This German art-house flick is best viewed cold — the less you know about its extraordinary main character, Michela Klinger, the stronger and stranger the film becomes. But for those of you who like your some background to your movies, read on.

“The Exorcist” stripped of special effects and transformed into something harrowing and beautiful, “Requiem” is based on the events that inspired the 2005 thriller, “The Exorcism of Emily Rose”. The basic outline of the story is taken from the real 1976 case of Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old German woman with a history of psychiatric disturbances. Convinced that she was possessed by demons, Michel sought and received permission from the Catholic Church to undergo an exorcism, and died of exhaustion and medical complications during it.

Desperate to cover itself, the church reversed its decision before the case reached court, declaring that she wasn’t possessed, merely mentally ill. But Anneliese’s parents and the priests involved in the exorcism were convicted of manslaughter.To this day her grave is a destination for pilgrims who believe she was martyr in the spiritual war between God and Satan.

Director Hans-Christian Schmid guts the visual excesses and lurid sensationalism of “Emily Rose,” removing most of the music, visuals, color, and ham-handed attempts at suspense until what remains looks like a movie assembled in a monk’s cell: sparse and spare but possessing a spiritual empathy and attention to detail. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a Zen garden.

Michela is 21, trapped in her small southern German town, slowly suffocating beneath her family’s harsh Catholicism when she’s not being emotionally tortured by her mother, who seems to have had all human feeling surgically removed.Suffering from epilepsy, Michela dreams of escaping to university and finally, on one fine day in 1976, her long-suffering father agrees to let her go. If you’re only here for the horror then you’ll miss Michela’s metamorphosis from downtrodden caterpillar to luminous butterfly, liberated by love, learning, and the music of Deep Purple. First-time actress Sandra Hüller uses only her face to tell this tale and it’s the perfect instrument, changing mood and emotion like a wildfire. She took home the Silver Bear in Berlin for her performance in “Requiem” and she deserves it — this is one of the most moving performances you’ll see this year.

But the plot of the movie flows inevitably onward like a black river, filling every frame with dread, and Michela’s nervous breakdowns, medical condition, growing pains, religious doubts, and intellectual and sexual awakenings all snowball until they hit her like a shotgun blast, blowing away a magnificent young woman and leaving behind nothing but fear and ashes.

Mr. Schmid’s firm, sure hand shows us what led up to the fatal exorcism that took Michela’s life, quietly and constantly overturning our expectations along the way. The argument is made that God and the Devil only exist in our minds, but that they’re no less powerful for all that. No fingers are pointed in this movie, and there’s definitely no head spinning, but when Michela finally succumbs to her demons, the effect is deeply horrific. She does spit pea soup, but here it’s shattering, not gross. A near perfect movie, “Requiem” only has one flaw: I wish it was longer.