Heads up! This piece contains MASSIVE SPOILERS for the movie Pearl. We kindly “axe” that you see the movie first and come back to read this after.
We all know the story. The story of little Dorothy Gale and the adventure she has when she’s whisked away to the wonderful land of Oz. The Wizard of Oz is one of the most timeless pieces of American literature ever produced, and the 1939 film adaptation remains one of the greatest (and most frightening) films of all time. This has caused numerous filmmakers of all genres and backgrounds to be inspired by the classic story in different ways over the years. Ti West brings it to a whole other level with his new film Pearl, the prequel to his slasher movie X that tells the story of the titular character and her descent into complete madness.
The film is littered with parallels calling back to the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, showing how the fairy tale story can be used in a different context to what we’re used to.
Right off the bat, the aesthetic and filmic style choices call back to the era of technicolor filmmaking. Technicolor is a process of filming color movies that dates back to 1916 and uses a three-strip system in which a modified camera would capture footage through different color filters (typically red, green, and blue), and be processed separately so that each strip would “print” various colors onto a finished print of the film. The result was a vivid display of color not commonly seen in this era of filmmaking, though one film in particular became famous for its use of the process: The Wizard of Oz. Pearl pays tribute to this by using a vivid color palette of bright reds, greens and blues, visually evoking the spirit of The Wizard of Oz.
From here we’re introduced to Pearl (Mia Goth), a lonely farmgirl who lives a quiet life on her family’s farm. She helps take care of her invalid father and is chastised constantly by her overbearing mother, Ruth. She dreams of a better life but her husband is fighting in World War I and her predicament has her with no place else to go. Pearl is a mirror image of Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz (right down to the pigtail braids). In that film Dorothy lives on a farm with Auntie Em and Uncle Henry and dreams of someplace “over the rainbow “ to escape the mundane life that she leads.
Pearl then rides into town on her bicycle to fetch her father medicine. When she gets to town we’re presented with a whole different world than the one Pearl is accustomed to. There’s music playing and people freely living their lives, and Pearl’s troubles melt away with an escape to the movie theater (with a side of micro-dosing). While here she also meets the projectionist (David Corenswet) of the theater she frequents (more on him later). This runs parallel to the iconic scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy is whisked away to the land of Oz. From the muted, drab palette of her sepia tone world to a technicolor fantasy only possible in dreams.
As Pearl heads home she by happenstance is led into a corn field that is home to a scarecrow that oversees the field. Curious, Pearl begins seductively talking to and dancing with the scarecrow, ultimately leading to a scene where she plays out a sexual encounter with it and imagines the face of the projectionist before having a violent outburst informing it that she’s married. Ashamed of what she’s done she heads back home with the scarecrow’s hat in tow.
The scarecrow’s design is obviously very much inspired by the design that was used on actor Ray Bolger in The Wizard of Oz. A noted dancer while he was alive, the filmmakers gave his character a dance number when he was introduced and Pearl repays the favor by having them share an intimate dance. Something to note is that the 1939 film’s script has an ending scene where the Scarecrow’s human counterpart, Hunk, leaves for agriculture college and Dorothy promises to write to him, implying a…
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