Alex Epstein's new novel
about Morgan le Fay...
... magic, legends,
history, myth,
and more.
The Circle Cast website
Email Alex
Wiccan Links
Starhawk
Eclectic wicca at its most inventive.
Gerald Gardner
Q. How many Gardnerian witches does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. That's a secret.
Margot Adler
Author of the influential survey of contemporary Wicca Drawing Down the Moon.
Historical Links
Butser Ancient Farm
Peter Reynolds runs a recreated Celtic farm, with ancient styles of sheep. The Irish in The Circle Cast would have lived more or less like this..
Ireland in 400 AD
About the time of The Circle Cast.
South Cadbury Castle
A Dark Ages hillfort believed to be the original Camelot.
Camlann
The final battle. A short story.
Camlann Eve
I perpetrated a one-night
live-action
role-playing game set in King Arthur's tent on the eve of the battle of Camlann. It was fun. It was a bit geeky. Who will win the battle?
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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
I saw THE WICKER TREE at the Montreal Fantasia Festival last night. I was disappointed.
/* SPOILERS */
Years ago, I saw THE WICKER MAN (1973). It's a cult classic because it does a very clever thing: it makes you root against the hero. A police detective goes to Summer Isle to investigate a missing girl. What he finds there upsets his priggish Anglican prudery. Summerisle seems to be a place of loose morals. Couples rut in the bushes. Everyone drinks and sings. No one goes to church. It's as if hippies ran the town like one big summer camp.
What Summerisle is, of course, is pagan. And as the cop runs around interfering and meddling, Summerisle is working its way towards one of the great pagan holidays. The cop realizes too late that the locals are into human sacrifice, and he's it. But by the time he's in the giant wicker man and they're lighting up the torches, we pretty much hate him, and love the locals.
It's one of the peculiarities of the big and small screens that we can love murderers if they are adorable enough, and dislike professional heroes if they are annoying enough.
(Your mileage may vary. Lisa was horrified by the ending. Either way the movie works.)
Along comes THE WICKER TREE, 38 years later. This one, director Robin Hardy also wrote. (Anthony Schaffer wrote the original.) Unfortunately, while it's beautifully directed, structurally it's a mess. Some directors should not write.
Essentially, it's a reworking of the same idea. But this time, instead of an obnoxious police detective, the protagonists are two American evangelicals from Texas, a pixiesh Christian Country Music singer with the voice of an angel, and her cowboy boyfriend. They are out of their depth from the moment they come to Scotland to proselytize. But even when confronted with out-of-the-broom-closet pagans, they roll with the punches. She agrees to be the May Queen, even though she's been told May Day is a pagan holiday. He agrees to be the "Laddie."
In other words, they're likable and fairly non-judgmental, for all their loudly, repeatedly professed love for Jesus. So the villagers and their bald-shaven goatee'd landowner wind up having to be cartoonishly evil.
Ah, damn. I'll have to look elsewhere for my pagan kicks.Labels: watching movies
1 Comments:
I read The Wicker Tree for Scottish Screen [before that film agency got swallowed into Creative Scotland]. The script - then called Cowboys for Christ, I think - was all over the place. My recommendation: pass!
