My Easter Movie: The Wicker Man (1973)

[Editor's Note: My apologies to Deborah Lipp (and you!) Since I forgot to post her review of her favorite Easter movie this weekend. Pretend it's still Easter for us! Here's Deborah to sing that movie's praises. - Nathaniel R]
 

The Wicker Man is one of my favorite movies. There's a lot to be said about it, and I'm not going to say it all here. I'll start with the obvious: Different people perceive this film in very different ways. It's horror, it's a musical, it's kitsch, but it's also, quite blatantly, religious. Despite the fact that it takes place around the Pagan holiday of Beltane (May Day), I am going to argue that it's an Easter movie, dealing with sacrifice and resurrection.

May Morrison (to Sergeant Howie): You'll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice.

The Wicker Man's horror centers on the conflict between two spiritual world views that are alien and opposite to one another. Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) is a pious, not to say priggish, Christian, while the residents of Summerisle are Pagan. (Spoilers aplenty once you proceed.)

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Curio: Film Devotionals

Alexa here.  This Easter/Passover time of year is always replete with biblical references; for me, most are tied to film.  For instance, my main understanding of the significance of Passover is through my repeated childhood viewings of The Ten Commandments.  As one of the heathen mob, I am more likely to light a candle to mourn the loss of Ryan Gosling from the screen than ask saints for intercession. Religious or not, I thought TFE readers would enjoy some curios that aid in the practice of film idolatry, like these devotional candles from this etsy shop.

Who would you light a candle for this year?

More false idols including Tim Burton, Steve Buscemi and The Avengers after the jump... 

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The Lady or The Tiger: Ambiguity and Life of Pi

Michael C. here. I hope everyone has had a chance to see Ang Lee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. I’ve been dying to dive into spoiler territory since the film’s premiere at the New York Film Festival. 

If you haven’t seen the film I recommend you do. Lee has created a visually magnificent fable that transfers the book’s expansive imagination to the screen better than I thought possible. It’s a terrific return to form for Lee following the face plant that was Taking Woodstock. 

But then there’s that nagging problem of that ending. I’ve struggled with it in the book and now I struggle with it in the film. Try as I might, I just can’t get behind it. 

Detailed SPOILERS follow… 

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The Masters of My Eyeballs

I like getting lost at the movies. I live for the moments when you dive into the blue box. Ever since Mulholland Drive, that's what I've called that delirius feeling. That's when a movie with a tractor beam size pull just sucks you in until you're fully immersed in its world. Sometimes it's only for a moment. Sometimes it happens in fits and starts. With masterpieces it can last for the whole running time once you've stopped resisting. In these moments we've left the movie theater behind; the projectionist isn't the only one projecting.

Paul Thomas Anderson movies usually give me just this blue box sensation. I ate at the diner in Hard Eight. I hung out on porn sets and called Julianne mommy while high on coke in Boogie Nights. In There Will Be Blood I fell right in the oil well with Daniel Day-Lewis but only one of us emerged again after that prologue. I even lost myself a time or two in Punch-Drunk Love flights of rage and whimsy. 

 THE MASTER and HOLY MOTORS after the jump

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Oscar Horrors: Margaret White Burns in Hell

Just one more day of Oscar Horrors! On this penultimate day of the series, JA has an incredible take on one of our shared favorites, "Carrie". -Nathaniel

HERE LIES... or rather, HERE BURNS IN HELL... Margaret White, Piper Laurie's Supporting Actress nominated performance in Brian DePalma's 1976 film Carrie.

JA from MNPP here - the only thing more shocking to me than the fact that Piper lost the Oscar for Margaret White is the fact that nobody's covered this performance for this here Oscar Horrors series yet. You could just sit back and quote her lines and be done with it - "I can see you dirty pillows." "Pimples are the Lord's way of chastising you." "I liked it. I liked it!" What a grand time it'd be! It would be like any given evening in my house, really. But give me an excuse to watch Carrie for the 50th time, and I will bite.

Piper lost the Oscar to Beatrice Straight's very brief role in Network; I won't diss Straight because I like her and I like that performance (and I like her a few years later in Poltergiest even more)... but come on. 

Rewatching the film today I was reminded what a note-perfect line Laurie walks. Dances, really. In sensible witch shoes. Her Margaret White should be what you see when you look up "Jesus Freak" in the dictionary.

But while she's often criticized for being over the top (and it's not as if director Brian DePalma backs off that angle -- when Carrie tells her mother she's going to the prom, Piper repeats the word aghast - "Prom?" - which DePalma then gooses with some ever-so-subtle lightning and thunder) what I noticed today is it's Margaret's smallness and fear that reveals themselves between the hysterics, and become disturbingly palpable. She is in a battle with herself, the beleaguered Christian, trying to be all the God Warrior she can be, but her beaten-down daughter, meekness personified (Sissy Spacek giving one of the finest performances ever put on screen, if you ask me), begins to beat her back at every turn and she's entirely befuddled by it. You can sense she's felt this before - when her husband, the one with the stinking roadhouse whiskey on his breath, also driven nuts by her zealousness, up and took off. It must be the Devil! You can see the parts clicking into place in Laurie's performance as her confusion turns into its own sense - this is what she is here for. Calmness washes over her; she has found her life's meaning. And it's a serenity that's terrifying.

And that's the thing with this performance and why it continually rings true to me - in the twenty minutes or so of screen-time that Laurie has, she simultaneously charts not just a broad portrait of religious fervor driven way off the deep end, but the pinpoint center wherein stands a very small very frightened woman, deranged by her own terror of abandonment. Once was enough, twice is too many, and she will drag her daughter straight to Hell before she ever lets go.