"I did so many bad things": Sin and Redemption in the Films of Abel Ferrara

Paul Davies

I am in search of some kind of truth according to God. I know I didn't create the universe. Someone else did. So I'm in that search. Abel Ferrara

Abel Ferrara is best known for his violent exploitation films and powerfully intense and brutal portraits of New York's mean streets. Having started off as an independent filmmaker, his reputation has since widened beyond a mere cult audience. What perhaps surprisingly links all his films is a serious, at times searingly honest attempt to deal with religious themes. It is hardly surprising then, that the critical reception of Ferrara's films was at first marked by initial confusion and rejection, much of which was stirred up by censorship and 'video nasties' controversies, particularly concerning The Driller Killer and Bad Lieutenant, and by the feeling that Ferrara was nothing more than a cheap slasher-cum-porno monger. With time such uncritical, vituperative abuse subsided and a more sober, serious tone took over reflected by six book-length studies with a seventh upcoming, in addition to articles in the British film journal Sight and Sound and the International Abel Ferrara Internet Library, by far the most comprehensive reference guide to all things Ferrara. 1 Studies by Nick Johnstone and Bernd KieferIMarcus Stiglegger are likely to remain standard for some time. Although marred by an approach that mostly does nothing more than retell the content of the films, Johnstone's Abel Ferrara: The King of New York nevertheless manages a close enough reading of Ferrara's work and establishes relevant connections between the films. Though symptomatic of the author's determinedly biographical orientation, the thirty-six page introduction entitled "Notes on Ferrara", does unearth important aspects of the director's life and approach to film making, and Johnstone must be given due credit in two areas. First, he acknowledges the crucial role of religion in Ferrara's oeuvre, something too many critics are still reluctant to do, believing instead that Ferrara merely (mis)uses Catholic symbols and iconography for his own ends - whatever they are. Second, Johnstone recognizes the key contributions of Ferrara's close circle of regular collaborators as well as his status as a genuine auteur whose influences include Pasolini, Godard, Bresson, Polanski and Fassbinder. More 210 "I did so many bad things" scholarly by far however, is the book by the two German academics Bernd Kiefer and Marcus Stiglegger. Entitled Die bizarre SchOnheit der Verdammten: Die Filme von Abel Ferrara (The bizarre beauty of the damned: The films of Abel Ferrara). This work contains an introductory essay by the two editors on Ferrara's search for redemption - like Johnstone, the authors have no trouble identifying Ferrara as a filmmaker with deeply spiritual and religious concerns who is fascinated by definitions of good and evil - along with eight other contributions which deal with issues ranging from sex(uality), death and an interpretation of Ferrara's protagonists in the light of Kierkegaard's work, to Ferrara as a director of 'neo-Noirs,' his filmic topography of New York, the role of Rap and Hip Hop on his soundtracks, and a welcome in-depth analysis of New Rose Hotel. The book as a whole and the introductory essay in particular, come to the conclusion that Ferrara's central theme, present from the very beginning, is the violence of the infernal world of the city in which his protagonists more and more desperately search for redemption.2 The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how many of the characters in Abel Ferrara's films face quasi-religious moral dilemmas revolving around questions of sin and redemption. They experience a descent into violence, often provoked by a desire for revenge which then turns into a voyage of self-discovery before resolving itself in the discovery of some sort of inner, often spiritual truth. Above all, Ferrara's films force us to decide how to face up to the implications of our often violent actions and to take responsibility for them. Although Ferrara constantly, almost obsessively, returns to the same themes, I would nevertheless like to analyse the director's films in three sections, which progress chronologically throughout his oeuvre, in order to determine whether any thematic developments take place after all. In the first I will look at those films Ferrara made before The King of New York which have a desire for some sort of revenge as a central theme. In section two I will deal with what I believe are the four key Ferrara films in three thematically connected groups rather than in a strictly chronological order: (i) King ofNew York (1990), which shows the devastating effects of violence, murder and the lack of a spiritual anchor; (ii) The Funeral (1996), in which the characters justify their actions by recourse to a form of Catholicism which is not only the bleakest form possible, but which also misinterprets the concept of grace; (iii) the films Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Addiction (1994) both of which offer much more concrete solutions to the problems of evil and human wickedness in terms of faith. So what we have here is a sort of sliding scale from ignorance to misguidedness to final enlightenment. Section three will briefly cover the work Ferrara has done in the last five years or so since The Funeral. I will