I loved this movie so much, even if i only understood half of what they were saying. Were the witches purposely setting up Thomasina to look guilty?
I really liked Goodnight Mommy. My coworker hated it, though.
That’s not how I read it. I don’t think they really cared.
I read an article about how the director consulted with people at Plymouth Plantation and other specialists about recreating the features and styles of Pilgrim Life. The boards, for example, were split oak, not sawn planks. I haven’t seen the movie (and don’t really intend to, except for the historical recreation thing) but I remember looking at stills and also thinking that it was a bigger house than I expected. I just chalked it up to the demands of the movie. You can’t really make a horror movie if the characters all squat in the same tiny cellar the whole time (well, you can, but it’s not that kind of horror movie).
Anyway - here’s an article about the movie’s production, with a director interview:
And here’s an accompianment reading list courtesy of the New york Public Library:
And here, perhaps inevitably, is Black Phillip’s Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/blackphillip
He’s a damn fine goat, I’ll give him that.
Dealings, yes, but they’d have to have wholesale cooperation in order to get those buildings built, not just trading silver cups and the like. Not exactly what you do with a Banished Member of your society.
The witch’s dwelling, as depicted, is still more luxurious looking than those first shelters the Salem pioneers built. Here are the images from Salem Pioneer Village:
The boards, both in the house construction and in the garden, look an awful lot more like sawn boards than split ones. In fact, I can’t see how you could get split wood as big and as flat as the ones used in the construction of the house. In any event, even split boards of that size represent a helluva big investment in work, especially while youy’re trying to raise a crop and have a baby (which they did in the interim). I doubt that they’d carry historical reality that far, and am willing to extend them the liberty of having a bigger and relatable set for the drama that unfolded.
Was it said how much time passed between the banishment and the scenes with Samuel? She wasn’t carrying a baby and didn’t look pregnant, so at least a year, but possibly two or three.
He’d also had time to build a barn and plow and plant a field after all.
Does anybody know what kind of candle that was at the dinner table? It had one vertical and one diagonal taper. I was wondering if there was a reason for that. (Speaking of, one thing I really liked was how the candles gave enough light to see for a few inches at the dinner table but that was it; I hate it in movies with historical settings when a candle puts out the light of a 60 watt bulb.)
The toddlers weren’t any more grown up after they had the buildings, so it couldn’t be several years. According to the Wikipedia page she wasn’t pregnant when they set out. It’s obviously only a couple months old, tops, when we first re-encounter the family. The time passed couldn’t be more than about a year.
The candle at the table was actually two – one standard candle, and something clasped at an angle in a clamp. That setup looks like a rushlight, in which a rush dipped in wax is used as a candle – except that it didn’t look like a rushlight. The “rush” looked like a garden-variety candle, simply mounted at an angle. Why you’d do that, I don’t know. But rushlights burn rapidly, and have to be changed frequently. Maybe for filming they just stuck a regular candle in a rushlight holder so they could get on with filming.
Candles, by the way, are another big time investment. Tallow candles , using animal fat, used to be the standard – the fat is a byproduct of cooking. But it’s dirty and smelly and smoky, and can get soft. Mice like to eat it (which is why you keep candles in a tin “candle safe”, nailed to the wall). You can make bayberry candles, if you’re near bayberry bushes, but you have to pick the berries, boil them, and skim the wax. If you have beehives, you can make beeswax candles, but raising bees is a huge investment in time and effort.
They had awfully clean, white-looking candles, which is kinda hard to square with all this. I’m assuming, again, that we should just allow this, for the sake of the movie.
Rushlights:
Well, again, I haven’t seen the movie, but the technology that used to be used for splitting wood is well understood. Here’s some dudes splitting an oak to make planks for a longship, using Viking era tools. Once the tree is split into eighths, the plank from each section is smoothed out using a variety of blades.
The resulting planks are quite thin and even rather flexible. It made for a stronger, more agile, ship. Here's another example, photos of a guy making the handle for a long axe - http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/viking_woodworking_riving.htm OH - here's a better link, relating to 17th century woodworking. http://www.greenwoodworking.com/RivingArticle No argument though that making enough planks to build the buildings in the movie would have needed either more people or more time. Well, I guess I don't know how rich the guy was supposed to be. Maybe he bought the wood or hired the help. Even religious fanatics couldn't be too choosy about their customer base in 1632.Yeah – my point wasn’t that it couldn’t be done – it was that I didn’t buy it being done by one guy, his (pregnant part of the time) wife, and two kids (ignoring the toddlers). You’d expect something a great deal cruder, because it’s what could be done. Back then, for instance, it wasn’t uncommon to keep the animals in the house, especially if building a barn would’ve taken more work than you could wrangle workers. it’d be close quarters and wouldn’t smell great, but in the winter everybody’d be warmer and sheltered.
