This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
I Yam a Material Girl
Plot Overview
In a medieval coastal village, a smelly fishwife (Olivia Colman) rejects the counsel of a wise woman to be satisfied single and requests the master basket maker make her a straw husband—be careful what you wish for.
It turns out to be the consummate dutiful husband—without
olfactory sense. But he's “very flammable” in an age
powered by fire and a village prone to gossip. The basket weaver
(Peter Dinklage) is bummed out by the publicity & attention he
receives, so he announces his retirement and that he'll donate a
wicker woman to the winner of an ad hoc competition he's hosting.
If Rhudyard Kipling's 1911 poem, The Female Of the Species
(is more deadly than the male) is any indication, this bitch will
be made of sterner stuff than her male counterpart.
Ideology
(Eccl.
10:19) “A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh
merry: but money answereth all things.” The village life
we're privileged to witness consists wholly of:
- Festive weddings (“Man and woman become man and his wife”) with their quaint customs.
- Loosened tongues in the pub attached to the inn.
- A rather vigorous life of commerce.
It's a simple, peasant life that will help us appreciate the drama that would be otherwise obscured by modern accoutrements as per a Rosie Walsh novel:
I've got to take her for her psychiatrist's appointment next week. She said she just couldn't cope with cars, hospitals, people. Not without me. (354)
Production Values
“”
(2026) was based on a fable, The Wicker Husband by
Ursula Wills. It was directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor
Wilson who were responsible for its screenplay. It stars Olivia
Colman. Alexander Skarsgård and Elizabeth Debicki. The sparse
stable of characters include the fisherwoman, a quack doctor, the
wicker husband, the tailor's wife, the basketmaker, the bottle-washer,
the drunk, the innkeeper, the shoemaker, the bakerman &
woman, the butcher, the minister, the tailor, and various wives and
singles. Not the most glamorous roles, but they were handled
adequately. These were not the beautiful people.
It's rated R for sexual content,
language and brief full nudity. It's a scenic third world (if even
that) where one might like to visit but wouldn't want to stay. The
wicker costumes looked real. Runtime = 1½ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The balance of sexual power ♂
– ♀ is endemic but not politicized. A wise woman tells
the girls that to please a man she should feed him, be quiet when
he's working, and provide occasional release. Psychiatrist Paul
Dobransky , M.D. passes on the advice:
HOW TO MAKE A MAN HAPPY (211)
- Feed him
- Have sex with him
- Shut up
So it comes that man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands. And man knows it! Knows moreover, that the Woman that God gave him Must command but may not govern—shall enthrall but not enslave him. —
Eminently respected business writer Peter F. Drucker states:Throughout man's history, and above all, among primitive peoples, work groups have always been sexually differentiated. Men work together and women work together. But we rarely hear, either in history or in cultural anthropology, of work groups of mixed sex. Men hunt and women tend the village. Men build boats and women grow yams. In Europe women have traditionally milked cows, in America men; but on neither side of the Atlantic has milking been done by sexually mixed groups. (188)According to respected scholar George F. Gilder,
Who would have anticipated that it would be liberal Republicans in the Nixon Administration who would fulfill the cynical dream of Judge Smith when he added the words “or sex” to the bitterly won civil rights laws of the sixties. Smith thought that the thicket of sex discrimination would ultimately confound and discredit all the antidiscrimination efforts of government—in fact all the highest egalitarian impulses of liberalism. And he may have been right. (96)A reversal of sex roles was commented on by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Charles McCabe writing on Dame Power:
British anthropologist Ashley Montagu … [i]n a new book called The American Way of Life argues that the ladies, though still marvelous, are rightly mixed up about their roles in life because they went a bit too far when they battled for the vote and equal rights in this country. Dr. Montagu says that women in this country have undoubtedly made good in areas they would never have thought of entering a half-century ago. The price, though, has been what he calls “psychic masculinization—the tendency to identify themselves with males, to think and act as males, and to aspire to masculine roles with resulting turmoil and confusion. As a consequence and corollary of all this, there has been the feminization of their males,” Dr. Montagu says. He adds, “American women in great quantities go to their psychotherapists and complain that their husbands are not as they would have them be, he-men. American men visit their psychotherapists and complain that their wives are not as they would have them be, she-women” (53).
This movie is in no way political but as a fable it clashes with modern notions of Equal Rights and Female Suffrage.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Good Date Movie. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Dobransky, Paul, M.D.. The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love. Copyright © Dr. Paul Dobransky, 2007. New York: Penguin Group, First Printing, June 2007. Print.
Drucker, Peter F. Management (London: Heinemann, 1974. Print.
Gilder, George F. Sexual Suicide. New York: Quadrangle, 1973. Print.
McCabe, Charles. Tall Girls Are Grateful. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1973. Print.
Walsh, Rosie. Ghosted. Copyright © 2018 by Rosie Walsh. New York: Viking Penguin Random House LLC. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org