The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

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Luke M
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#26 Post by Luke M » Sun May 22, 2016 2:28 am

Lost Highway wrote:I enjoyed the film, but I feel less positive than the other posters here. Maybe yet again my expectations were set too high by a skillfully edited trailer, which made the film look way more scary and intense than it ended up being.

Unlike earlier period classics about witches like The Witchfinder General the film is unambigious from early on that the witch is for real. This is surprising as in all other respects The Witch is such an "art house" film, reminiscent of Herzog, Bergman and Kubrick in particular. For me the lack of ambiguity or moral complexity robs the film of any deeper themes or subtext. It ends up as a beautifully shot and art directed spook show which feels too remote to get really scary and too superficial to work as anything more artful.

The film spends much of its time on the drama of the disintegrating family, which is never that riveting as there never is any doubt that there really is a witch who means harm to the children. Unlike more thematically ambitious horror films about Christianity vs paganism/satanism like The Wicker Man, The Devils or The Witchfinder General, the film has not much to say about religion, which means that in the end it's no more profound than something like The Omen, without the trashy rewards of that film. I certainly don't see the the thematic depth of the better Haeneke films here, even if stylistically the film is reminiscent of The White Ribbon.

The Witch is still striking enough for its meticulous sense of time and place. The meticulous recreation of the period is striking. It's also more entertaining than Ben Wheatley's similar but meandering A Field in England. I'm curious to see what the director will do next as he clearly has talent. He just needs a plot with a little more substance to support his confident sense of style.

The always excellent Kate Dickie (Red Road, Gane of Thrones) who plays the mother here, starred in a little seen contemporary film about witchcraft and Celtic folklore called Outcast (2010), which is rather underrated and which for me at least worked better as a horror film.
I finished watching this tonight and came here to read thoughts on the film. I'm most inclined to agree with this post. The film didn't quite meet my expectations, perhaps my fault for reading criticism of it early on. I think Lost Highway makes a great point here about revealing the witch so early on, it makes the film disjointed. Aside from the beautiful score, I didn't think much worked. Things like the acting, cinematography, and story I thought were all better than average but nothing truly remarkable. I think the comparisons to Haneke's Cache are valid and valuable but I think Cache is leagues above this film.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#27 Post by domino harvey » Sun May 22, 2016 8:54 am

Yep, a mediocre film that had some component parts working in its favor, namely a cast of talented actors navigating the dialogue (especially that little boy-- has any male child actor ever been given a more impossible task and still pulled it off?), but never quite does anything with its material that isn't gobsmackingly obvious-- and the cheap ending does not help
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Enough allegations of moral and sexual impropriety and you'll eventually just do what you're accused of sounds deep 'til you realize it's literally just a variation of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em"

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mfunk9786
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#28 Post by mfunk9786 » Sun May 22, 2016 3:01 pm

Or, you're just left with no choice by your circumstances. It's not like that was a conscious decision by the character. There's a good deal of supernatural intervention at play.

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knives
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#29 Post by knives » Wed Oct 19, 2016 8:27 pm

Late as usual. I suspect I would have liked this a lot more if they underplayed the score a bit more and stabilized the sound mix dramatically more (seriously for the first half I had to constantly change my volume from speaking to score scenes). Though even with that in mind this is about ten minutes too long which is not what should be said for a thirty minute movie. The central elements of sexuality and religion are well handled and well applied to this setting often resulting in creepy and scary moments, but so many of the other basics like acting (the guy playing the father is laughable with his Batman voice) have pretensions that just distract from the good elements. With that complaining out of the way I do think the film is mostly good and certainly shows a lot of promise for Eggers assuming he can keep in check the need to pronounce his films as ART in the future leaving the well thought out themes to speak for themselves.

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Swift
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#30 Post by Swift » Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:26 am

knives wrote:so many of the other basics like acting (the guy playing the father is laughable with his Batman voice) have pretensions that just distract from the good elements.
Ralph Ineson's Batman voice is less an acting pretension, and more just down to the fact that that's his actual voice.

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knives
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#31 Post by knives » Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:28 am

I've seen him in other films and it has never been so distracting.

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djproject
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#32 Post by djproject » Thu Oct 20, 2016 10:01 am

Cameron Swift wrote:
knives wrote:so many of the other basics like acting (the guy playing the father is laughable with his Batman voice) have pretensions that just distract from the good elements.
Ralph Ineson's Batman voice is less an acting pretension, and more just down to the fact that that's his actual voice.
Remember, this was the guy who played Chris Finch in The Office [UK].

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xoconostle
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#33 Post by xoconostle » Thu Oct 20, 2016 1:26 pm

Fascinating to read that forum members were reminded of Haneke, Bergman, von Trier, and Dreyer. All of those make sense but on my first viewing I kept thinking "if I didn't know otherwise I'd swear this was the new Ben Wheatley film." Very much looking forward to future work by Eggers.

