Snicker man

Noel Vera

It's difficult to understand why anyone thought a remake of "The
Wicker Man"--the classic thriller about a police officer who lands
on a far island in search of a missing child--would be a good idea:
the film has a single plot twist that, once revealed, was basically
it for the audience; the only thing left to do afterwards was pick
up your coat and things and look for the exit. Audiences who went to
see the 1973 production would know what I'm talking about; those who
haven't are advised not to bother with this sorry remake.

Actually, the twist ending isn't the be-all and end-all of the film
(if it was, it wouldn't have developed such a strong reputation),
but it does provide a visually satisfying climax that tops off what
amounts to seventy minutes of carefully calibrated and subtly
prepared buildup--the kind of all-embracing atmosphere of dread and
tension and unseen evil that hardcore fans treasure far more than
the easy scares found in horror movie nowadays.

It's easy to compare original and remake and see what's wrong with
the latter: just on the casting alone, Edward Woodward is a far more
formidable-looking figure than the wide-eyed, slack-jawed Nicholas
Cage (giving Cage's character a recent tragedy to recover from
doesn't help his macho creds any), and seeing Woodward's stony
facade slowly crack under the strain is a far more unsettling sight
than seeing the already neurotic-looking Cage grow even more
hysterical than usual. Plus there was this Puritan subtext to
Woodward ("We are a deeply religious people." "Religious? With
ruined churches, no ministers, no priests--and children dancing
naked!") that provided intriguing contrast to the island's hedonism
(Was he letting his sexual prejudices run away from him?). LaBute
with the help of Paul Sarossy has the whole place handsomely
designed and beautifully photographed--House and Garden meets
Romanworld--but Harry Waxman shot the original with all the gritty
realism of a travelogue documentary, as something exotic and strange
that you could nevertheless believe (if you allowed yourself to) may
be actually happening in some remote corner of the globe. LaBute's
screenplay is workmanlike and largely undistinguished, compared to
the sinister tone and barbed wit of Anthony Shafer's original script
("Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent." "A small
child is even better, but not nearly as effective as the right kind
of adult." "And what of the true god, whose glory, churches and
monasteries have been built on these islands for generations past?
Now sir, what of him?" "He's dead. Can't complain, had his chance
and in modern parlance, blew it.")

LaBute does play one fairly daring card: he recasts the mysterious
society as a matriarchy--where the men are mute and subservient and
the women beautiful, mostly blonde, and treacherous--drawing plenty
of parallels with (and images from) bees and beehives. This plays
into LaBute's strength as a provocateur (some would say outright
misogynist) in the field of sexual politics, but the culture is only
sketchily realized; one wants to know what the men feel about it,
how this all came about, why would the women need such an elaborate,
far-flung plan for--well, for what they plan to do. Not an absolute
requirement, of course, but what with a miscast lead and LaBute's
pointed lack of skill in creating anything even moderately
suspenseful, much less terrifying, there's really nothing else this
picture can be about. A hundred minutes of LaBute lecturing on the
details of his paranoid vision of a female-dominated hive culture--
with digressions on how it developed, and why it would be a bad
thing--would be far more interesting than this feeble attempt at
scaring us.

That all said, I can see this becoming some kind of camp classic a
few years down the road--a male chauvinist pig's take on a cult
favorite. Leelee Sobieski and company make an attractive set of
cultists, blond tresses, pert breasts and all, and Ellen Burstyn
(complete with "Braveheart"-style makeup in Toilet Duck Blue) never
looked handsomer, more confident, or more serenely and confidently
out of her mind. I wish they actually did something with James
Franco (who seems to want to say something but never gets a chance).
I would have liked a word or two about bees (something both dull and
deadpan comic, like "bees are female, except for the drones,"
or "bees are the first creatures ever to manufacture processed
food"), and I would love to learn more about the women's sexual
mores (so few men amongst so many lovely women must lead to some
pretty kinky fare--or some pretty strange problems). On occasion
(far too few, alas) LaBute cuts loose and gives us something
memorably irrational: a quick glimpse of a woman bearded by a swarm
of bees, say, or Burstyn in her queen-sized bed, arrayed in queenly
splendor and attended by her maidservants. Cage, who can't be relied
on to look even halfway menacing, can be relied on to flounder
eloquently when given a nonsensical character to play: I'm sure the
scene where he levels his gun at a woman on a bike and declares, in
his strongest attempt yet at a bold and authoritative voice: "Lady,
step AWAY from the bicycle!"--that scene will be parodied for years
to come (if not, it should be).

So is there a lesson to be learned from all this? Should be, but
Hollywood hasn't been paying attention for years. More relevant in
my mind is the question of what to do with a disaster that hasn't
set itself up to be one (like "Snakes on a Plane" did, to middling
success): hold midnight shows maybe, with members of the audience
bringing jars of honey to slather on the screen and each other? The
possibilities are endless.

(First published on Businessworld 09/08/06)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)