Friday, September 01, 2006

The Wicker Man: Evil, Evil, EVILLLLLL

I am quite exercised about this, and anyone who's seen the original version of the film will surely be in accord: whatever do the assorted makers, backers and promoters of the new version of The Wicker Man think they're doing?

Exhibit A:
Early trailer posters for the movie - UK versions - featuring the burning Wicker Man icon and the phrase 'Evil is waiting.' I stirred uncomfortably in my quotidien wandering.

Exhibit B:
Brand new release date adverts: 'Evil has arrived'. Right.

In short: No.
At length: The Wicker Man is an intriguing meditation on the antagonism of beliefs, the conflict of different cultural and spiritual methods and practices and how one man's truth is another's fairy tale, or comparator, if you want a more scientific sounding word, and a word used in the film by the schoolteacher. It reveals an 'ideological abyss', as the wordy post-grads at Metaphilm suggest. It's simply a great movie, one that handles enduring themes and questions with a mixture of amateurishness, enthusiasm, good consideration and a conviction in the absence of answers, merely an acknowledgment of continuum with/without humans. And the soundtrack's great as well.

What it certainly doesn't do is make your mind up for you as to where you should place the acts of the actors on the moral swing-o-meter. Unless the remakers have just abandoned their film and the posters are a caveat, in which case 'Pointless remake' would be a better phrase for the posters than 'Evil'... Wikipedia's entry on the film: The white eyed child on the US poster signifies what exactly? [pick a reading, codified indoctrino-zombie girl, I shudder to think, it's so tedious] Apparently, making the leader of the cult a woman gives the film a 'feminist slant', and look at this nonsense: "Cage's character is not a virgin like the protagonist from the original film, as it was thought that the idea of an adult virgin in modern American society was too farfetched. Instead, Cage's character has an allergy to bees and has to deal with attacks by killer bees." Delicious. 'Evil', for fuck's sake. Neil LaBute probably believes in 'Post-feminism' as well, the film-tampering wanker. Gah, I say, gah!

1 comment:

Matt said...

Add it to the list which includes; The Omen, The Italian Job, Planet of the Apes, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory.
From what I heard: Director John Woo is to re-make Citzen Caine and Mel Gibson is going to try and re-make Teen Wolf...great!