Every film eventually meets its harshest critics, and for Wicker they turn out to be people who know about wicker. According to the Guardian, as picked up by File 770, more than 100 basket makers have taken to the internet to point out that Alexander Skarsgård’s Wicker Husband is plaited rather than woven, and is not made of willow. Wētā Workshop’s costume team has defended the choice of material.
The objection is, at heart, a matter of technique. In the film, Olivia Colman’s outcast of a fisherwoman asks the village basket weaver, played by Peter Dinklage, to make her a husband. The husband duly arrives, with Skarsgård inside a practical wicker suit. To an audience, he is a handsome, thoughtful man of twigs. To a basket maker, he is evidently a man who has been put together with the wrong hands. We have not seen the Guardian piece in full, so we will leave the finer points of weaving to the people who weave.
We are, of course, firmly on the side of the craftspeople, mainly because it is a rare pleasure to see a fantasy film held to account by someone who knows how the magic is done. It is the folk-horror equivalent of a sailor pointing out that the knots in Master and Commander are all wrong. And the film’s whole joke is that the Wicker Husband is a better product than anything the village men can offer. A craft that produces a superior husband is a craft that expects to be taken seriously.
There is some defence for the film. Wicker is a fable adapted from Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story, not a documentary about basketry, and a costume that has to let an actor emote, sit down, and survive a love scene is entitled to make a few compromises with willow. As we said in our piece on Mark Kermode’s review, the practical suit is one of the film’s real pleasures. Few would swap it for a digital one.
Still, if you plan to see the film in the next few days, do bring a basket maker. They will have plenty to say, and some of it may even be about the plot. Wicker is in UK and Irish cinemas now.
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