“The Wicker Man” is a British cult classic from the 1970s, a low-budget existential horror movie that takes place entirely in broad daylight, frequently with singing and dancing. It is very rare to watch a movie that you have never seen before, nor will ever see again, but this is one of those films. I admire it deeply for its craft, originality, and boldness, and I think it is a complete success. As a Christian, I connected with the moral of the story intensely, and took a great deal away from it. I’m not sure I’ll ever want to watch it again.
The plot centers around a Scottish police officer named Sergeant Neil Howie who is visiting a secluded island in search of a missing girl. The locals are quaint, ordinary looking people, but their behavior is immediately off-putting. At first they appear simply uninhibited, but soon it becomes clear that this tiny society is operating on completely individual moral standards, most of which originate in pagan culture and are extremely sexually explicit. Sergeant Howie, a devout Christian, is horrified, and immediately suspects something far more sinister and violent beneath the town’s affable exterior. He is more correct than he knows.
I don’t think this movie was intended to be a Christian morality play, but that’s how it works out in my opinion. Howie is not the ideal follower of Christ, he’s immediately scornful of any religion other than his long before he has reason to suspect the townspeople are dangerous, but nonetheless his faith is a way to channel and control his behavior, and we immediately sense that the residents of Summerisle lack this. They are rich in culture and tradition, but underneath their happy exterior they are vile and dangerous. They consider themselves highly enlightened because they let go of restraint and embrace their carnal instincts, but the script exposes a dark undercurrent that necessarily comes with such an attitude. I think “The Wicker Man” is trying to tell us that human beings have very base instincts wired into us, and that if you let one of them go to excess, the others come along too.
For a Christian, these themes hit home, because our faith has always warned that sexual indulgence is volatile and corrosive. The reason this movie is so frightening, even though the vast majority of it takes place in daytime and focuses on happy, smiling people, is we sense the ominous riptide underneath the calm surface. The residents of Summerisle grin and wave, but they have become monsters. (SPOILER) In the final scene, as Sergeant Howie perishes in a fiery ritual designed to offer him as a sacrifice to the sun god, much of the town gathers around and sings merrily. They reminded me of the monsters in Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” but far worse. These people had no solar rays or contagion to blame for their brainless, violent natures; they had simply chosen to be that way.
Little scenes linger in my mind still. I remember our shocked protagonist, wandering into an elementary school classroom and finding the teacher calmly telling her students about the wonders and pleasures of phallic symbols. I also think about the titular wicker man, a gigantic wooden statue erected on a picturesque Scottish cliffside so that Sergeant Howie could be placed in its chest and burned alive. It is a menacing thing to behold, standing several stories high (I think) and possessing the basic features of a man, sans a face. I later learned that the art department had tried many different designs for the face, then decided that the most ominous thing they could do was to give the viewer a blank slate and let them project onto it. I’m not sure what my mind put on the wicker man, but I didn’t like it.
Of course, a different audience might look at this film as an indictment of religion’s potential for evil. After all, our hero is murdered in a fertility ritual, and the townsfolk profess a deep spirituality which is directly responsible for every evil thing they do. This too is an accurate interpretation, which is probably why “The Wicker Man” is a great film: you don’t have to see it one way. Another reason this movie may be a classic is the fairness of its condemnations: it berates sexual excess but not sexuality, brainless ritual but not religion.
“The Wicker Man” is notable for another reason: the sheer guts it took to make it. Like a Coen Brothers film, only years ahead of them, this movie is unafraid to venture into the weird and absurd, because that’s where the story wants to go. Most filmmakers would shy away from prolonged musical numbers (yes, you read right), and maybe that’s normally smart, but these guys stayed the course. No doubt many casual viewers will turn off their televisions when the first song kicks in (it’s not a “musical” technically, these people just all know the same folk songs and they sing together), deciding that the shark has officially been jumped, but I think a great victory was won by keeping these scenes in. As we watch groups of children, old men, or young women sing together, the illusion of a real place, with real people who all grew up together, is rendered with great effect. I kept having to remind myself that Summerisle is not real, and that is a serious accomplishment.
Nonetheless, I’m not sure I’m ever going to watch this movie again, nor would I be willing to show it to anyone under 18. It contains little violence or profanity, and nudity only shocking to someone who has never been in an art class, but the psychological depths it plumbs are horrifying. It is proof, yet again, that the absence of shock tactics and gore is always beneficial. I appreciate the moral and technical character of “The Wicker Man,” and I’d gladly recommend it, but it’s maybe just a little too good at upsetting me, so I’m not sure I’d ever sit through it again.
0 Responses to “Discussion: “The Wicker Man””