The Omen: how a silly plot can make a great film
If one were honest, one would have to admit that the plot of The Omen (1976) isn’t exactly Shakespearian. The Devil fathers a child – a perfectly healthy human child – on a jackal! Upon the boy’s fifth birthday, bad begins to happen – usually in the form of someone dying in various supernaturally influenced ways. Apart from the boy’s mother. No, the boy himself does for her! His father eventually allows himself to be convinced of what is happening and plots the boy’s demise.
Doesn’t it make you wonder just how the Hell this became the great film it so obviously is?
Who makes a movie what it is? Was it the Studios, back in the 1940s? Or the Directors, in the Seventies? Or the Stars, of the Two-Thousand-Tens?
I am firmly of the belief that it is some alchemical mix of all three. Not forgetting to add the seasoning of a good script. The Omen, as much as any other film, shows, however, that the script, like the seasoning in a good winter soup, is variable. One wonders if The Omen could ever have been as good as it is if not for Gregory Peck and David Warner? Or if the Director, Richard Donner, had not decided to include only what was realistically possible.
Just how does this film work? It’s a story of the Devil spawning a child, yet the Demon King makes no personal appearance. It’s the story of an evil child who does nothing overtly evil – even his mother’s fall could, just about, have been an accident. After all, Damien isn’t looking where he’s going as he races along on his tricycle – though I’ve always thought the child’s indifference gives this one away. It’s the story of the fight between good and evil, yet the good guys are a mad priest, a photo-journalist with a damaged lens and a father wrung-out after the death of his wife. And they conspire to murder a child!
Aha! Could it possibly be that this is what it all comes down to?
Whatever the weakness of the plot, the actions of the characters are made believable through the superb – and wholly serious – performances of the actors. One of my favourite scenes is the one in which Gregory Peck’s ‘Robert Thorn’ receives the call telling him his wife is dead. Peck’s face, the way it changes as the news permeates his stunned brain, is the epitome of horror, especially of the type of horror that this film is all about.
It may clothe itself in the guise as a tale of demonic takeover but, in reality, it is, as Donner wisely pitched it, far more a story dealing with very human concerns.
We are actually forced to ask two questions. Firstly, can a child really just be born evil? And, secondly, is evil not less about the inherent nature of a thing and more to do with our perception of it?
A film, as a film, is, first and foremost, an entertainment – if we apply as wide a definition of the term as possible. Even a Schindler’s List (1993) or a Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), despite the content, are encountered through the medium of entertainment and, therefore contain those elements a story requires in order to be entertaining. That they tell horrific stories – and, even worse, stories based on actual events in our shared human history – detracts nothing from their power as stories, as entertainments.
The Omen tells an entertaining tale of an attempt by evil means of taking over the world. As such, it is not unrelated to the other two films just mentioned. This connection is made all the stronger by Damien’s being born into a political milieu. It could be said that Schindler and Striped Pyjamas are tellings of the story of what would have happened if Damien hadn’t ultimately been defeated.
This political background to the events of The Omen is no accident. This is, after all, a film of the Seventies, the decade that ended with – in Britain, at least – the demonic, in the form of Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), well and truly in political control. There is absolutely no need for any form of religious conviction to be able to relate to this movie and its commentary upon the times.
There are those who would argue that Thatcher was anything but demonic, of course. Very few of those who fly to her defense would have been living in Council housing back in the Seventies and Eighties, threatened on an almost daily basis by the ever-rising costs of basic amenities like water and electricity which Thatcher privatized. Their jobs weren’t in danger of disappearing before their eyes while the right to voice concerns and struggle for basic human rights were being denied them.
The evil that was Margaret Thatcher, born out of the Seventies as a political force, is open to angles of perception but, the simple fact is, as with Damien, people actually died as a direct and indirect consequence of her policies. Our sense of evil here need not be religious, our Devil may be nothing more than a person lacking the human decency to care for those caused to suffer, and those tasked with bringing her down might be seen as traitorous and slightly mad, yet, as film after film from the Seventies were determined to show us, there was evil abroad and threatening all that had so recently been fought for. Such evil manifested in the form of politics.
