Earlier in the year, I had seen a movie called The Witch which I thought was going to be a scarier look into the Salem Witch Trials or at least that time period. Coming from Massachusetts, my interest in the subject matter has always been peaked and when I saw that The Crucible was available to watch, I immediately chose it for today’s film. The film follows the actual accounts of the Salem Witch Trials in which Abigail Williams (Winona Ryder) started. Abigail among other girls were caught dancing in the woods with the famous Tituba (Charlayne Woodard). In order to save themselves, they began to start accusing innocent people from the villiage that they had problems with which included the wife of John Proctor (Daniel Day-Lewis). The film features an amazing cast that includes Paul Scofield (A Man For All Seasons) as Judge Thomas Danforth, Joan Allen (The Bourne Supremacy) as Elizabeth Proctor, Bruce Davison (The Lords Of Salem) as Reverend Paris, Rob Campbell (Hedwig and The Angry Inch) as Reverend Hale, Jeffrey Jones (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) as Thomas Putnam, Peter Vaughan (Brazil) as Giles Corey, Karron Graves (The Good Shepard) as Mary Warren, George Gaynes (Police Academy) as Judge Samuel Sewall, Mary Pat Gleason (Basic Instinct) as Martha Corey, and the film was directed by Nicholas Hytner.
Now as far as The Witch was concerned, it wasn’t as scary as people made it out to be even though it was well acted. This film gave you exactly what you thought you were going to get and that was an account of all the horror that occurred in the town of Salem. The subject is still a sore spot in Salem, but it’s a history they no longer deny. You watch this film and you say how stupid could people have been back in those days and you must understand that this was a puritan society where religion was number one alongside greed and envy. I cannot begin to make you understand how amazing the performances in this film were and I was not lying when I said it was an all star cast. Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the most amazing actors to come out in the 90’s and he has provided us with classic after classic even though I need to catch up on a lot of them. All the performances in the film were absolutely fantastic and you should see it for that and the sets and costumes. The sets were amazing as it made you feel like you were in Salem in 1692 and the costumes enforced those beliefs. I also loved how they stuck the original script that Arthur Miller wrote as they stayed true to that. This was an excellent choice for me for today and if you ever want to learn more about Salem, start here and then travel to Salem for yourselves. It is such an amazing place to be and there is so much history. With that being said, I am going to give the film an A+ for a final grade.
365moviesin365dayschallenge 