{"id":740,"date":"2011-02-21T16:32:35","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T16:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=740"},"modified":"2014-06-24T18:19:24","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T17:19:24","slug":"740","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=740","title":{"rendered":"TIDELAND\/THE WICKER MAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/a>Sometimes you watch a film and you can’t help wondering what the director was thinking when they made it. A major movie is a huge collaborative effort and the director is the captain of the ship. Everyone looks to them for a sign that they’re all sailing on the right course, that everything is working and that there are no great big icebergs ahead. The director can’t just look confident when things start going wrong, he has to be confident. He has to be convinced that things are going fine and they’ll all soon be safe in harbour with a decent profit and perhaps a nomination or two from the Academy.<\/h3>\n

But, sometimes, underneath it all, their subconscious fears leak out onto the screen. And sometime their subconcsious is absolutely right to be terrified. In writing such moments are sometimes called “a signal from Fred”.<\/p>\n

Signal from Fred:<\/strong> The author’s subconscious, alarmed by the poor quality of the work, makes unwitting critical comments: “This doesn’t make sense.” “This is really boring.” “This sounds like a bad movie.”<\/p>\n

The Turkey City Lexicon<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t believe I had ever seen a more obvious \u201csignal from Fred\u201d as the one planted at the start of Neil LaBute\u2019s The Wicker Man<\/em>. How else can one explain starting this film with a shuddering car crash. I wouldn\u2019t suggest you go and see the film but go and stand in the car park next to any cinema in which it is being shown and I\u2019m pretty sure you\u2019ll be able to hear LaBute\u2019s subconscious screaming to be set free from this shattering disaster. It\u2019s actually rather endearing, by the end, that the car crash repeats so often that event the dullest witted member of the audience (and presumably the cast and crew) must get the point.<\/p>\n

This film is a disaster.<\/p>\n

It is very nearly a textbook example of a \u201csignal from Fred\u201d. I say very nearly only because the very next day I saw an even better and more ludicrous example of the same phenomenon. Terry Gilliam\u2019s Tideland <\/em>ends with a train wreck. <\/em><\/p>\n

Tideland<\/em> is a dull, pretentious and ultimately meaningless film which forces the audience to watch Gilliam torture his central character, Jeliza-Rose (Ferland \u2013 who is excellent). This eight-year-old girl sees the gruesome deaths of both her drug-addicted parents, including a period where she is left alone in a crumbling and isolated house with her decaying father, before she watches her father\u2019s ex-girlfriend (a taxidermist) extract his entrails and stuff him. Jeliza-Rose then becomes involved with a mentally handicapped young man in a relationship that is riddled with unpleasant sexual tension.<\/p>\n

I am not against film-makers taking risks and forcing viewers outside their comfort zone when making films. If there\u2019s a serious point to be made then I\u2019m all for it. And I love much of Gilliam\u2019s earlier work \u2013 Brazil<\/em>, Twelve Monkeys<\/em> and The Fisher King<\/em> rank highly on my list of all-time favourite films.<\/p>\n

However Tideland<\/em> has nothing to say \u2013 except, perhaps, that \u201clife is shit\u201d.<\/p>\n

And if Gilliam\u2019s intention was, simply, to convince the audience of the crappiness of existence then I can think of much better, shorter (at two hours, Tideland<\/em> is unmercifully long) and more effective ways of doing it than this mixed-up film. Personally I\u2019d rather watch Gilliam scream \u201clife sucks\u201d for two hours than sit through Tideland <\/em>again. As Jeliza-Rose wanders through the carnage of the train wreck that is the film\u2019s conclusion it is clear that she has suffered for no purpose other than to allow Gilliam to indulge in some macabre imagery.<\/p>\n

It is true that the film has visually arresting moments \u2013 Gilliam remains a master of images \u2013 but that isn\u2019t enough. The pretty pictures can\u2019t hide the emotional vacuum at the heart of this story nor compensate the audience for the rather seedy sensation that they, like Jeliza-Rose, have just been used to gratify some unpleasant urge that has overtaken the director.<\/p>\n

Still, no matter how bad Tideland\u2019s<\/em> train wreck, it is a Sistine Chapel-like work of genius next to the plodding, fright-free bollocks that is Neil LaBute\u2019s The Wicker Man<\/em>. I am not a particular fan of Robin Hardy\u2019s 1973 British original but it is impossible to watch that film and not recognise the effective way it evokes a mood and builds tension or the basic intelligence at work in the dialogue about faith and religion. All of that is missing in this remake. LaBute couldn\u2019t summon up a sense of dread if his life depended on it and the religious aspect of the story has been stripped away \u2013 no doubt because much of America\u2019s film-going audience have no stomach for anything that challenges their faith.<\/p>\n

The plot sees traffic cop Malus (Cage at his twitching, fidgeting, affected worst) witness a car crash which may, or may not, have killed a young girl and her mother. Damaged by this incident he receives a letter from a long-lost girlfriend who claims that her daughter (and his) has gone missing on the isolated island of Summerisle. Malus goes to investigate, discovering that everyone on the island denies the girl ever existed and that Summerisle is dominated by a strange pagan cult led by women.<\/p>\n

If one was being generous one might argue that LaBute has tried to make a film about the relationship between the sexes, but this element of the story is so crudely handled that the film slips perilously close to misogyny. Women are portrayed as wicked old crones or evil seductresses preying on innocent, noble men. In the original Vincent Lee\u2019s Lord Summersisle is given a plausible philosophy with which to challenge his opponent Christian faith. In the remake Burstyn\u2019s Lady Summersisle is played as a stereotypical comic-book villain with her creepy henchwomen terrorising the downtrodden men. <\/em><\/p>\n

The Wicker Man<\/em> is a very bad film. Attempts at symbolism \u2013 the repeated car crash and a ludicrously overworked bee metaphor \u2013 are embarrassingly crude and essentially empty. The acting borders on the inept and the direction and cinematography are flat. The plot is full of silliness that even Scooby Doo<\/em> writers would be ashamed of (Malus\u2019s tendency to go grave digging\/crypt exploring in the dead of night, for example) and stodgy dialogue.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re determined to see one of these (despite what the director\u2019s subconscious and I are trying to tell you) then, for those with stronger stomachs than mine, Gilliam\u2019s Tideland<\/em> at least offers some reward in terms of the quality of the pictures on screen and a superior cast. The Wicker Man<\/em> has no redeeming features.<\/p>\n

(Originally published in Matrix<\/em> 182, Oct\/Nov 2006)<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you watch a film and you can’t help wondering what the director was thinking when they made it. A major movie is a huge collaborative effort and the director is the captain of the ship. Everyone looks to them for a sign that they’re all sailing on the right course, that everything is working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,8,10],"tags":[51,76,43,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/tideland.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s27AP7-740","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=740"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2646,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions\/2646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}