But I could see them just assuming a basic 17th century farm just to get on with the story, and so that we could concentrate on the weirdness without worrying about a farm full of compromises. it’s enough trouble to get a 21st century audience to relate to the 17th century farm life as it is. (Especially having to decipher the dialect.)
I grew up in a rural area and never liked the woods at night but now will never go into them after dark again.
Still processing the film. Very slow and dark. This is not a horror film. If you’re expecting Insidious you’ll be disappointed.
By the way, what happened to the twins at the end?
I assume that the Witch made off with them, like the baby. They’re simply gone from the “barn” at the end, never seen again.
I’m really looking forward to seeing this. The New Yorker has a great review here: “The Witch” Review | The New Yorker.
I enjoyed it quite a bit but as with many movies lately, I think it’s being mis-marketed. It’s not a horror movie, it’s a creepy period piece that is… very… deliberately… paced.
It’s not just a Period Piece, though. as I say above, it’s Dark Fantasy, if only because witches really do exist in the film’s universe, and behave and have the powers described by contemporary documents. It’s not like that film The Devils, where the witches of Toulon were tortured for suspected of being witches, but weren’t – they really do have witches with supernatural abilities in this film.
A friend of mine was asking if the witches were women who didn’t want to be second class citizens and perhaps practiced with home remedies and herbs.
I told her “Not exactly…”.
It’s hard for people to wrap their mind around "No, it’s a world where the Puritan world view is right. It’s as bizarre as sci-fi realities, but it held sway for a long time in Old and New England.
Yeah, I also thought the kids were supposed to be at least a year or two older when we saw them after the first sequence. Of course, that’s harder to suggest with actual child actors, who are more reliant on size than makeup to convey age and who can’t be resized at will.
My take on it is that
It was a massive spiritual-destruction campaign to get Thomasin distraught and helpless enough to sign her name in the Book. The nubile virgin is the one the Boss was after, and apparently the victim has to consciously and officially agree to the deal before they can be brought into the coven. No way they were going to get a good Puritan girl on board with that unless and until everything else in her life had been reduced to sheer demonic horror.
Of a truth, thou art a merry soul! I laughed within myself.
Finally got to see this and I really enjoyed it. All the performances were strong, especially those of Tomasin and Caleb; the actress who plays Tomasin could be a third Fanning sister and in fact when I first saw the trailer for this I thought it was Elle.
It is so refreshing to see a truly atmospheric, creepy movie that doesn’t rely on jump scares and gore. The few blooody(ish) parts were just icky enough to be disturbing but not over the top.
I’m not totally sold on the ending and am wondering what anyone here thought. My first thought when she’s talking to the goat and then Satan appears was "Really?They really had to go there? But then HIS voice really was hypnotic and I found myself just going with it and looking back it was a good choice by the director. I’m still torn, however, by the very last scene with the coven around the fire. I felt like that scene was from a totally different movie. The stereotypical, almost comical chanting and the witches literally taking off on broom sticks just felt kind of lame. I wonder if anyone got something from it that I didn’t that might make me view it in a different way. As it stands that scene really takes away from all the great stuff that came before it.
Also, Black Phillip is one cute goat (though I read he was rather difficult on the set. Diva. )
Well, but
if my take on it is correct, the whole point of this evil cascade of catastrophes was to get Thomasin broken down enough to join the coven and surrender her soul to her new master. Where else could they have gone with it?
As Sampiro noted, the worldview here is the Puritan mindset, taken at face value. Witches are real, the Devil is real, and if you’re not one of the mysteriously chosen Elect then God ain’t gonna do shit to save you from them.
I agree that the coven scene didn’t have anything particularly fresh or awe-inspiring about it, but that’s kind of the point. In the Puritan mindset, evil is real and terrifying but also small-minded and nasty. People are selling their souls and destroying their kin and neighbors in seriously revolting ways not in exchange for being able to do anything magnificent and glorious, but just to indulge all their petty little lusts and power fantasies. Flying on broomsticks: check. Scaring the shit out of everyone you don’t like: check. Naked orgies round the bonfire: check. Achieving anything genuinely wondrous or delightful: sorry, that’s not in our charter.