director/screenwriter
Neil LaBute
based on
a screenplay by
Anthony
Shaffer
producers
Nicolas Cage
Randall Emmett
Norman Golightly
Avi Lerner
Joanne Sellar
cinematographer
Paul Sarossy
music
Angelo Badalamenti
editor
Joel Plotch
cast
Nicolas Cage (Edward Malus)
Ellen Burstyn (Sister Summersisle)
Kate Beahan (Sister Willow)
Frances Conroy (Dr. Moss)
Molly Parker (Sister Rose/Sister Thorn)
Leelee Sobieski (Sister Honey)
Diane Delano (Sister Beech)
Erika-Shaye Gair (Rowan)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 101m
u.s.
release: 9/1/06
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other neil
labute films
reviewed on this website:
- in
the company of men
- nurse betty
- possession
- the shape of things
- your friends
& neighbors
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I've seen many ill-advised
horror remakes in my time. The Wicker Man may be the worst
ever. It's like a Psycho
remake without the
shower scene; a Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake
without the chainsaw; an Amityville Horror remake
without the house. You get the idea. Writer/director Neil LaBute,
whose bitter social experiments I've supported in the past, has
taken the 1973 British classic -- about a devoutly Christian
cop investigating a disappearance on a devoutly pagan island
-- and removed most of the religion and all of the point. The
story now seems to be about how power corrupts and how a matriarchal
society wouldn't be much kinder and gentler than a patriarchy.
That's debatable, but this tale was never structured to make
that argument.
A lost-looking Nicolas Cage
steps into Edward Woodward's shoes as highway patrolman Edward
Malus, who's having trouble getting over an accident he witnessed
(and had a small hand in causing). This backstory does nothing
for the narrative except to give Cage an excuse to go googly-eyed
whenever he sees a pigtailed blonde girl, which, as the movie
lumbers along, is often. Anyway, Edward receives a note from
ex-girlfriend Willow (Kate Beahan), whose daughter has disappeared
from Summersisle, the remote private island off the West Coast
that Willow grew up on and eventually returned to. Edward swings
into action, arriving on the island only to be greeted by a sea
of uncooperative female faces. Summersisle, you see, is a matriarchy,
though there are pitiful-looking men straggling about too, relegated
to scutwork and breeding.
The original Wicker Man
contrasted Edward Woodward's uptight Catholicism with the natives'
freewheeling, sexually open paganism. For a matriarchal remake
to make any sense, Cage's character would have to swagger onto
Summersisle with smug white-male privilege, the way Woodward's
cop brandished his close personal friendship with Jesus. But
Edward Malus isn't written or played that way; he's just a guy,
a decent man, and when he becomes annoyed with the women of Summersisle
it's not out of male disdain but simply because he wants to find
a missing girl and they're giving him the runaround. His disdain
and distrust now seem justified. Needless to say, all the accurate
pagan details the original film so scrupulously planted are absent
here. It's now a vaguely pagan society whose real sin, the movie
seems to say, is that the bitches are in charge.
Ellen Burstyn shows up in full
priestessy efflorescence as Sister Summersisle, the distaff equivalent
of Christopher Lee's Lord Summerisle in the original, but she
isn't given the dialogue to compete with Lee's performance. The
debate about Christianity versus the old gods? Gone. So Burstyn
is left stranded in a role almost as hollow as the titular object.
Sister Summersisle does refer to her ancestors moving to the
island to get away from oppressive patriarchy, but LaBute doesn't
express the irony that the resulting matriarchy is just as oppressive,
nor does the islanders' hostility seem particularly male-directed.
I can't really call this Wicker Man misogynist; if it
is, it's a very flaccid form of it. It's yet another gender power
struggle in the director's portfolio, this time hung onto a story
that doesn't wear it well. The Wicker Man should be about
the conflict of belief systems, not the battle of the sexes.
After a while, as you may have
heard, you do indeed get to see Nicolas Cage running around in
a bear suit, and the movie does recreate the original's much-discussed
ending, though without a tenth of its force and eloquence. (In
the original, Christopher Lee leads his followers in a rousing
rendition of "Sumer Is Icumen In" while Woodward shouts
various Biblical quotations; in the remake, the islanders chant
"The drone must die" while Cage shrieks "Noooo!
Noooo! You bitches!" Which is as good an indication as any
of how far screenwriting has fallen.) The Wicker Man was
always constructed as an atmospheric piece in which a believer
finds himself among other believers, doubts his own beliefs,
and finally ascends to a higher purpose amid a thick subtext
of eroticism and the use of faith as an imposition of the will.
This movie believes in nothing -- except, perhaps, that women
would enslave and torch men if they had the power, so let's not
give them power.
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