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<\/a><\/p>\n\nIt’s startling to see a movie where you know, just know, that zero<\/i> compromises have been made. That the director has done exactly<\/i> what he set out to do. It’s startling to see (especially) a film that does not 1. reach for a brass ring in terms of emotion\/effects\/make-a-big-splash or 2. try to be comprehensible\/acceptable\/swallow-able to the widest possible audience. Director Robert Eggers, in his first feature The Witch<\/i> (which he also wrote, based on his research\/obsession into Puritan New England the Salem witch trials\/hysteria), has made a film that is difficult, a film that requires patience, a film that requires a LOT of the viewer. It’s being billed as a horror film. That’s incorrect. It’s a drama. There are moments of pure terror. There’s maybe two “Gotcha” scares. There’s a lot of blood. But the fear is emotional. And that makes it worse. <\/p>\n
Eggers has followed his own artistic vision, no matter how difficult, unyielding, humor-less, genre-less. He has been uncompromising in his goals, and has created an uncompromising film. (My pal and Ebert editor Brian Tallerico interviewed Eggers about the film.<\/a>) 1630s New England was a bleak and rigid world. Much of the dialogue comes from transcripts and extant documents from the 17th century. It sounds<\/i> right. The original score by Mark Korven is so effective, and sometimes it’s barely there, you can feel<\/i> it, but you almost can’t hear it. So primeval, really, where very real fears from very real beliefs (Satan, witches, demonic influence) dominate. The fear of sin and Satan is constant<\/i>. The goal is to live in a state of almost constant prayer. And you don’t know until you die … whether or not you’re going to Heaven. So worry and fear about your eternal life comes with every breath. Good times. <\/p>\n The family in The Witch<\/i> was banned from the plantation because they were too fanatical even for those bunch of fanatics. (Kind of like Roger Williams, the founder of my own home state.) <\/p>\n While I am sure there were compromises made along the way (always the case with low-budget films), The Witch<\/i> is so serious<\/i> in its intentions, so ruthless in sticking to its mood and tone, that the compromises are not on the screen. I couldn’t clock any, anyway. I thought at one point, “This is exactly the movie that Eggers wanted to make.” <\/p>\n Exciting<\/em>. <\/p>\n I want challenging films like this. I want individual outlooks and perspectives, told personally. I love<\/i> difficult, especially when I get the sense that the vision of the director is being realized. It’s like a high-wire act. We all see so much crap, condescending warmed-over cliched stuff, especially in the supernatural genre, that when something comes out that looks different, feels different, has a different structure and intention … it’s exciting<\/i>. I felt that way about It Follows<\/i> too, although that was more of a classic horror film than The Witch<\/i> is. <\/p>\n \n \nThe dread The Witch<\/i> creates is the dread borne out of fanaticism and religious hysteria, claustrophobic family life, total isolation, poverty, literalism. Terror comes from the inside. Terror is disorienting. The film has no tricks up its sleeve. It doesn’t withhold crucial information to be theatrical, or “effective,” or to “keep the audience on the edge of their seats.” It withholds because in a mood of hysteria, nobody knows which end is up. It withholds because the fear of the devil and of witchcraft is so palpable that people’s faces visibly change when the mere word “witch” is spoken. Hysteria is catching, you know. If you’ve read the transcripts of witch trials, or first-hand accounts from that era (I’m from New England, and every year our class would go to Salem for a field trip), then the paranoia, terror and superstition come rippling off the pages. Trial shmial, being accused<\/i> of being a witch was all it took. <\/p>\n Eggers knows his stuff. The film has very few frills. The actors don’t wear makeup. The light is grey, the colors dim. Everyone’s hands are dirty. (Apparently, the family’s house and barn were built by the production team only with the tools that the family would have had. 1630s tools. The clothes were hand-woven. These details show an obsession with authenticity that is part of Eggers’ vision and passion. Sometimes, when you watch a period piece, you know that that corseted 19th-century woman pulls out her iPhone in between takes. The period is so thin<\/i> in such pictures. The Witch<\/i>, on the other hand, looks like it lives and breathes from that era.) Whatever effects Eggers used to get that realism, they are invisible. He cast phenomenal actors (adults and children) who seem like they have strolled right out of that long-ago period. Saying “thee” and “thou” come naturally to all of them, including the very small children. It does not feel like a “period piece.” It feels like a historical document, or a diary entry passed on down through the centuries, warped through the re-telling. (Two notes: the father is played by Ralph Ineson, who was so sleazy and Cockney-dude-bro in the British Office<\/i>. He is so unrecognizable here and so different it took me a while to clock what else he had done. It’s an extraordinary performance. And Supernatural<\/i> fans, Julian Richings (aka “Death”) is in the first scene as the Governor who banishes the family from the plantation. Because he looks like a medieval woodcut, he fits right into the grim 1630s environment). <\/p>\n There was not one moment in the film when I relaxed. The film never lulled me into a sense of complacency, to then jolt me, artificially, with some horrible thing. There was not one moment when I let my guard down. Everything is eerie. And bleak. Suspicions growing, everyone starting to lose it<\/i>. So that when characters laugh, it rings false. Laughter seems dangerous. Perhaps even sinister. There were moments when I re-coiled from what I was seeing (one scene that comes mid-way through in particular), and there were moments when I felt so disoriented that I didn’t know what<\/i> was happening. This is not a criticism. This is the mood of a witch-hunt. If you believe, like the Louvin Brothers<\/a>, that Satan is real, then human beings can be infected, entered into, compromised. The soul is a fragile thing. No amount of prayer can ward off insinuations from the Devil. All of life must be spent building up walls to stave off Evil. <\/p>\n That’s the world the family lives in and believes in. Eggers never lets us out of it. <\/p>\n The ending is radical. Radical in a way that almost explodes all that came before. It creates more questions than answers, and that is deeply right. That’s also what I want more of in film. It is hard to watch that final scene and have a totally unambiguous reaction. (Or, I imagine it would be hard.) The ending, though, is where it was always going. That becomes clear the more you think about it. The script, taken from transcripts of sermons and other materials from the era, is wordy. Until … it’s not. And when the language drops out of the film near the end, something else arises, something powerful enough to suck all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. And that powerful thing, that powerful feeling<\/i> is what language is used to hold back, or control. People need<\/i> their words if all of THAT is going on underneath.<\/p>\n The Witch<\/i> is a work of great integrity. Not easily-classifiable, not easy to watch, not easy to endure. The feeling is one of dread, from beginning to end. The film does not have the unbearable un-relenting terror of The Babadook<\/i>, where I honestly thought I might pass out a couple of times. The Witch<\/i> is different than that, although the terror is in every frame.<\/p>\n The film is exactly what it wants to be. It’s something to see. <\/p>\n Here’s a really good piece by my friend Bill<\/a> about it (spoilers abound).<\/p>\n So far, it’s the most thoughtful review I’ve seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s startling to see a movie where you know, just know, that zero compromises have been made. That the director has done exactly what he set out to do. It’s startling to see (especially) a film that does not 1. … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n