THE WITCH (2016)
What makes a film good? Or is good the right word? I haven’t a clue, that’s why I’m writing this. But also I think I do know because I’m very opinionated and stubborn and that’s also why I’m writing this.
‘The Witch’ (or ‘The VVitch’ if you want to be pedantic (or ‘The VVitch: A New England Folktale’ if you want to be pedantic and correct)) is the hot new film that has everyone all excited. Everyone finds it weird in a creepy and effective way except for general audiences who find it weird in a dumb and doesn’t make sense way. When I saw it my audience laughed through most of it causing a guy to stand up and start shouting at them that they ruined the movie. There’s a lot of stories like this, general audiences just don’t seem to be going for it. A lot of film fans on twitter were getting mad about this and complaining that general audiences were dumb and only liked horror films that had gore and jump scares. Maybe that’s true but I think a lot of people just didn’t connect to it and it think it comes down to how much you connect to a movie based on ascetics and craft or based on the story and theme.
The story is about a puritan family in the 17th century who are driven out for being *too puritan* and set up house in a shack beside a creepy forest. A witch steals and kills their baby and then everything goes to shit for them. The thing that everyone’s talking about is that the writer/director Robert Eggars spent 5 years researching the era and the attitudes and superstitions about witches. The dialogue is based on actual transcripts from the day and there’s lots great work with the details. The guy used to be a production designer and it looks as great as you’d expect a movie by a former production designer to be. It’s seriously gorgeous, plus it does the shooting on location with natural light thing that the revenant got praised for. I guess the cast didn’t spend enough time rolling around on the ground and eating raw meat because if they did they could have won oscars! Seriously thought the cast are all fantastic, even the kids and the animals give great performances. Everything about the craft of the filmmaking is fantastic, everyone did an amazing job. So it’s a great movie then? Welllll I dunno. And the question that it comes down to for me is ‘why?’. Why make this movie and why now? Why spend 5 years doing this?
I’m going to put this out there first that I have issues with movies about witches. I think it’s really weird that in the past a bunch of women were flat out murdered and burned alive for no good reason and now we make movies about ‘what if the murderers were right and the women deserved it though?’. So I’m automatically going to have a problem with a movie like this. But even ignoring that, what does this add to the canon of witch movies? It seems like all it really adds is period detail and it’s more graphic. Instead of blowing powder and rubbing leaves together and whatever the fuck witches do in movies, now they mash up babies and cover themselves in blood. There’s some stuff about the paranoia tearing the family apart but it’s kinda understandable considering it takes place in a world where witches are actually real. Plus it does that thing of making a girl getting supernatural powers as a metaphor for sex and going through puberty which is getting kinda overdone at this stage and anyway it’s kinda weird for a guy to be using that metaphor.
But also how accurate is the movie really? If it’s about a family that gets kicked out the community for being too puritanical how much is it really reflecting the times? If this is based on the real paranoia that existed back then then why not base it on a regular family. Plus as I’ve said it’s not really about paranoia if the witches are real in this world.
It honestly bothers me the way people talk about people who don’t like this movie. There’s this idea that people don’t like it because they’re dumb or uncultured or don’t like to be challenged or whatever. And if I’m being honest I kinda think this movie is a bit dumb (dumb is too strong a word but I wouldn’t call it smart). And this is the thing that really sucks about trying to talk about movies, people still link taste to intelligence/maturity and think that arty movies are for smart people, blockbusters are for the brainless masses, superheroes are for kids etc. If someone likes a movie and you criticise it what people hear is either “I’m smarter than you” or “you’re not as smart as you think you are”. And I struggle with this myself, especially when it comes to movies like this. I genuinely don’t think this movie is really saying anything interesting or at the very least saying something that hasn’t been said a bunch of times before.
But it says it well. The movie isn’t good if you strip away the ascetics and all the period detail but you could easily say any movie is bad once you strip away the good stuff. This is where the divide is coming down to. Do you respond to it as a piece of filmmaking (in which case it’s great) or as a piece of art with an artistic statement behind it (in which case it’s not great). I clearly go for the latter, I had the same problems with Whiplash and people think I’m crazy for it. Maybe this is being a witch was like.