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jazzo
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#34 Post by jazzo » Thu Oct 20, 2016 2:43 pm

I'm a huge fan of the film, and the absolute sense of dread that permeates every second of it. But what The Witch did spectacularly well, and what pushed it into masterpiece territory, at least for me, was its thematic challenging of what we consider good and evil in their most basic archetypes.

Religion: Good
Mother/Father: Good
Family: Good
God: Good

The Other/Devil: Bad

And yet, Thomasin and her brother Caleb's lives, under the umbrella of everything purportedly "good" in their existence, are horrible and cold and punishing. The rest of their days, if they had remained on their original course, would have been doomed to years of emotional and physical abuse, saturated in backbreaking, unfruitful labour, with all their dreams and desires lost to bitter disappointment.

So...
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Caleb chooses bad and to act upon his burgeoning desire, and though he is killed for it, he is also rewarded with moments of ecstasy so pure, they would have surpassed anything he would have actually experienced.

And Thomasin, in pure Old Testament fashion, choses bad and is given awareness (in addition to her already vast capacity for self-awareness) and knowledge that everything she was ever told about family and god is a lie. Except it frees her. And she embraces it, rapturously. And lives.
I know these are obvious themes and metaphors, but for me they all worked in beautiful conjunction with the picture's exquisite craft. I think of it not just as kin to Haneke's work, but also, bizarrely enough, Ken Loach's and Mike Leigh's.

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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#35 Post by mff » Thu Oct 20, 2016 6:03 pm

jazzo wrote: And yet, Thomasin and her brother Caleb's lives, under the umbrella of everything purportedly "good" in their existence, are horrible and cold and punishing. The rest of their days, if they had remained on their original course, would have been doomed to years of emotional and physical abuse, saturated in backbreaking, unfruitful labour, with all their dreams and desires lost to bitter disappointment.

So...
SpoilerShow
Caleb chooses bad and to act upon his burgeoning desire, and though he is killed for it, he is also rewarded with moments of ecstasy so pure, they would have surpassed anything he would have actually experienced.
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Moments of ecstasy so pure? Is that what was actually intended, though? Now, I've forgotten quite a bit, so I could have completely forgotten the entire "tone", but I think that, if that was supposed to be truly genuine, then his acting didn't manage to sell it. I thought it was more a case of him still being possessed, and the witch mocking the entire family through that fake "salvation".

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jazzo
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#36 Post by jazzo » Thu Oct 20, 2016 6:57 pm

My memory's for shit these days, too, but I don't think your take on the scene is wrong, either. My feeling was that it was a little bit of both.

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barryconvex
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#37 Post by barryconvex » Fri Nov 11, 2016 1:54 am

I think what was going on in the scene:
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where Caleb lay dying was that the devil was already in possession of the twins Jonas and Mercy (through the goat Black Phillip) while Caleb was able to successfully repent and experience the ecstasy of entering the kingdom of heaven. I believe the reason he spit out the apple was to show the witch's spell had been broken in part because Caleb was still pure at heart and unshaken in his faith. As for Thomasin she was not corrupted, so to speak, by either the witch or the devil at this point. However the twins (abetted by the guile of the unseen evil) are able to pervert their parents' faith and plant the seed of doubt (actually way more than a seed at this point) that Thomasin was the real culprit for all of the family's misfortunes as well as to blame for the twins' inability to remember the Lord's Prayer at Caleb's bedside as she had obviously "bewitched" them. That's what it seemed like to me at least.
Absolutely brilliant movie. The whole film is a textbook example of how to induce paranoia. Perhaps a better word to use is "dread"...So few movies manage to actually "scare" me nowadays but this one got under my skin...

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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#38 Post by djproject » Fri Nov 11, 2016 8:58 am

barryconvex wrote:I think what was going on in the scene:
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where Caleb lay dying was that the devil was already in possession of the twins Jonas and Mercy (through the goat Black Phillip) while Caleb was able to successfully repent and experience the ecstasy of entering the kingdom of heaven. I believe the reason he spit out the apple was to show the witch's spell had been broken in part because Caleb was still pure at heart and unshaken in his faith. As for Thomasin she was not corrupted, so to speak, by either the witch or the devil at this point. However the twins (abetted by the guile of the unseen evil) are able to pervert their parents' faith and plant the seed of doubt (actually way more than a seed at this point) that Thomasin was the real culprit for all of the family's misfortunes as well as to blame for the twins' inability to remember the Lord's Prayer at Caleb's bedside as she had obviously "bewitched" them. That's what it seemed like to me at least.
Absolutely brilliant movie. The whole film is a textbook example of how to induce paranoia. Perhaps a better word to use is "dread"...So few movies manage to actually "scare" me nowadays but this one got under my skin...
Interesting because my own take is:
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While I can see your point about Caleb retaining some measure of purity, I still think there were "issues" if you like. In fact, with all of the family, there was some major sin that led to their downfall such as pride for the father and probably avarice and covetousness for the mother. Caleb's issue was lust as he was approaching manhood and was tempted ... consider it was a very voluptuous and quite bosomy witch that lured him. And it was lust that provided the downfall for him.

