Featured Film Review
'The Wicker Man (Extended Version)' 1973 Anchor Bay Entertainment, starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento and Britt Ekland. 100 mins.
There is a category of films that have somehow made an interstellar leap onto a pedestal, which beholds each person to watch them at least once in their lives. It's assumed that everyone has seen these classics and, if you haven't, you feel like you've somehow failed in some great pilgrimage.
'The Wicker Man' is in that category. Until today I had never watched it, because pyrophobia and a certain scene in it don't mix well, but nonetheless I knew the story by osmosis. It seems that we are almost born knowing that a policeman travels to a remote Scottish island, where the natives are a bit weird. Weird turns into Pagan in the Dark Ages sense, ie the version written by the conquering Romans about the defeated Druidic Celts, grisly and cruel. The very title would give you a clue as to how it ends, even if most promotional posters and the covers of videos/DVDs didn't depict it.
This is what I knew as I sat down to watch it and there were no surprises there, just the detail filled in. What no-one had warned me was that it's actually a soft porn musical. I spent most of the film trying not to laugh. It is very dated and I'm well aware that I belong to a more desensitised age than that in which it was filmed, but even so it hasn't aged well. I also felt that the acting was extremely wooden and the Scottish accents slipped all over the British Isles and into several other countries besides. Most of the actors could barely keep the same accent throughout a single sentence let alone the entire film.
I did expect to be more indignant that I actually was about the portrayal of Paganism. I'd been warned that it's very much an 'evil Pagans versus good Christians' film and probably wouldn't be able to be filmed today, due to religious rights legislation. In all honesty, I was too busy laughing at the aforementioned soft porn musical to muster much indignation at all. A fair chuck of the depiction was spot on anyway, homicidal maniacal tendencies notwithstanding, though I'm not convinced that they all belonged to the same people or same historical period.
I thought that there was some interesting commentary on the nature of religion, though, if anything, the conclusion was that if you reject Christianity you become corrupt and inhumane.
All in all, I'd advise that it's not touched with a bargepole and an urgent reassignment out of the category of 'classic film' should be forthcoming. I can't comment on the famous scene, as I passed through most of it with a pillow over my face.
Reviewer: Mab
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