The Wicker Man

THE WICKER MAN

(1973)
Considered a cult classic in its native England, The Wicker Man unfolds on an island off the coast of Scotland. Policeman Edward Woodward (later of television's The Equalizer) arrives by seaplane, lured there by a mysterious letter implying a 12-year-old girl has disappeared. But the local townsfolk claim never to have heard of her, and what's worse, neither has her mother.

As Woodward investigates further, he grows to suspect everyone on the island has a screw loose. His notions of what is right and virtuous are constantly offended by the rampant sexuality he encounters everywhere. Not only do the locals at the inn sing bawdy songs, but the innkeeper beams with approval when his daughter (Britt Ekland) joins in the rowdy festivities. The teenage boys at school cavort around a maypole as their teacher sings the glories of abundant procreation. Even more to his horror, Woodward enters a classroom where the teacher (Diane Cilento) lectures her female students that the maypole represents a phallic symbol - the "generative force in nature." (This last scene could have been distasteful, but the manner in which it's presented and the fact the teacher is female succeed in making it humorous instead.)When Woodward asks the class if they've heard of the missing Rowan Morrison, they answer in the negative, yet there's a desk in their midst suspiciously empty. Opening it, Woodward finds the children have tethered a large beetle to an upright nail. "He goes round and round until he winds up tight to the nail," explains one student. Woodward reacts with disgust, but unfortunately misses the allusions to his own situation.

When Woodward visits Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), the patriarch of the island community, he learns the people have reverted to paganism during the past century. Isolated from the rest of the world, they've become completely dependent upon the earth to provide their sustenance. This reversion to a more fundamental and primitive way of life has brought with it the reversion to a more primitive belief system. As Lee states, "God had his chance, and... blew it." Here, writer Anthony Shaffer raises the interesting question of whether a people's religious beliefs are inseparably intertwined with their level of civilization: Christianity being too sophisticated a religion to meet the needs of a society reverted to primitivism. Or, stated another way, could Christianity flourish only after civilization progressed beyond the immediate concerns of its agriculture?

Strange bits of evidence begin to suggest something is terribly wrong. Although the island is famous for its produce, all the fruits and vegetables served to him are from cans. The previous year's harvest photograph is strangely missing from its spot on the wall of the pub. Woodward comes to suspect last year's crops failed miserably, and that the townspeople intend to sacrifice the missing girl during the upcoming May Day festivities to ensure this year's harvest is plentiful.

On the day of the festival, he commandeers a costume and secretly joins a parade through the countryside to the Stonehenge-like site of the celebration. There he spies Rowan Morrison being prepared to be sacrificed. He flees with her, and she leads him through a maze of caves to evade their pursuers. As they emerge into the open, they are on a high cliff, with Lee and his cohorts lying in wait. She has led him into a trap, and he was the intended sacrifice all along. In the final scenes, he's bound and placed inside a large wicker statue of a man, which is then set ablaze. As the statue burns, the island people join hands and cheerfully sing to their pagan god.

Director Robin Hardy devotes considerable attention to the mise-en-scčne, to good effect. Everywhere Woodward travels on the island, the background is filled with flowers, ducks, and blossoming trees, imparting a cheerfulness and sense of abundance which makes the undercurrent of horror ever more creepy. So too, the presence of a lilting Scottish ballad at the film's beginning is disarmingly upbeat in light of the story to follow.

One of the best scenes occurs when Woodward settles down for the night at the inn, and Ekland tempts him with her nubile charms from the adjoining room. As she alluringly sings "come to me - I am waiting for you," she performs an impromptu dance brimming with gyrating sexual energy. The scene is effective because it's rather unexpected and catches the viewer off-guard, and the song is actually quite enticing in itself. In retrospect, the fact Ekland isn't wearing a stitch of clothing probably doesn't hurt matters either.

It might be argued that The Wicker Man is anti-Christian, but I don't believe it has a specific anti-Christian agenda per se. Woodward's character is never portrayed in an unflattering light; his motives are always noble, and never hypocritical. Although he is tempted, he refuses to give in to Ekland's carnal provocations. And even when being put to death, his faith in God never waivers. Part of the pagan ritual is that the character Punch (the disguise Woodward purloins) is "king for a day." It's tempting to interpret this as an allusion to Christ, and of Woodward's sacrificial death as an allusion to the Crucifixion. It might also be noted that every Joan of Arc movie ever made ends with her being burned to death, yet those films are certainly not anti-Christian. In the case of The Wicker Man, we have an upright, innocent person who suddenly finds himself inescapably surrounded by evil. His unfortunate fate, although a downbeat ending, contributes to the overall effect of horror for the film. It's meant to be a shocker.