DVD of the Week: The Crucible
Monday, August 25th by leinana
I’m officially hooked on Daniel “I Drink Your Milkshake” Day-Lewis. Desperately searching for another adaptation with a climactic scene in which he rages so hard that the blood vessels in his head appear to be on the verge of exploding, I found The Crucible.
The film starts mysteriously with a group of girls in the woods participating in some type of ritual. As they each call out the name of the boy they hope to marry, they throw an offering into a boiling cauldron. One of them, Abigail (played by Winona “Shoplifter” Ryder), goes the extra mile by slaughtering a chicken, smearing her face with the blood, and wishing death upon another woman. This really sends the other girls into a frenzy – they start screaming, dancing around, and getting naked. Girls gone wild!
When Abigail’s uncle happens upon their wild little party, the girls get scared and scatter. Afterwards, two of the younger girls who had been present fall into some sort of catatonic state. Naturally, witchcraft is to blame.
I should mention that witchcraft was a pretty serious charge in Salem circa 1692, it being punishable by hanging and whatnot. When Abigail and the girls realize they will be blamed for the girls’ “possession,” they first accuse Tituba, a slave from Barbados, of bewitching them. When they see how easily that worked, they begin accusing others of witchcraft, and mass hysteria ensues. Witchcraft is soon blamed for seemingly every possible thing that goes wrong in the town, and many innocent people are arrested.
Arthur Miller intended this play to be an allegory of the McCarthy-era Communist witch-hunts. I think this story is as timely as ever. We’ve seen plenty of mass hysteria in our time. Just think of 17th century Salem as present-day Guantanamo Bay.
The Crucible (1996)
DVD Date of Release: June 2004
Based on The Crucible by Arthur Miller
