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The Scathing, Romantic Parable of Wicker

The story of Wicker feels like it ought to predate that of the movie it is at risk of being confused with, The Wicker Man. It is credited to a fable called “The Wicker Husband”, which might be an old folktale from the pre-Norman past of England for its parable-like moral narrative and lack of official names for any of its characters who might as well be mere metaphorical symbols. But in actual fact it was a short story written just a few years ago by Ursula Wills, who does a remarkable job in adopting that particular style and character in a convincing but thoroughly contemporary manner. I can’t imagine a woman’s agency being all that popular a topic in even the pagan days of yore.
It is filtered into movie form by directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, and while I can’t say whether its particular sense of humour and ironic tone is native to its source, it detracts surprisingly little from the ethos being communicated -that ethos being a rather stark reworking of Beauty and the Beast where the spotlight is turned on the ignorant townspeople as a wry indictment on petty artificial structures of age and beauty and masculine complacency in romantic relationships. It is very blunt on these terms, but on occasion the blunt tool is the right one.
The film is set in an ambiguous place in history entirely within a small village with ludicrously patriarchal traditions surrounding marriage that include locking a bride’s neck in a chain at the end of the ceremony, shaking baskets with eggs to determine who weds next, and taking on the identity of merely the husband’s wife (though the husbands are only ever known by their occupation anyways. Olivia Colman’s Fisherwoman is a local spinster, friendly but subtly mocked by the community and who is both very cynical over the village rituals and also very lonely. After a post-wedding  ceremony declares her the next bride to a very dismayed reaction of the villagers, she contracts the Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband as a joke. Excited by the prospect, the Basket Weaver indeed fashions for her a fully cognizant husband made of Wicker (Alexander Skarsgård). And though this startles and perturbs the rest of the village initially, and especially the passive-aggressive Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), the Wicker Husband’s romantic devotion to the Fisherwoman, his considerate initiatives of domestic labour, and his apparently intense sexual talents gets around to the community, stoking envy in the women and insecurity in the men.
In favour of that amusing commentary, the magical component of this story is rather underwritten. There is some shock but no offense from the townspeople -no invocation of witchcraft or terror-induced prejudice against the Wicker Husband -which certainly makes you wonder what other unusual phenomena can these people be familiar with. The Basket Weaver is essentially a Frankenstein figure, though the story is only mildly interested in his bizarre wicker alchemy. But while certain questions and curiosities abound, the movie does a fine job in assuaging them by setting a tone of pure fairy tale logic, even as things such as gender roles are drawn with more immediate tangibility. Fischer and Wilson do perhaps feel an obligation though to answer for the fantastical aspect of the Wicker Husband’s creation, dousing the scenes of the Basket Weaver’s assignments (which are never actually shown in practice) in a poetic flare to the dialogue that, accompanied by deliberate musical cues, almost gives birth to a musical number. The effect of these however is rather odd and retroactively out-of-sync -so too is the Basket Weaver’s initial narration, charming though Dinklage’s performance is.
The crux of the story’s appeal is in the fun that it has with the social shake-up that goes on in the village and to a lesser extent in the home of the Fisherwoman and the Wicker Husband. Fischer and Wilson’s script has fun with both the growing lusts of the women towards the Wicker Husband and what he represents, and the frustrated insecurity of the men who for the first time are really exposed to their wives how awful they are as partners. The Wicker Husband’s simple responses when confronted on this make for its own humourous interaction. A cathartic element comes out pretty well, the attitudes of the men in this archaic time not all that removed honestly from a staggering number of men today -the conservative religious connotations to the dogma of the village speak for itself, as do the resentful actions of the Tailor’s Wife, wielding control in her own little way as ‘trad-wife superior’. It is a fun exercise.
It does come a little at the expense though of the Fisherwoman and the Wicker Husband, whose perfect relationship in the early goings can feel a tad dull apart from the apparently magnificent sex that breaks multiple beds and can be heard across the village. Colman and Skarsgård are both very good -that shield of cheeriness the Fisherwoman puts on that makes good use of Colman’s gift for comedy not delineating any of her genuine sadness. And for as romantic as the Wicker Husband is, Skarsgård plays his innocence and generosity of spirit in almost a deadpan manner. And his prosthetics are endlessly fascinating to pore over. But it is their reception amongst the villagers that is the more entertaining throughline of the movie, and the conflict that is drawn between them -stemming from the Fisherwoman buying into rumours that the Wicker Husband is being unfaithful, feels not undercooked -not unbelievable, but arbitrary. It emphasizes the depths of her own insecurity and ultimately serves some major plot relevance -there is a curious comment it makes on the notion that such a perfect man might be rejected by woman out of suspicion, but it doesn't gel so well with the other feminist themes of the film. Certainly it isn't as juicy as the self-loathing sexual complex of the Tailor's Wife or the creative cure to the motherhood instincts of her widowed sister (Marli Siu) -or even completely separate from that the horrifying medical malpractice of her doctor father (Richard E. Grant). 
Both the happy couple and the village itself come to fitting ends, the last plot thread being quite an interesting one (though also the logical next step along the Frankenstein tread of the narrative), exposing a little more the community's attitudes and hypocrisies, taking a hammer to whatever of its rigid social and gender structure is left standing. And it strikes well a balance of dark and funny. In the end, Wicker does make for a strong latter-day fairy tale -one that both feels universal in its themes and yet is very specific for its modern demographic. A lot of men could use its lesson on how to be a considerate partner. And a lot of women deserve the chance to swoon over a sexy wicker man. 

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