Review of Devil (2010) by Shiira — 17 Sep 2010

There are Intuitionists and there are Empiricists, two warring factions of elevator inspectors who form the Elevator Guild, an organization that is at the center of the alternative world in Colson Whitehead's first novel "The Intuitionist", an allegory about race, upward mobility and.

..religion. The Empiricists see the problem; they scoff at the procedural metaphysics that is practiced by the Intuitionists, men and women with hunches who divine the problem. Lila Mae Watson, the first black elevator inspector in the history of the Guild is an Intuitionist; she uses a faith-based approach on each inspection job.

Intuitionists just know. But then Lila Mae's kind come under fire when an elevator car she oversaw on a routine inspection, suffers a complete malfunction, plummeting to the ground, which calls the Intuitionists' methodology into question.

As it turns out, Lila Mae was a victim of sabotage, perpetuated by the Empiricists, who rigged the fall. G. Carson is the elevator inspector in "Devil", a film with a world that's topsy-turvy in its own right.

The vertically-challenged opening shots of the upside-down metropolis has an estranging effect on the moviegoer, because it reallocates heaven and hell from their normal points of reference: north and south.

So what does it mean when Gehenna finds itself aloft in an emblematic sky, while a reconstituted Canaan is lowered from the celestial sphere, occupying where the ground used to be? Well, if Gabriel and his gang of rowdy angels can kick ass in Scott Stewart's "Legion", why can't the devil sport an altruistic side and do God's work for a change? "Devil" inverts The Rolling Stones' song "Sympathy for the Devil" through its originative characterization of an archfiend who has sympathy for the human condition.

Taking the form of an old woman, the devil works in ways more mysterious to God; she's a one-demon advocacy group: D.A.D.D.(Devil Against Drunk Driving). The devil cares. Like the Colson Whitehead novel, "Devil" has its own intuitionists and empiricists in a holding pattern of ideological discord.

When a ghostly image superimposes itself upon the elevator passengers in the security camera monitor, Ramirez(Jacob Vargas), the intuitionist(read: ecclesiasticist in the Whitehead novel), has a gut reaction; that video disturbance, his gut tells him, is the devil, whereas Lustiq(Matt Craven), the empiricist(read: atheist), dismisses his partner's spiritual notions outrightly.

Bowden(Chris Messina), the detective in charge of the ongoing crime scene, is also an empiricist, but with a difference; he believes that man is the devil, after a mortal demon left his wife and child at the scene of a vehicular homicide.

He becomes an intuitionist after the devil reveals herself, and forces the drunk driver(Logan Marshall-Green) to repent. Afterward, in the squad car, Bowden tells Tony who he is, and forgives the man for what he'd done to his life.

The devil made him do it. That's pretty subversive stuff. God is nowhere on the scene. G. Carson(COL-son) is no longer in the elevator inspection business.