The trailer for The Wicker Man (2006) suggests a mystery with supernatural overtones. With images of a missing child, a station wagon hit by a truck and bursting into flames, an isolated island, and strange women dressed in 19th-century clothing, the trailer caught my interest At the same time, there was something about the trailer that bothered me, something hackneyed, jury rigged.
Written and directed by Neil Labute, and “reinterpreted” from the highly regarded 1973 British Wicker Man, this film has an agenda. It targets feminists, matriarchy, the New Age movement, Wiccans, nature worshippers, alternative cultures, bees, and fans of Ellen Burstyn, whose appearance is an embarrassment. It draws on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and, of course, the 1973 original. Labute’s film does not live up to these sources.
Policeman Edward Malus, played by Nicholas Cage, stops a station wagon in Northern California to return a doll dropped on the road. When he returns the doll, the little girl who dropped it throws it out again. When he walks over to pick up the doll, a truck crashes into the station wagon, which bursts into flames and then explodes as Edward tries to pull the girl from the wreckage. He loses consciousness. Bodies are never found in the wreckage. While he is recovering, he receives a letter from his former fiancé whose child has disappeared. She asks his help. Against his better judgment, he travels to the state of Washington and the isolated island where she lives, and the mystery begins to unfold.
This film reminded me of the old computer game Myst, which had a rich and fascinating atmosphere but not much of a plot, at least not much of one as far as I got into the game. Myst in its evocation of mystery and suspense and its puzzles and problems was a revolutionary computer game. The Wicker Man is a dull and plodding film that follows Edward Malus in his anguished and fairly dimwitted plunge towards the mystery’s solution. There is little about this film that is surprising or creative.
In the first few minutes of the film, Nicholas Cage is convincing as the police officer recovering from the traumatic failed rescue. He keeps having hallucinations, or thinks he does, and pops pills to suppress them. But once he arrives on the island he spends most of his time stumbling around in an angry sort of funk, yelling at various women who smile at him in a knowing way as they refuse to give up any information. He runs or trots or walks up and down the roads and paths of the island, breaks into houses, descends into holes, rides a bicycle, swims, and explores an old barn. He never changes the suit he wears. He never seems to catch on. Nicholas Cage is a great actor given the right part. This is not the right part.
The Wicker Man offers all the usual hints and clues and portents of horror films—lost clothing, forbidden rooms, nightmares, cackling crows, disfigured bodies, disfigured people, a beautiful and tormented woman, lies, deceit, fear, hiding places, holes in the ground that lead to danger, clues that mount up and lead towards an inevitable conclusion. There is the standard shocking reversal near the end of the film that turns everything on its head, though anyone who watches this film with any care will catch on long before the surprise reveals itself. And there is the concluding scene that assures the final horror’s perpetuation.
In a rather systematic way the iconography of this film presents nature worship, feminists, and pagan religions as all wrapped up in an anti-male, anti-Christian, anti-tradition, anti-Western World cabal. The penultimate scene certainly supports this notion. Towards the end, Edward Malus violently slugs several women who, he suspects, are about to take part in a terrible crime—beyond the issue of the crime, what point is the film making here about women who don’t know their place? What this film shows about pagan religions such as Wicca is exactly what many right-wing fundamentalist Christians want to believe: that they are demented, tree-hugging, anti-Christian, men-hating subversives. All the women characters are named for plants: Sister Rose, Sister Thorn, Dr. Moss, Rowan, Sister Willow; Sister Beech. They take part in fertility rites and harvest rituals. The figuratively if not actually emasculated men never speak or assert themselves or respond to Edward’s calls for help. The women refer to the men as drones. Edward falls into a subterranean pool where he comes across a submerged statue of Jesus. In another scene, a teacher asks her girl students, “What is man in his purest form” and the girls give the answer they have been taught, “Phallic symbol, phallic symbol, phallic symbol.”
Even if the film is not deliberately expressing these sentiments, it is still exploiting them. Those of us in the audience are clearly expected to react negatively to all of this. We’re supposed to share Edward’s point of view. Neil Labute does not seem like the sort of director who would endorse these positions. Yet they are in the film. Why?
Interestingly, the main character in the 1973 original (which I have read about but not seen) is presented as a Christian whose faith conflicts with the nature worship of the inhabitants of the island. Moreover, the earlier film depicted an island ruled over by a man, not by women. In this more recent version, the Christianity is sublimated into the mood, characterizations, and dialogue.
I am no advocate for Wiccans and other paganists. But they are harmless. To suggest that they and feminists are somehow one and the same, interchangeable, is ridiculous. To imply that feminism’s attack on patriarchic social institutions has undermined and endangered our world is preposterous. Yet The Wicker Man makes these arguments and vilifies those who choose alternative paths by presenting them as a danger.
The one positive element in this film is the setting, a beautiful island--in the film it sits off the Washington state coast but in reality it is near Vancouver in British Columbia. The film exploits the exotic and remote scenery effectively. But it’s not much of a film.
This review originally appeared in BlogCritics, http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/09/10/191157.php.
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