The Wicker Man (Limited Edition)
by Robin Hardy
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Britt Ekland, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Edward Woodward, Ingrid PittDirector: Robin Hardy
Cinematographer: Harry Waxman
Editor: Eric Boyd-Perkins
Producer: Peter Snell
Writer: Anthony Shaffer
Writer: David Pinner
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Limited Edition, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-08-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Movie Reviews of The Wicker Man (Limited Edition)
Movie Review: Burning Man
Summary: 5 Stars
Have you ever noticed the really funny thing about Religion? No matter where you go, no people, race, or tribe has ever selected somebody other than themselves as God's chosen people.
Every religion says "God chose *us* to rule the world!"; none says "God chose those guys in the next county to rule the World!".
The most atrocious acts of depravity in the history of mankind have been carried out by one godly set of folks against another: burnings, torture, genocide, suicide bombings, missionaries---all justified in the name of the Divine.
The Enemy, the Heretic, The Infidel: these people are all Evil because they do not recognize the One True God. They worship a fantasy, a False God, or even worse: the Devil himself.
You've probably had lots of discussions with a very religious person; I grew up among them, and I learned in my youth that having a rational argument over the existence of God with the extremely ecclesiastic is useless.
It goes something like this: God exists, He wouldn't have permitted the Bible (the means by which He is made manifest) to exist for millennia if it were false, Jesus is both Son of God and God at the same time, we accept these things-all of which contradict our five senses, the only means we have as humans to perceive the world-on Faith.
But what of Muslims, or Buddhists, or Mormons, or Animists, you might ask? What if you had been born in one of those religions-wouldn't you have been just as sure of your virtue and Rightness, just as convinced of the power of Allah or Buddha or Moroni or Dark Mother Kali, just as bound to take everything on faith, and just as determined to see Christians as the slaves of the Devil? No, says your subject---I would have seen the light and converted.
And take any of the adherents to any of the world's religions, and you'll get the same response. And you also begin to see why religion has persisted for so long: it is emotional body armor, the glue that has bound men together into rough and ready societies for millennia, the single most powerful Meme and primary organizing principle after Food, Shelter, and Sex. Religion is ultimately irrational---by that I mean incapable of being challenged by Reason---because it is founded on Dogma. And when one Dogma meets another, the results range from the Comic to the Grotesque.
With that in mind, "The Wicker Man" is a triple threat.
1) Viewed one way, "The Wicker Man" is about British Police Sergeant Neil Howie and his awful, terrible, miserable, nasty, not-so-good day, and serves as a fine object lesson in the importance of always calling for backup.
2) Viewed another way, "The Wicker Man" is a fable about the very real dangers of epistemological imperialism, in which the by-the-numbers Colonist becomes the by-the-numbers Colonized.
3) Viewed yet another way---"The Wicker Man" is a little bit of both, and a moody, delicious, haunting little creepshow in its own right---and depicts what happens when one set of True Believers slams headlong into another.
British Police Sergeant Neil Howie (played with stoic reserve by the great Edward Woodward, who puts the stiff in the British Stiff Upper Lip) travels to the remote Island of Summerisle, off the English coast, after receiving a letter from an islander alerting him to the disappearance of a village girl, the young Rowan Morrison (played fleetingly by Geraldine Cowper).
Arriving at the isolated island by seaplane, he proceeds with a standard inquiry into the girl's disappearance, but the rustic islanders are anything but helpful. Sergeant Howie digs in for a long investigation and sets up shop at the local inn, increasingly aware of Summerisle's strangeness, a baroque mix of the whimsical and malevolent.
His investigation is hampered by the island's passive-aggressive residents, who offer two flavors of obstruction: baffled surliness and outright derision. And as director Robin Hardy ratchets up the tension and strangeness, Howie encounters pagan rites, toad-licking, a naked and writhing Brit Ekland, and gratuitous folk-singing. No, Toto, we're not in Southeast England anymore.
Even the courtly Lord Summerisle (played by the immortal Christopher Lee, who appears to be having the time of his career) seems to be in on a joke that no one bothers to tell Sergeant Howie. Certainly he is concerned, he tells Howie; certainly he will help in any way he can---but only moments before, riding up to the brooding battlements of Summerisle's estate, Howie saw a circle of women, naked and lost in ecstatic abandon, dancing and chanting about a fire.
Director Hardy has cobbled together a spellbinder of a film, technically crude (at one point it seemed I was watching outtakes from Woodstock), superficially innocent, but all blood-stained altars and shiny bladed edges beneath the bucolic and charming surface. Edward Woodward was the ideal choice to play Sergeant Howie, a stern, stoic, disapproving Anglican who---much like Summerisle itself---is a man tortured by the undercurrents of desperate wanting beneath his shiny, steely surface. Christopher Lee is equally perfect as Woodward's genteel foil, and to be honest---you've never seen Christopher Lee until you've seen him in "The Wicker Man".
Truly creepy, lushly mysterious, supremely confident, "The Wicker Man" is an account of precisely what happens when two Dogmatic Tribe---both Chosen People, one side represented by an Island, the other by an outgunned Police constable---meet face to face. Eighties glam-New Wave group Frankie Goes to Hollywood once sang "When Two Tribes go to war, One is all that you can Score"---but I don't think that's the case in "The Wicker Man". See for yourself---but doesn't it seem both sides end up getting precisely what they want?
JSG
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