Baptism of fire: the ending of The Wicker Man

“Next year your people will kill you on May Day!” shouts Police Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) as he is led up to a giant wooden figure, ready to be burned as a sacrifice in order for the crops of Summerisle to grow once more. Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) is a film built on deception and the violent outcomes of that deception, defined most explicitly in these final moments. With a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, very loosely adapted from David Pinner’s novel Ritual (1967), the film begins with the mystery of a disappeared girl from an isolated Scottish island, famed for its unusual fruit-growing capacity. Howie is sent to investigate, only to find a virulent, erotic form of paganism thriving in the community, which harvests the fruit for the island’s feudal ruler, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). Howie gradually comes to realise that the islanders are hiding something, though he only discovers the full truth far too late – that their crops last year failed and only the right kind of human sacrifice will fix it.

The figure of the film’s title isn’t seen or mentioned by name until these final minutes when the blind actions of the community are all too clear to see. Because of Howie’s overt Christian belief, the ending of the film is often characterised as a final clash between Christian and pre-Christian ideologies, the latter coming out triumphant. In many ways, the pagan belief system portrayed in the film – and it is hardly an accurate portrayal of paganism – is seen to be far more liberated than Howie’s. Yet, considering the theology on show as window-dressings – Howie’s as an excuse for his own repression, Summerisle’s as a system for acquiring and keeping a cheap labour force – what is at the heart of this most perfect piece of folk horror is how far those at the top will allow a deception to go in order to retain power.

This is in spite of the absurd lengths that the islanders are shown to have gone to in order to choose Howie as their desired sacrifice. The whole sequence of events, even at its most esoteric, is constructed in essence for the aristocracy to keep control. As Howie suggests in a final plea to the deceived community, the island was simply not meant for growing such fruit. In other words, the cause of their problems is not what they have been told and, in fact, their actions are going to make them worse.

Harry Waxman’s cinematography makes Howie’s death the most oddly beautiful in 1970s British cinema, though it is more than the death of a single man that is ultimately captured. Ignoring the cloak of optimism that the music and ceremony provides, the celebration of ignorance on display is unbearably familiar today. The final shot is not of this moment, however, but of a final glimpse of the islanders’ sun logo zooming towards the screen before the credit “A Summerisle Film Release” is briefly seen. It’s an interesting ploy, as if to frame the entire film as a public information piece, constructed by the Summerislanders as propaganda.

Yet before this, as we watch the final gorgeous shots of the burning head falling while the sun melts into the sea at dusk, clearly more has been lost than the life of a police officer. For with their actions, the islanders are not only left with the problems that faced them before, but they have destroyed the only hope they had of becoming aware of their own deception and complicity; taking a backward step into a spiral of moral decay. They may have taken back control of their land, appeasing a great sun god with their folly, but, as Howie suggests to Lord Summerisle, the island’s people will come for him next year when the crops inevitably fail. Such mass delusions can, thankfully, only last for so long.