{"id":304090,"date":"2026-01-26T07:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T07:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/304090\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T07:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T07:45:07","slug":"olivia-colman-orders-a-man-made-of-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/304090\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivia Colman Orders a Man Made of Wood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn Ursula Wills-Jones\u2019 2008 short story \u201cThe Wicker<\/a> Husband\u201d (not to be confused with the \u201cThe Wicker Man\u201d), an unpleasant fisherwoman in an unenlightened medieval town asks the local basketmaker to weave her a partner. From there, the supernatural fable could be \u201cPinocchio\u201d for adults, only it\u2019s not the wooden creation\u2019s nose that grows, and this ideal husband cannot tell a lie, whispering things like \u201cI was made to be with you\u201d and \u201cYou are the only reason that I live and breathe\u201d \u2014 which are not only true, but just about the most romantic thing one can say to a woman so unfortunate of feature and unfragrant of aroma.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn writer-directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer<\/a>\u2019s bawdy big-screen adaptation, the \u201cugly woman\u201d of Wills-Jones\u2019 imagination (played by Olivia Colman) is no grimier than the other townsfolk \u2014 except perhaps the tailor\u2019s wife (Elizabeth Debicki) \u2014 and seemingly content to have no part in the local marriage customs. In a significant step up from 2020 Sundance darling \u201cSave Yourselves!,\u201d the filmmaking pair don\u2019t stray far from Wills-Jones\u2019 intention, using the story\u2019s unspecified time and place to poke fun at superstition, the pressures to conform and the institution of marriage.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, they take feisty delight in embellishing just how uncouth these townspeople are (except for Peter Dinklage\u2019s master basketmaker, who\u2019s as couth as an openly gay artisan can be in a town where people piss and fart in public). One could say the filmmakers have been strategically reverent toward the source material, but slyly disrespectful in all other respects \u2014 like the marriage custom of locking a heavy copper collar around the bride\u2019s neck and a strap-on carrot over the groom\u2019s nibbly bits.<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch touches give the film a distinctively irreverent tone, not dissimilar from the ignorant peasant folk in \u201cMonty Python and the Holy Grail,\u201d to the degree that it might have been fun to see a man in drag playing Colman\u2019s \u201cugly woman\u201d role \u2014 not that there\u2019s anything wrong with the Oscar winner\u2019s interpretation. The adventurous actress dirties up her frock and face to play the village pariah, who reeks of fish and would be no man\u2019s idea of a suitable wife, except perhaps the one-eyed bum who sleeps in the town square.<\/p>\n

\n\tNo matter. Solitude suits her fine. And then one day, after accidentally \u201cwinning\u201d a silly game to predict who will be the next to wed, she changes her mind and orders up a mate from the master basketmaker \u2014 the way one might request a mail-order bride or life-size love doll. He\u2019s a wordy chap (the basketmaker, not his creaking creation), waxing Shakespearean as he considers his commission. Dinklage\u2019s multiple monologues stick out, assuming you can hear them over Anna Meredith\u2019s jauntily invasive score \u2014 one of the few embellishments that doesn\u2019t improve the experience.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhere Wilson and Fischer really deepen Wills-Jones\u2019 tale is in the private moments between the fisherwoman and her wicker husband, who awaits her at the altar in a handsome new suit and shoes borrowed from her neighbors \u2014 the tailor (Nabhaan Rizwan), shoemaker (Scott Alexander Yougng) and so on. Back at her run-down shack, the long-neglected lass enthusiastically experiences a lover\u2019s attention for the first time, unperturbed by his wooden \u2026 everything. And who can blame her, considering he\u2019s embodied by Swedish actor Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd, clearly recognizable beneath a veneer of elegantly woven willow?<\/p>\n

\n\tOne can only imagine the endless hours of debate that went into deciding how this wicker husband should look. He couldn\u2019t be too sexy, or else the other women in town would be instantly jealous. They should be initially skeptical, the way one might be to learn that a friend was marrying her AI chatbot, only to come around once they see the fisherwoman\u2019s husband doing chores and doting on his wife. But he can\u2019t be too offputting either, lest he alienate the audience. (Per the directors\u2019 Sundance Film Festival<\/a> intro, there were practical considerations, too, like whether to give him nipples.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter all those considerations, the filmmakers landed somewhere between \u201cBicentennial Man\u201d (whose boxy robot shell was kind of a deal-breaker) and the fish man in \u201cThe Shape of Water\u201d (far from human, but blessed with nice abs and a limited vocabulary). The wicker husband isn\u2019t exactly hot, but he\u2019s handsome, and where the other men in town love to hear themselves talk, the newcomer proves reserved in both speech and gesture. The early scenes between this unlikely couple are tender, almost loving \u2014 a dynamic that\u2019s not lost on the village women, all of whom have trouble with their own husbands.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a time, it doesn\u2019t feel like Wilson and Fischer know what to do with the story, which stalls a bit in the second act \u2014 the part where they ought to have embellished upon what Wills-Jones had written. The plot requires the tailor\u2019s wife to introduce doubts in the fisherwoman\u2019s mind about her affectionate man\u2019s fidelity. It could be a consequence of the movie\u2019s insolent sense of humor, but there\u2019s something unconvincing (or else too convenient) about how often the fisherwoman\u2019s attitude changes, from caring nothing about marriage to cautiously inviting a man into her life to completely distrusting him when rumors swirl.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs she really so weak of will? The script needs her to be to prove its point, which makes a few of her choices (to say nothing of her peers\u2019 behavior) tough to accept. A fable is only as strong as its moral lesson, and while so many are rock solid, this one\u2019s made of wicker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Ursula Wills-Jones\u2019 2008 short story \u201cThe Wicker Husband\u201d (not to be confused with the \u201cThe Wicker Man\u201d),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[149160,66771,18,117,19,17,327,16999,149619],"class_list":{"0":"post-304090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-alex-huston-fischer","9":"tag-alexander-skarsgard","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-sundance-film-festival","16":"tag-wicker"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115960291153478482","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}