Review of The Wicker Man (1973) by Andy C — 26 Jun 2010

"The Wicker Man", the original english cult classic, is, quite simply, a brilliant film. And is a brilliant film not because it is an amazing work of art (it isn't), or because its director (Robin Hardy, in his first and almost only film), is a master director (he isn't), but because its screenplay is very powerful on the way it is structured, because the director knew just exactly how to conduct the audience through the film, and because, despite its theme, it has a very peculiar black humour which is very appealing.

A lot of the english style of humour and filmmaking is here, as are major influences from the 60s sexual revolution. But the package goes beyond that, to a, one might almost say, pathetically brilliant study of mass worshipping.

The movie opens with two typical, God fearing, english cops, with the usual characteristics and great accents. At the police station they receive an anonymous letter saying that a child is missing in an island.

This scotish island is very peculiar, isolated, and no-one really knows what goes on there. One cop, the hero of this story, played by Edward Woodward in a brilliant so-british performance, goes to the island alone.

He meets the quaint and particular characters, from the leader of the island, a masterful Christopher Lee, to the inn-keepers daughter, played by beautiful Britt Ekland. At first every-one says that they do not know the missing girl, that there never was such a person.

But Woodward finds her grave and her school records and so he sets to find her and discover exactly what goes on in the island. He stands alone, in a place he cannot escape from, against an entire village.

He starts to see that they are pagan worshippers, that they repel God and Christ and worships gods of sex and pleasure. He starts to think that they killed or are going to kill the girl as a sacrifice.

As he uncovers the plots and gets closer to the secret, so it is revealed to the audience the extent of this free-love-pagan-worshipping-cult, until the surprising and powerful climax, which is at the same time pathetic and brilliant, mesmerizing and unbelievable.

From Lee who treats every strange thing that happens as matter of fact, to Ekland and her sexy naked dances (she was pregnant so her breasts were huge, and the shots cleverly disguise her belly), to the townsfolk so brilliantly naive and deceitful, to Woodwards almost paranoid cop but always with the british and christian integrity, the movie has a great set of, more than just actors, characters.

And the ending will appeal to most, and without spoiling it, let me just say, it is not a save the day good ending. It may be predictable with the course of the movie, but it is fascinatingly brilliant nonetheless.

A daring and great movie about beliefs and mass hysteria, as is cleverly shown by the last shots, which 10 years before no-one would even dare think of making. After seing this, Cubby Brocolli hired Lee and Ekland for his next James Bond: "The Man with the Golden Gun".

And what is really the Wicker Man? Well, you have to see the last scene to know that! The movie was remade in 2006 with Nicholas Cage and is being retold by Hardy himself in "The Wicker Tree", a movie currently in production.