“To me, the two most interesting characters in the history of the world are Hitler and Jesus,” director William Friedkin declares in the opening moments of “Friedkin Uncut.” It’s the kind of statement that if you’d overheard it from someone at a party, you’d likely do your best to escape the room to find a better, less cringe-inducing conversation. But it’s not a surprise coming from Friedkin, whose filmography and interviews are littered with usually far more thoughtful moments of provocation. Nevertheless, it’s an odd beat for Francisco Zippel to begin his portrait of the filmmaker, one whose title promises an incisive investigation, but rarely scratches beneath the surface.
The look at Friedkin’s work begins, expectedly, with his most popular picture, “The Exorcist.” But it’s a glancing appreciation of the film, with nothing in the way of additional insight from the director, besides an anecdote about the last minute casting of Jason Miller. This sort of cursory overview becomes a routine for the rest of the documentary, which is nearly always too much of in awe of its subject to offer any kind of probing investigation or objectivity.
Modeled on Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s terrific and wildly entertaining “De Palma,” Zippel also anchors his documentary with a sit-down conversation with Friedkin. But clearly lacking the close friendship Baumbach and Paltrow shared with De Palma, and with much less interview footage to work with, Zippel is forced to pad out his film with not particularly compelling celebrity punctuations from Francis Ford Coppola, Wes Anderson, Philip Kaufman, Edgar Wright, Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Matthew McConaughey, Gina Gershon, and Juno Temple. Even more, Zippel seems at such a loss for material, he intercuts footage of Friedkin relaying the same anecdotes he shares with the filmmaker, to audiences at a handful of film festivals in Lyon, Sitges, and Strausbourg. These are canned tales, and as such, they go down with all the flavor of a reheated meal. Both “De Palma” and “Friedkin Uncut” run nearly the same length of time, but where the former was packed with candid, hilarious and fascinating stories, the latter rarely leaves you feeling like you’ve learned something or gained a greater understanding of filmmaker. However, there might be a larger issue at play — it’s entirely possible that Friedkin actually has nothing to say.
For all of his confident and voluble demeanor, it’s a bit jarring that the only real takeaways that Friedkin offers about the process of making movies are along the lines of “rehearsals are for sissies” and that good films are a combination of “ambition, luck, and the grace of God.” Zippel only takes the time to focus on Friedkin’s pictures that were lucky enough to have all three of those elements or notorious enough to not be ignored (yes, I’m talking about “Cruising,” but don’t expect to find a definitive answer about the forty minutes the director was forced to cut from the movie to secure an R-rating). That said, all of the director’s ‘90s and early ‘00s films are neglected, so you won’t hear anything about the erotic thriller misfire “Jade,” his TV take on “12 Angry Men,” or his run at fairly anonymous studio pictures like “Blue Chips,” “The Hunted,” and “Rules Of Engagement.” Instead, “Friedkin Uncut” leaps over them to 2006’s “Bug” and 2011’s “Killer Joe,” which indeed saw the director get his groove back thanks to the pen of Tracy Letts, though the filmmaker doesn’t have much to say about those movies, or what they meant to his career.
From his passing praise of Kathryn Bigelow and Damien Chazelle as the best working American filmmakers today, to a walkthrough tour of his house and art collection, “Friedkin Uncut” is a shambling, unfocused effort that is deferential to the director to a fault. The film ends as Friedkin prepares to unveil the documentary “The Devil And Father Amorth” at last year’s Venice Film Festival. It once again sees director grappling with the subject of exorcism, but it’s a reminder that “Friedkin Uncut” is far from the religious experience it should be. [C-]