Sep. 06, 2006 - Issue #568: Sex in the City
New Wicker Man wooden compared to its predecessor
Scripted by Anthony Shaffer (Frenzy), the film follows a mainland officer’s investigation into a missing child case on a remote, private Scottish island inhabited by a small pagan agricultural community still devoted to practicing pre-Christian rituals of fertility and procreation.
Shaffer’s most fruitful contrivance, while reading as very much of its time, arises from his making Sargeant Howie (Edward Woodward, later star of TV’s The Equalizer) a pushy, uptight virgin and strictly observant Christian trapped amongst the isolationist hippies, setting up an ideological conflict blissfully free of any moralizing on the part of the filmmakers.
From the moment Howie arrives on Summersilse he’s given a disconcerting series of cold shoulders and come-hither winks, the residents inexplicably denying knowledge of the missing girl’s existence and showing little reverence for Howie’s authority while allowing him inviting glimpses of their free-lovin’ ways.
Howie encounters folk singing, frog sucking, frank sex education sing-alongs in the school yard, nocturnal outdoor orgies and, in the room right next to his at the inn, a handsome young lass trying to lure him to her bed with naked slap dancing and a song. Howie just cowers helplessly in his jammies, although it’s uncertain whether in response to an internal battle with his libido or the sudden discovery that The Wicker Man isn’t just a horror film, but a musical!
As Howie eventually earns an audience with the prevailing Lord Summersisle (a marvellously composed Christopher Lee) and the pieces of the puzzle begin revealing increasingly disturbing forms, the animal suits are dragged out of the closets and things get even weirder, if you can imagine. That the film sustains its energy and creepiness as well as it does through such wild gambles in tone and style is a tremendous accomplishment, though I’m not sure how much can be credited to director Robin Hardy, who handles both the nudity and music very awkwardly and exhibits a generally inconsistent sense of style. Given that its predecessor is a great movie helmed by a not so great director, there was sound reason to hope that the new Wicker Man, directed and freshly adapted by Neil LaBute, might hold some promise. Add to this the fact that LaBute’s a Mormon and thus someone who should know a thing or two about tensions between mainstream and fringe religion, the new Wicker Man seemed set to be at the very least a curious reimagining. Unfortunately, the result is a movie that’s perplexingly bland and at times seems almost wilfully inept.
Shifting the setting over to a like island near Puget Sound, LaBute’s version groans to life with a leaden opening backstory that adds nothing to the atmosphere or narrative cohesion nor makes a lick of sense. By the time California highway patrolman Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) finally arrives on this New World Summersilse, disappointment mounts as we realize that LaBute’s axed the hero’s virginity (not that the dour Malus seems to be getting any) as well as the fevered sex and opted instead for a colony of bitchy, twin-spawning, ruddy-faced, mead-swilling, Matriarchal bee keepers led by a silver-maned She-Devil (Ellen Burstyn) who lives in a cottage with pristine interiors designed to the max. I wish it was half as fun as that description makes it sound.
Malus isn’t led to Summersisle on official police business, but rather because the missing girl this time round turns out to be the daughter Malus never knew he had, the product of premarital relations some years back with one Sister Willow (Kate Beahan), an islander who dumped Malus at the altar and now seems either mentally ill or perpetually on drugs (either hypothesis might explain why Beahan’s enormous dark orbs seem always on the verge of tears). The idea is that Malus should have more at stake, though LaBute’s written him as even more impolitic and brutish than Howie was.
While the new Wicker Man keeps the original’s horrific finale basically in tact, its edge is dulled considerably by an endless build-up, way too many explanations and a needless, stupid denouement. Like the rest of us, Cage seems dumbfounded by what the hell is supposed to be going on in this movie, and provides what’s either the worst dramatic or best comedic performance of his career, beating up women with cop kung fu, making disrespectful—but very funny!—jokes and hysterically flipping out in his attempt to wrestle with this weird, utterly uneven expression of LaBute’s obvious disinterest in the horror genre and rampant misogyny. V
Opens Fri, Sep 8
The Wicker Man
Written & directed by Neil LaBute
Starring Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn,
Kate Beahan
Now on DVD
The Wicker Man
Directed by Robin Hardy
Written by Anthony Shaffer
Starring Edward Woodward,
Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland
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