The Terror of Religion and a Repeated Past: Father Paul Hill in Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass
Contains spoilers!
Introduced in Mike Flanagan’s Netflix 2021 limited series Midnight Mass, Father Paul Hill quickly became my favorite character. Hamish Linklater portrays Hill, and Linklater brings Hill to life in a spectacular way. Midnight Mass details Hill’s arrival at Crockett Island, a town suffering from a religious recession. Hill’s activities quickly bring him great popularity, but he harbors a dark secret, one he intends to share with Crockett Island’s residents.
His secret is that he is the de-aged Monsignor Pruitt, an elderly priest that travelled to Jerusalem to undertake a spiritual journey. During his travels, he encountered a sandstorm that forced him to take shelter in a cave. Within the cave, Pruitt discovered what he deemed to be an angel. The angel allowed Pruitt to drink its blood, allowing Pruitt to become young and youthful again. Astonished, Pruitt returns to Crockett with the angel in tow, intending to share the angel’s abilities with the residents there. The problem: after being infected, Pruitt/Hill now craves human blood.
Though a priest, Pruitt/Hill shares a disturbing number of similarities with one of history’s most infamous men: Adolf Hitler. Both are powerful public speakers, able to turn the citizens of Germany and Crockett Island to their sides. The most prominent example of Pruitt/Hill’s rousing rhetoric can be found in episode five, titled “Gospel.” In a captivating monologue, Pruitt/Hill describes his intent for Crockett’s residents to rise into the ranks of God’s army. He tells the congregation, “God does not want you to fight for this country. The arrogance… of that. God has no country… No, don’t fight for a country. You fight for God’s kingdom.” It is notable that, as he gives the speech, Pruitt/Hill is wearing a red chasuble, this being the archetypical color of power, sacrifice, and war. The speech is a call to fight in a holy war, and Hitler was well known for his rousing and encouraging speeches.
An example of Hitler’s rhetoric that bears similarities with Pruitt/Hill is the former’s speech in Munich in 1929, quoted in saying: “One is either the hammer or the anvil. We confess that it is our purpose to prepare the German people again for the role of the hammer.” Here, Hitler encourages the German people to be the dominant force (hammer) rather than the of the weak, inferior victim (anvil).
In the aftermath of World War I, Germany and its citizens faced an economic depression, which Hitler and the Nazis managed to rebuild following Hitler’s assumption to power. An example of this within Nazi Germany is of promoting unions but with Nazi ideas: some workers are better than others (Aryans are better than Jews).
Prior to the events of Midnight Mass, Crockett suffers from an oil spill, which affected the island’s fishers. The islanders are downtrodden and hopeless, but the arrival of Pruitt/Hill and his subsequent activities reinvigorate their faith and emotional well-being simultaneously. Once they’re resurrected, the residents believe they have achieved a sense of higher self, that they, as God’s chosen people, are, as Deuteronomy 7:6-8 states, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.”
Upon his return to the island, Pruitt/Hill begins to perform miracles, his first being allowing a young wheelchair-bound woman to walk again. This young woman is the daughter of the island’s mayor, and both he and his wife flock to Pruitt/Hill, amazed and grateful by what he has done for them. Other characters start noticing physical changes soon after: a woman no longer requires her glasses to see, her husband’s back pain vanishes, and another, elderly woman rattled with dementia begins to de-age and re-attain her memory. These miracles quickly put Pruitt/Hill as the de facto leader of the island; while not necessarily in an elected position, both the mayor and the island’s handyman become devout followers. With the mayor and handyman in your pocket, who can stand against you?
During the Easter mass, Pruitt/Hill plans for Crockett’s residents to commit mass suicide but, due to the residents having unknowingly consumed the angel’s blood, rise again. The plan goes wrong when Bev Keane, a devout citizen, unleashes the infected parishioners upon the rest of the island, and a feeding frenzy begins. This sequence is a combination of Lebensraum, Hitler’s idea of more living space for the German people, as well as Kristallnacht, during which non-Jews ransacked and destroyed Jewish-owned properties. The citizens of Crockett flood the street, busting their way into the homes of their friends and neighbors; some are dragged out into the street to be feasted upon.
The greatest difference between Pruitt/Hill and Hitler can be viewed in the final episode, titled “Revelation.” Bev Keane has released the infected citizens upon the rest of the island, and blood is flowing through the streets. Upon learning this, Pruitt/Hill denounces both Bev and the carnage, only having wanted a select few to receive this gift. When presented with the failure of his plans, Pruitt/Hill knew when enough was enough. Hitler, on the other hand, wouldn’t have stopped attempting to achieve his goals, and his obsession drove him to attack even his allies, such as the Soviet Union during the early years of World War II.
It's unknown if Flanagan intended for Pruitt/Hill to resemble Hiter and his ideology. Even without entering politics, an individual can wield great power if they justify their actions as coming from a higher being, committing horrific acts in the practice of worshiping their god. Pruitt/Hil did to an island with a population of 127 what Hitler did to a country with a population of eighty million: resurrect their faith, day-to-day lives, and encouraged them to rise to a position greater than themselves.
