Although "The Wicker Man" is sometimes classified as a horror film, it starts off like a standard police detective drama. Neil Howie, a sergeant with the West Highland Constabulary, arrives on Summerisle, a small Hebridean island, to investigate the case of a young girl named Rowan Morrison who has been reported as missing. To his surprise, however, the local people prove to be unhelpful to him in his search, either evading his questions or deliberately misleading him. An even greater surprise to Howie is the discovery he makes about the religious beliefs of the locals. They have abandoned Christianity and, encouraged by Lord Summerisle, the local laird, adopted a form of paganism. Howie starts to suspect that Rowan may have been murdered as a sacrifice to the island's pagan gods.
The film raises some interesting philosophical issues about the nature of religious belief. Howie is a devout Christian, and is shocked by the paganism of the islanders. He is shocked partly by their open attitude to sex which conflicts with his own puritanical views, but mostly by their callousness about human life. Although the film was made in the hippy era of the early seventies, with its growing interest in alternative forms of religion, it is not a celebration of paganism. The faith of the islanders is not a benign nature-worship but rather a cruel, superstitious, mechanistic fertility cult, devoid of any genuine spirituality.
The view one takes of the religious issues raised by the film will probably depend upon one's own religious views and also upon how one sees the ambiguous character of Howie. On the one hand he comes across as deeply unsympathetic- narrow-minded, dogmatic and priggish. On the other, he is the only representative we see not only of law and order but also of decency and morality. He may be a prig, but he is also the only character in the film who objects to human sacrifice on moral grounds. It seems to me that two quite different interpretations of the film are possible. On the one hand, it could be seen as a humanist critique of religion. On this reading, Howie's Christianity could be seen as merely a watered-down variety of the islanders' fierce paganism, more socially respectable but no more rational. When Howie challenges him about his beliefs, Lord Summerisle retorts with some sharp comments about the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth.
On the other hand, it would be possible to see this as a Christian film, an exemplification of Chesterton's dictum that when men cease to believe in God, they will not believe in nothing, they will believe in anything. Summerisle and his followers do not merely reject Christianity, they also reject the entire rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment. They believe that human sacrifice will ensure the success of their harvests and that illnesses can be cured by placing a toad in the sufferer's mouth. Howie stands not only for orthodox theology but also for orthodox science. Religion and science are sometimes portrayed as being in conflict, but it can also be argued that science has had a beneficent effect upon religion; by removing material affairs such as the cure of the sick and the fertility of the soil from the hands of priests and shamans and entrusting them to doctors and agronomists, it has freed contemporary Christianity from these concerns and enabled it to concentrate more on spiritual matters.
I normally like films that tackle weighty themes and ask difficult questions without necessarily providing easy answers, so I am disappointed that I did not like "The Wicker Man" more. It seems unfortunate that so many versions exist; I have seen two on British television, both different from one another and neither the full director's cut. I will therefore reserve my comments on the direction until I have seen the definitive version, but neither of the versions I have seen flowed easily. The famous ending is genuinely shocking (as Goya said, the sleep of reason produces monsters), but what leads up to it does not always tell the story with any fluency.
The acting was too often wooden and lifeless. In the case of Edward Woodward as Howie this was presumably deliberate, as his character is supposed to be a stiff, formal individual who finds it difficult to show emotion, but none of the other characters seemed any more animated. Christopher Lee as Summerisle had too much of the urbane British gentleman about him and not enough of the religious fanatic. The worst contribution came from Britt Ekland, who wandered through the film as though she did not know what she was doing in it. Come to that, I wasn't sure what she was doing, either. A body double was used for her dance scene, her singing voice was dubbed and (according to some accounts) her speaking voice was too, apparently because she could not manage a convincing Scottish accent. She was presumably only hired because the film-makers thought that to have a glamorous international star in the cast-list would be good for the takings at the box-office.
Despite these weaknesses, the film is often thought-provoking, and there is enough of interest to make it worth watching. 6/10
The film raises some interesting philosophical issues about the nature of religious belief. Howie is a devout Christian, and is shocked by the paganism of the islanders. He is shocked partly by their open attitude to sex which conflicts with his own puritanical views, but mostly by their callousness about human life. Although the film was made in the hippy era of the early seventies, with its growing interest in alternative forms of religion, it is not a celebration of paganism. The faith of the islanders is not a benign nature-worship but rather a cruel, superstitious, mechanistic fertility cult, devoid of any genuine spirituality.
The view one takes of the religious issues raised by the film will probably depend upon one's own religious views and also upon how one sees the ambiguous character of Howie. On the one hand he comes across as deeply unsympathetic- narrow-minded, dogmatic and priggish. On the other, he is the only representative we see not only of law and order but also of decency and morality. He may be a prig, but he is also the only character in the film who objects to human sacrifice on moral grounds. It seems to me that two quite different interpretations of the film are possible. On the one hand, it could be seen as a humanist critique of religion. On this reading, Howie's Christianity could be seen as merely a watered-down variety of the islanders' fierce paganism, more socially respectable but no more rational. When Howie challenges him about his beliefs, Lord Summerisle retorts with some sharp comments about the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth.
On the other hand, it would be possible to see this as a Christian film, an exemplification of Chesterton's dictum that when men cease to believe in God, they will not believe in nothing, they will believe in anything. Summerisle and his followers do not merely reject Christianity, they also reject the entire rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment. They believe that human sacrifice will ensure the success of their harvests and that illnesses can be cured by placing a toad in the sufferer's mouth. Howie stands not only for orthodox theology but also for orthodox science. Religion and science are sometimes portrayed as being in conflict, but it can also be argued that science has had a beneficent effect upon religion; by removing material affairs such as the cure of the sick and the fertility of the soil from the hands of priests and shamans and entrusting them to doctors and agronomists, it has freed contemporary Christianity from these concerns and enabled it to concentrate more on spiritual matters.
I normally like films that tackle weighty themes and ask difficult questions without necessarily providing easy answers, so I am disappointed that I did not like "The Wicker Man" more. It seems unfortunate that so many versions exist; I have seen two on British television, both different from one another and neither the full director's cut. I will therefore reserve my comments on the direction until I have seen the definitive version, but neither of the versions I have seen flowed easily. The famous ending is genuinely shocking (as Goya said, the sleep of reason produces monsters), but what leads up to it does not always tell the story with any fluency.
The acting was too often wooden and lifeless. In the case of Edward Woodward as Howie this was presumably deliberate, as his character is supposed to be a stiff, formal individual who finds it difficult to show emotion, but none of the other characters seemed any more animated. Christopher Lee as Summerisle had too much of the urbane British gentleman about him and not enough of the religious fanatic. The worst contribution came from Britt Ekland, who wandered through the film as though she did not know what she was doing in it. Come to that, I wasn't sure what she was doing, either. A body double was used for her dance scene, her singing voice was dubbed and (according to some accounts) her speaking voice was too, apparently because she could not manage a convincing Scottish accent. She was presumably only hired because the film-makers thought that to have a glamorous international star in the cast-list would be good for the takings at the box-office.
Despite these weaknesses, the film is often thought-provoking, and there is enough of interest to make it worth watching. 6/10