One certainly wouldn’t want to portray Thatcher as inherently evil. This does seem to be a very American way of looking at things. Maybe it relieves the burden of responsibility if one is able to blame some outside agency or inherent nature for all the evils of the world? It is a trend that continues to this day in Hollywood movies, so it seems to be a deeply ingrained belief in the culture. They seem not to accept the argument that evil is a matter of perception, preferring to see it more as nature rather than nurture. But, in this movie, all that guff about Damien’s parentage is there merely to enliven the story not to heighten the threat. As the literal son of the devil, Damien actually becomes less of a horror.
If Damien is, instead, the product of a mother suffering some degree of mental instability and a father used to wielding the power of politics – the power to make decisions which affect the lives of others in very real ways – then he becomes a very real threat, for he has it within his power to wreak the horrors we know humans are very capable of.
Irrespective of his natural parentage, having Damien adopted makes of his nature an unknown quantity. The Thorns can only contribute to his nurture and are portrayed, in the early part of the film, as doting parents. When Robert Thorn is finally persuaded to investigate Damien’s origins and makes the discovery of his parentage, we accept, as the movie expects us to, along with Thorn and Jennings, the evidence as presented.
What we are given very little perspective on, and very rarely are in movies – unless it be the whole point of the plot, which it isn’t here – is Damien’s perception of his nurturing. Generally, this would be due to the Hollywood belief that evil is born not made. The script plays with this idea, of course, especially in the scenes in which the Thorns arrive at church for a wedding and the Safari Park incident with the Baboons. It shouldn’t go without notice, though, that it is only after his father has left the car, at the cathedral, that Damien reacts violently, attacking his mother. Also, earlier, during the party for Damien’s fifth birthday, as he is being carried by his nanny and Daddy is talking with a number of men in military uniforms, Damien asks, “Want a bite, Daddy?” He completely ignores his mother, not even glancing in her direction.
While the entertainment value might lie in Damien’s having been sired by the Devil, the human element confronts us with the possibility that, despite all the best intentions of his parents, the child’s perceptions of them – father as a powerful man; mother as a weakness likely to get in the way of achieving the full expression of that power – which is, of course, why she must die on becoming pregnant! - have more of an influence on his development than they can bring themselves to recognise. Imagine the consequences of such a realisation!
The Omen as political allegory is far more frightening than it is as a fanciful tale of the son of Satan. It is also far more in keeping with the general themes of Seventies’ cinema. In this sense, it has far more in common with Jaws (1975) than it does with The Exorcist (1973).
Doesn’t it make you wonder just how the Hell this became the great film it so obviously is?
Who makes a movie what it is? Was it the Studios, back in the 1940s? Or the Directors, in the Seventies? Or the Stars, of the Two-Thousand-Tens?
I am firmly of the belief that it is some alchemical mix of all three. Not forgetting to add the seasoning of a good script. The Omen, as much as any other film, shows, however, that the script, like the seasoning in a good winter soup, is variable. One wonders if The Omen could ever have been as good as it is if not for Gregory Peck and David Warner? Or if the Director, Richard Donner, had not decided to include only what was realistically possible.
Just how does this film work? It’s a story of the Devil spawning a child, yet the Demon King makes no personal appearance. It’s the story of an evil child who does nothing overtly evil – even his mother’s fall could, just about, have been an accident. After all, Damien isn’t looking where he’s going as he races along on his tricycle – though I’ve always thought the child’s indifference gives this one away. It’s the story of the fight between good and evil, yet the good guys are a mad priest, a photo-journalist with a damaged lens and a father wrung-out after the death of his wife. And they conspire to murder a child!
Aha! Could it possibly be that this is what it all comes down to?
Whatever the weakness of the plot, the actions of the characters are made believable through the superb – and wholly serious – performances of the actors. One of my favourite scenes is the one in which Gregory Peck’s ‘Robert Thorn’ receives the call telling him his wife is dead. Peck’s face, the way it changes as the news permeates his stunned brain, is the epitome of horror, especially of the type of horror that this film is all about.
It may clothe itself in the guise as a tale of demonic takeover but, in reality, it is, as Donner wisely pitched it, far more a story dealing with very human concerns.
We are actually forced to ask two questions. Firstly, can a child really just be born evil? And, secondly, is evil not less about the inherent nature of a thing and more to do with our perception of it?
