The Wicker Man: Learning to love the film that broke us

Lives Less Ordinary

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.6 • 814 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Dominic and Justin Hardy were young boys when their father, the director Robin Hardy, began a gruelling and obsessive quest to make The Wicker Man. Now the film is regarded as a masterpiece and beloved by fans across the world, but when it was first released in 1973, it was a major flop. The fallout for the Hardy family was painful, tearing them apart. It would take many decades, a bundle of lost letters and another burning effigy for Dominic and Justin to finally come to terms with the past – and this iconic movie.

Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Maryam Maruf

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Transcript

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0:00.0	On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.
0:06.9	It was an extraordinary news story.
0:09.1	The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,
0:13.7	mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.
0:18.0	One of the great mysteries in English criminal history.
0:20.7	We're still looking for Lucan. It's honestly one of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for
0:21.6	Lucan. It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime. I'm Alex von
0:26.6	Tundselman. This is The Lucan Obsession. Listen on BBC Sounds. Well, I'm Dominic Hardy. I'm a professor
0:35.0	of art history in Morayal, Quebec, in Canada. I'm Justin Hardy. I'm a professor of art history in Morayal, Quebec, in Canada.
0:38.4	I'm Justin Hardy. I am an academic and a filmmaker. And we are half-brothers. Our father had
0:47.5	many children wherever he laid his hat. I'm number five. Justin is number. I'm number six. Justin and Dominic's father is
0:56.8	Robin Hardy, the director of one of the most celebrated horror movies of all time, the Wicker Man.
1:02.9	The film is a cult classic. It's freaky and weird and very, very watchable. Something about it
1:09.3	gets under your skin, and it's beloved around the world.
1:13.2	But the two brothers' relationship to their father's film is a lot more complicated.
1:18.6	Well, I'm afraid the Wicterman was the film that blew up my family.
1:35.6	Yeah. You're listening to Lives Less Ordinary from the BBC World Service.
1:37.0	I'm Osiafuchs.
1:41.9	Today, the messy family history behind a cinema classic.
1:48.0	It all started, innocently enough, with a dream. Robin Hardy, Dominic and Justin's father, wanted to make a mark on the world, to leave a creative legacy. And so when he
1:54.4	got the opportunity to make the wicker man, it consumed him completely. It was the culmination
1:59.8	of his life's greatest ambition. Everything else
	...

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