WICKER. It should come as no surprise that I am not easily charmed by fables, magical realism, period dramas, romance — charming things, really. I could defend my proclivities with the notion that there is already such a great bulk of the stuff, and so much of it tepidly imagined and ineptly rendered, that the whole whimsical macro-genre has become tainted and I, inured to it. But of course, that is only part of the truth. I am probably just a callous old child, growing ever more distant from the lightness and wonder that can and should transport us into created worlds. Really, the suspension of disbelief that allows entry into the costumed realms of a constructed reality is just as critical to the enjoyment of a car chase or a heist or granular examination of corporate espionage as it is a fairy tale. Regardless of how they are presented, these are all fables. Some of them are just dressed up in fashions we prefer.
On its face, Wicker doesn’t emit the sort of light to which I am by my nature drawn. A modern myth, set in a nameless, long ago place where magic, though distrusted, exists and must be accepted, it sort of flies in the face of the tropes and trappings of the thuggish, neoclassical moviemaking that shaped my passion for the art. But it is so clever, so incisive, shot through with biting humor and so well crafted that I could not (cannot) help but be charmed by it.
The Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman), orphaned in adolescence and all but abandoned by her village, toils in solitude, relentlessly mocked for her trade, her loneliness and her very identity, which remains obscure to those who mock her. On a whim, perhaps in desperation, she asks the Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) to build her a husband. And, being a master of his craft, he does. The Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård) emerges as a being of great beauty, compassion and virility. Their ensuing union affirms and enlarges the lives of both husband and wife, casting them as partners in the project of co-existence and, to the distress of the villagers, illuminating the Fisherwoman from within via a bed-shattering sexual awakening. Accustomed as they are to marriage as a transaction in which a woman becomes the possession of a man, the villagers are as distressed by the inversions of their stilted beliefs as by the object of their ridicule discovering fulfillment and fullness of life. And so, as they do, jealousy and covetousness spread like disease, eventually infecting even our blissful newlyweds.
Adapted from Ursula Wills’ short story “The Wicker Husband”by writer/directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (Save Yourselves!,2020), Wicker engages in the type of world-building that had lately been the bailiwick of Shire-based fantasy (no coincidence the seamless visual effects are by Weta Workshop), but it embraces and transcends its bucolic creation with a combination of earnestness and sarcasm that renders it modern, albeit in a timeless mode. Punctuated by acerbic language and frequent comic asides, the movie is simultaneously classical in its carefully crafted aesthetic (with gorgeous cinematography by Lol Crawley, notably of The Brutalist, 2024) and decidedly contemporary in its clear-eyed contempt for the contemptuousness of some of its characters. It indicts their bad behavior but with such a lithe, lyrical touch that it never becomes cynical. Instead, it reinterprets the fundamentals of fairytale-telling, of mythmaking, as tools for forward-thinking, beguilingly insightful and ultimately irresistible invention. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a stellar cast of players to stage the thing. (Alongside the primary cast, Richard E. Grant has a delightful couple of scenes as the inept village doctor, with Elizabeth Debicki as his capable, vicious, unseen-despite-prominence daughter).
In doing what a fable is supposed to do (that is, reflecting our lives in a distorted mirror), Wicker achieves something rare in the world of modern movies. While it looks and feels as though it takes place in a long-ago, faraway world, a place that can exist only in the imagination, it confronts us with modern, timeless notions of identity and self-actualization, of envy and grief and cruelty, all couched in a droll, humane sense of kindness and humor. It’s delicately balanced and were it not so adeptly handled, it could easily drift into silliness or inauthenticity, but it never does. Instead, it achieves its admirable goal of immersing us in its lushness, its magic, while also telling us a relatable, often laugh-out-loud funny story tinged with sadness but also the possibility of hope and happiness. It makes something new out of something decidedly old, and that is truly exciting. R. 105M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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This article appears in Caring for Trans Youth.