After a gap of weeks I went to a cinema theatre twice this week for a showing of the Wicker Man at 21.10 Cineworld Bolden Tuesday October 8th 2013, cost £4.05 booked on line, followed by the following morning at 12.10 the showing of Blue Jasmine using one of the remaining Cineworld Vouchers obtained via my credit card, remaining as I appear to have lost, hopefully misplaced , the two special vouchers issued by Bolden because of problems previously experienced plus a couple of additional voucher via the Credit card. This continues to bug as the concerns is that i may have attached to one of the London visit Albums or a Development album. Having not found my photo card Driving licence which I am sure I left at home when not taking the car on a London trip during which I saw a film about Renoir present mood is one fo frustration.
I was disappointed by the special large screening of the Wicker man which I have viewed on TV as well as acquiring the DVD. The films is advertised is the Final Cut to mark its 40th anniversary and of the score of folk at Bolden I reckon I was the only one of an age to have attended the original screening release. I had expected a sharper picture given the boast of a restoration but it was far from HD quality.
The Wicker Man has become classic for two reasons. The traditional reason for why it has become a cult stems from portrayal of a heathen culture in which children are given and involved with the facts of life openly and frankly, participating in May day ceremonies dancing around the phallic Maypole or skipping naked over a flame to symbolise regeneration. There are flashing images of adult public couplings in the dark, a mother with her child at a breast in the former churchyard and rear view of a naked Brit Elkland’s body double pounding at a door invited the film’s, fundamentalist Christian hero police Sergeant played by Edward Woodward.
Christopher Lee plays the Lord of the Summer Isle in charge of the adult debauchery and the education and cultural system which abounds on his Scottish island community famed for his fresh fruit, apple trees, in particular, and vegetables, created from hard strains in this Gulf Stream paradise.
The original film was censored whereas to day and over this week there has been vivid sexual couplings on main stream TV albeit as part fo a scientific tested and observed experiments to understand the physiology of he subject and just as vivid public couplings between drunk 20 to 30 years olds in and around a swimming pool in the middle of the afternoon for which the participants paid under £10 for three hours of free drinking while watched in a mixture of wonder and curiosity by the parents and their children who had booked into the Bulgarian resort Hotel believing it was family centred in town noted for its buildings and culture as declared by its straight faced mayor who suggested the intrepid young female reporter was exaggerating and being insulting despite the documented visual evidence This perhaps explains why this branded as a horror film’s late night showing was so poorly attend by those who clamour for gory horror at weekends in CGI 3D and other forms of explicitness.
The less publicised aspect of the film is that it shows how an entire community of sane closely knit human beings covering all generations can unite to undertake the horrific murder of another human being in order to appease and please their form of deities, in this instance of the sea with barrels of beer before the God of the harvest.
Edward Woodward as the hero is trapped, lured to the island with the accusation of a missing school child because he represents incorruptible officialdom, a devout Christian of the Kirk who while engaged does not agree with sex before marriage and who says his prayers at night before going to bed and sleep. Everything appears to be done to stop him meeting his destiny, refusing to allow him on the Island without permission, insisting there is no such child and then pretending she has died, been skinned with remains someone where, and then to exist as some prisoner to be sacrifice in the hope of changing the island’s fortune after the crops failed, as the strain failed from growing in an unnatural clime.
Christopher admits from the outset that the religion of the islands is hocus pocus to get the whole community working for the general good and later that when the sacrifice does now work, he will be expected to volunteer himself as the next victim. He also placates his victim by offering the rare experience at the time of Christian Martyrdom, although history tells us otherwise and the victim understandably terrified at the prospect of being burnt alive with a host of animals finds the strength to accept his fate in the knowledge of his faith.
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