Heretic

by Philip Price

Photo: A24

Directors: Scott Beck & Bryan Woods
Starring: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher & Chloe East
Rated: R (violence) 
Runtime: 1 hour & 51 minutes 

 
I remember reading an interview with director David Fincher when he was doing press for “Gone Girl” where, in talking about adapting the book, he stated, "You have to choose which aspect you want to make a movie from." The idea that adapting didn't simply mean altering the material to fit a new medium but adjusting, modifying even - so that said material was suited to this new medium and complimentary to it stuck with me. “Heretic” was not adapted from a book and didn't *really* take Fincher's advice when picking a single aspect from the topic it's covering to focus on. “Heretic” operates more in the "go big or go home" line of thought as it attempts to be a mind game, a mind fuck, as well as a critical reading of organized religions that ring “as hollow and as capitalistic” as board games like Monopoly with all its "zany spinoffs."
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I bring up this Fincher quote because it helped me narrow my thoughts in response to “Heretic” for, despite the sprawling breadth of the subject matter and epic monologue deliveries via a charming-as-ever Hugh Grant, what I zeroed in on was this idea of "iterations" and how the film presents this idea that these amalgamations of fantastical stories meant to serve as moral channels have ultimately given us diluted and obscured worldviews. Views that people have died in the name of, views that have created rifts between entire civilizations and have fostered countless forms of violence throughout history despite being perceived as a significant contributor to a peaceful society. That isn't to say this is any single religion's fault - people will find anything to argue about - but that it has become the basis for such negative repercussions says a lot about how organized religions have imported their ideas to their followers and how that shapes how those followers then choose to experience the world.

This is why the pairing of Grant's character, Mr. Reed, who is seemingly nothing more than a reclusive Englishman, with that of Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) - two missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - is so fascinating in that writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods place each character at a different stage of their religious and faith journeys. Reed is an expert who has studied various meanings and perspectives on the nature of belief. In contrast, Barnes is a convert to the Mormon faith but more world-weary than the bright-eyed Paxton, who was born and raised in the church and whose most significant goal is to convert one of the people behind the many doors she and Sister Barnes knock on during their evangelizing missions.

Being able to co-exist at these different levels while engaging in the beliefs and ideas, even in the various denominations within Christianity, should be a selling point, celebrated even, given that institutions' main objective is to achieve salvation for as many people as possible. This would mean meeting people where they're at and, in turn, having those people engage with a certain religion's teachings in an introspective fashion rather than in a competitive one. That the film proposes a kind of embrace of the mystery of the unknown allows it to lay claim to this acceptance of these varying meanings and interpretations derived from different religious texts, but because of the role Grant’s Mr. Reed takes in the encounter and how he drives the philosophical and psychological aspects of the conversation make it overwhelmingly clear the type of person he is meant to be. Though a disturbed and irrefutably bad person, he makes some valid points and has obviously spent so much time reading, researching and considering all of this that his arguments are often more convincing than anything the girls can respond with. Of course, and this is why the second half of the film succeeds despite what many will say about it, as we get deeper and deeper into discovering Mr. Reed’s true intentions and how he means to test the hypothesis he’s been formulating for some time it becomes clear that, just like the religions he accuses of merely being echoes of something that might have once been true, he too is simply an amalgamation of the stories and opinions he has read, regurgitating it all as if it’s his thought and trying to convince those who are willing to engage with him that he holds the key to the one true conclusion.

Because of this, complaints around the movie will either be that it is essentially "Mansplaining: The Movie" or that it starts strong but devolves into some of your typical genre trappings. There is no denying the first hour or so is superior to the second purely from an immersive experience perspective but despite some of the holes one could poke in the plotting (though Elizabeth Smart would undoubtedly disagree) and in light of the defense I stated in the previous paragraph, it felt as if Beck and Woods successfully managed to both upend expectations while taking things to another level through to the final confrontation in which the film's central thesis is both nicely stated as well as visually illustrated in one of the coolest shots of the year; utilizing the maze motif the film employs to depict the control one can have over a person when they've overseen the construction of their worldview.