BEFORE: Last night's film added a witchcraft-related subplot to the original novel's story, and "ParaNorman" also mentioned witches last week, so it's a perfect opportunity to follow up with this one. Also like last night's film, this is set in colonial Massachusetts, and that's where I'll be heading after work today (to modern Massachusetts, not the old colony) to visit my parents for a couple of days.
Linking is once again very obvious, as Gary Oldman from "The Scarlet Letter" was also in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" with Winona Ryder (last seen in "Black Swan"), who's featured tonight.
THE PLOT: A 17th-century Salem woman accuses an ex-lover's wife of witchery in an adaptation of the Arthur Miller play.
AFTER: Ah, the 1600's - what a terrible time to be alive. When science was trumped by religion, and people came to America for a new life, only to be killed by one disease or another. Problem was, since people didn't understand what a coma or a fever dream was, it was easy for people to believe that evil spirits had taken over someone's body.
It was also a time when religion and government were apparently intertwined (any attempts at separating them came later), so if the government officially recognized the Providence of the Lord, then by default it also had to recognize the tempations of the Devil. Although neither entity had any legal standing, real world events could be attributed to the work of one or the other. Thankfully, we live in modern times, when our legislators are more enlightened, and none of them could possibly make policy decisions that affect the public based on outdated folklore and a woeful misunderstanding about how the human body works, especially with regards to female reproduction. Because that would be a damn shame.
Problem #2, once someone was accused of being a witch, or being in league with Satan, it was up to them to offer proof that this was not the case - and how does one prove a negative? Again, this must have been before the legal system established that the burden of proof was on the state - here everyone seemed to be guilty until proven innocent. Really, it's best not to second-guess the man upstairs on these things - kill 'em all, and God will sort them out.
So the accused here are given a choice - confess to being in league with dark forces and live, or deny it and be put to death. Really not much of a choice at all, but what kind of life would someone have in colonial America after admitting in print that they snuggled with Satan? I suppose this system was something of an improvement when compared with the Dark Ages, when accused witches were thrown in the river, and if they drowned they were innocent, but if they floated, they were fished out and burned.
And yet the Puritans seemed to have learned nothing from the days of the Inquisitors - using torture to make people confess sort of sullies the deal. People will confess to anything to save their necks or stop the pain, and that's how the game gets rigged.
My understanding of this story, based on a play by Arthur Miller, was that it was written as a thinly-veiled allegory for the McCarthy hearings of the 1950's, when witnesses were given a similar choice. They could either name people that they new had Communist leanings, or be labeled as a Communist sympathizer themselves, and blacklisted from working in Hollywood. When you take away this subtext, however, and let the Colonial story stand on its own, I'm not sure it holds up.
Did the Salem Witch trials go down like this? Or is this based on the way someone thinks they happened? Worse yet, did someone use what we KNOW happened in the 1950's to infer what happened in the 1600's?
Also starring Daniel Day-Lewis (last seen in "In the Name of the Father"), Joan Allen (last seen in "Searching for Bobby Fischer"), Paul Scofield, Bruce Davison (last seen in "Spies Like Us"), George Gaynes, Rob Campbell, with cameos from Jeffrey Jones (last seen in "Stuart Little"), Frances Conroy (last seen in "The Aviator")
RATING: 5 out of 10 Commandments
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