I say this because Caleb's ecstasy speech included verses from the Psalms and from the Song of Solomon, the latter being a case of sensual/erotic literature in the Bible. When I heard this the first couple of times I watched it, that aspect caught my ear as it gives one impression of spiritual enlightenment and purity at first but it could also reveal a perversion of sorts. After all, it's been said the Devil can use Scriptures for his own purposes. As I've said that Caleb had lust/sex on his mind, the final cry was pretty much what was on his mind: a mixture of emotions and sensations, some good, some bad and all laid out.

I'm saying this as not someone who personally believes in this - my own theology is ... well, extensive and perhaps a bit more nuanced =] - but rather trying to be in the mindset of a Puritan pilgrim who was sceptical of the Church of England's "Romish" tenancies and leans closer to say Calvin than Luther. For the family - even when they themselves were exiled from the larger community - the goal was spiritual purity and free from sin and blemish. And that was setting themselves up for inevitable failure.
All in all, I really enjoyed the film. Yeah, I can see how it's not a "perfect" horror film (then again, what is?). But I think it was a lot more interesting because it went to places most horror films - certainly the more current crop - dared to tread. It was less horror of the body but horror of the soul/mind. And I believe Robert Eggers succeeded in making a combination of The Shining and Cries & Whispers =]

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barryconvex
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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#39 Post by barryconvex » Sat Nov 12, 2016 1:41 am

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While I can see your point about Caleb retaining some measure of purity, I still think there were "issues" if you like. In fact, with all of the family, there was some major sin that led to their downfall such as pride for the father and probably avarice and covetousness for the mother. Caleb's issue was lust as he was approaching manhood and was tempted ... consider it was a very voluptuous and quite bosomy witch that lured him. And it was lust that provided the downfall for him.

I say this because Caleb's ecstasy speech included verses from the Psalms and from the Song of Solomon, the latter being a case of sensual/erotic literature in the Bible. When I heard this the first couple of times I watched it, that aspect caught my ear as it gives one impression of spiritual enlightenment and purity at first but it could also reveal a perversion of sorts. After all, it's been said the Devil can use Scriptures for his own purposes. As I've said that Caleb had lust/sex on his mind, the final cry was pretty much what was on his mind: a mixture of emotions and sensations, some good, some bad and all laid out.

I'm saying this as not someone who personally believes in this - my own theology is ... well, extensive and perhaps a bit more nuanced =] - but rather trying to be in the mindset of a Puritan pilgrim who was sceptical of the Church of England's "Romish" tenancies and leans closer to say Calvin than Luther. For the family - even when they themselves were exiled from the larger community - the goal was spiritual purity and free from sin and blemish. And that was setting themselves up for inevitable failure.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying
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especially the father's sin of pride. The mother's sin was a more complex affair as it was made to look as if it were greed but it seemed to me more like the sin of envy based on her simmering hatred of her very beautiful almost fully grown eldest daughter. This was another brilliant touch as it adds a further dimension to a character who could've easily come across as nothing more than a shrew. Question: When she confesses to her husband does she allude to an affair she had back in England? Or did i misread that? Regarding Caleb-all the things you mention are true, the lust, the exotic witch in the forest, i just thought that he was able to cast off his sin of lust on his deathbed, hence the apple and his ecstatic death. But I also have no knowledge of the scriptures he was reciting or if anything could be read into them or if it could all have been the work of the devil.

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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#40 Post by Salamanca » Wed Nov 23, 2016 4:51 pm

Thought it was a strong debut film. Slightly disappointed at first because of the expectations others built around it. But after distancing one's self from the film and others' comments found the film much stronger on a second viewing and the ending even empowering. Still thought that her motivation
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for killing her mother (self-defense)
was weak and the groundwork for arriving at that moment wasn't necessarily as firm. Music was distracting, yes, especially at key moments when silence would have been more effective.

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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#41 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Aug 15, 2017 3:50 pm

Anna Taylor-Joy and Robert Eggers re-teaming to remake Nosferatu - Eggers is apparently still making medieval epic The Knight first, not sure what happened with that Rasputin mini-series but it isn't mentioned in the Variety article

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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#42 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Feb 12, 2019 3:55 pm


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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#43 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Nov 05, 2019 6:17 pm


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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#44 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Nov 05, 2019 6:40 pm

Don't worry, swo:
But even if you’re one of the fans who has been using the double “V”, Eggers wants you to know that he appreciates your fandom and has all the respect in the world for you.

“That said, the most ardent fans of The Witch who are really dedicated… they spell it with two ‘V’s. So I respect it.”

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Re: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

#45 Post by swo17 » Tue Nov 05, 2019 6:47 pm

Whatever, I've moved on to what's the real title of the new Bonnie Prince Billy album

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