A film, as a film, is, first and foremost, an entertainment – if we apply as wide a definition of the term as possible. Even a Schindler’s List (1993) or a Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), despite the content, are encountered through the medium of entertainment and, therefore contain those elements a story requires in order to be entertaining. That they tell horrific stories – and, even worse, stories based on actual events in our shared human history – detracts nothing from their power as stories, as entertainments.
The Omen tells an entertaining tale of an attempt by evil means of taking over the world. As such, it is not unrelated to the other two films just mentioned. This connection is made all the stronger by Damien’s being born into a political milieu. It could be said that Schindler and Striped Pyjamas are tellings of the story of what would have happened if Damien hadn’t ultimately been defeated.
This political background to the events of The Omen is no accident. This is, after all, a film of the Seventies, the decade that ended with – in Britain, at least – the demonic, in the form of Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), well and truly in political control. There is absolutely no need for any form of religious conviction to be able to relate to this movie and its commentary upon the times.
There are those who would argue that Thatcher was anything but demonic, of course. Very few of those who fly to her defense would have been living in Council housing back in the Seventies and Eighties, threatened on an almost daily basis by the ever-rising costs of basic amenities like water and electricity which Thatcher privatized. Their jobs weren’t in danger of disappearing before their eyes while the right to voice concerns and struggle for basic human rights were being denied them.
The evil that was Margaret Thatcher, born out of the Seventies as a political force, is open to angles of perception but, the simple fact is, as with Damien, people actually died as a direct and indirect consequence of her policies. Our sense of evil here need not be religious, our Devil may be nothing more than a person lacking the human decency to care for those caused to suffer, and those tasked with bringing her down might be seen as traitorous and slightly mad, yet, as film after film from the Seventies were determined to show us, there was evil abroad and threatening all that had so recently been fought for. Such evil manifested in the form of politics.
One certainly wouldn’t want to portray Thatcher as inherently evil. This does seem to be a very American way of looking at things. Maybe it relieves the burden of responsibility if one is able to blame some outside agency or inherent nature for all the evils of the world? It is a trend that continues to this day in Hollywood movies, so it seems to be a deeply ingrained belief in the culture. They seem not to accept the argument that evil is a matter of perception, preferring to see it more as nature rather than nurture. But, in this movie, all that guff about Damien’s parentage is there merely to enliven the story not to heighten the threat. As the literal son of the devil, Damien actually becomes less of a horror.
If Damien is, instead, the product of a mother suffering some degree of mental instability and a father used to wielding the power of politics – the power to make decisions which affect the lives of others in very real ways – then he becomes a very real threat, for he has it within his power to wreak the horrors we know humans are very capable of.
Irrespective of his natural parentage, having Damien adopted makes of his nature an unknown quantity. The Thorns can only contribute to his nurture and are portrayed, in the early part of the film, as doting parents. When Robert Thorn is finally persuaded to investigate Damien’s origins and makes the discovery of his parentage, we accept, as the movie expects us to, along with Thorn and Jennings, the evidence as presented.
What we are given very little perspective on, and very rarely are in movies – unless it be the whole point of the plot, which it isn’t here – is Damien’s perception of his nurturing. Generally, this would be due to the Hollywood belief that evil is born not made. The script plays with this idea, of course, especially in the scenes in which the Thorns arrive at church for a wedding and the Safari Park incident with the Baboons. It shouldn’t go without notice, though, that it is only after his father has left the car, at the cathedral, that Damien reacts violently, attacking his mother. Also, earlier, during the party for Damien’s fifth birthday, as he is being carried by his nanny and Daddy is talking with a number of men in military uniforms, Damien asks, “Want a bite, Daddy?” He completely ignores his mother, not even glancing in her direction.
While the entertainment value might lie in Damien’s having been sired by the Devil, the human element confronts us with the possibility that, despite all the best intentions of his parents, the child’s perceptions of them – father as a powerful man; mother as a weakness likely to get in the way of achieving the full expression of that power – which is, of course, why she must die on becoming pregnant! - have more of an influence on his development than they can bring themselves to recognise. Imagine the consequences of such a realisation!
The Omen as political allegory is far more frightening than it is as a fanciful tale of the son of Satan. It is also far more in keeping with the general themes of Seventies’ cinema. In this sense, it has far more in common with Jaws (1975) than it does with The Exorcist (1973).
Comments
Post a Comment