“Sacred Evil” — Not Showing in a Theater Near You
…Well, unless you live in India. This new movie recently released out of Bollywood may be one of the most interesting ones I’ll never get to see. It’s the true story of a Wiccan who exorcises demons from a Catholic nun. My guess is that only in India could that ever possibly happen, and even there it’s pretty darn amazing.
The plot of the movie is taken from a story in an autobiographical book of the same title by Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, a pioneer of Wicca in India, author, and grass-roots activist. Chakraverti gives us a nut-shell version of the incident:
It happened to me in the late 80s. I am a psycho therapist. I was in Calcutta at that point of time. A Mother Superior called me and said that she wanted me to heal a nun. Me being a Wicca, I asked her that wasn’t it against her principals. I deal with behavioral problems. The young nun was suffering. I was told that no drugs were to be given. A Wicca was to treat her. Her spirit was suffering. I had healing sessions with her.
Predictably, the Catholic church tried to block the movie’s release, but it would seem they were unsuccessful. What reviewers seem to agree on is that the movie is only going to appeal to people interested in the occult. “The subject is one that caters to a niche audience only.” One review, published on many sites, occaisonally had the words “a no-no for non-believers,” attached to the title though the reviewer merely said:
Naturally, this film about unnatural occurrences in Nature isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Though the narrative gets high on the mood mode, it also puts the non-believers off. You have to be either an occulist or at least mildly interested in the supernatural to even get into the narrative scheme.
I simply can’t imagine the release of the movie in the United States. That’s due to it’s apprent “niche appeal” moreso than its contraversial topic, no matter what the movie’s production values. Those, from the reviews, sound at least a little above average only without much “star power.”
The narrative moves fluently from the present and the past. Whether it’s the forbidding ambience of the church or Kolkata in the 1940s, the French cinematographer Ivan Kozelka furnishes the frames with colours that we’ve either not seen or seen in an era gone-by.
Oh well… maybe I can special order it when it is released on DVD.
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