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Conversely, the film reveals a weakness when it diverges from this portrayal at the end, when the portrayal of the Devil verges upon evil overlord. He describes, for example, the twentieth century as being almost wholly his. Whilst this does a great job of showing the Devil as evil and the fount of evil, he's supposed to be tempting Kevin Lomax to join him at this moment! What sane human would not be revulsed by such an admission?

But then, failure of imagination and of comprehension of some key things about humans is also a regular character element in the Christian devil: it's not implausible that one could come to such a scene (I've not seen the film in question) with the intention of using it to show the Devil's limitations in not grokking that human reaction.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

That may well then be deliberate, which is as much as I can say without spoilers.