The Outcasts (1983)
It’s easier to remain stagnant and ignorant than to pursue knowledge. Opening and closing on children huddled around a fire on a dark and stormy night, whispering about how the strange sounds on the wind are Scarf Michael coming to steal their souls, The Outcasts explores how stories and superstitions can be ways to spook one another or explain away strange happenings. But when generalized to daily life, it can bring more of a mob mentality. Quiet and mousey Maura has always been the subject of bullying and ire from others in her small farming community, but after rumors that she was consorting with some sort of dastardly fellow begin to spread, that aggravation with her differentness begins to become more poisonous. Factor in strange happenings with crop failures and death of livestock and family, and soon a dangerous fervor sweeps the community. Maura is targeted by a hateful, simple-minded, superstitious crowd. But unlike a Salem situation, well, they’re not totally, wholly wrong. She has been spending time with the magical fellow Scarf Michael. Though to be fair, his antics appear more on the level of messing with people who are already messing about and don’t want to be caught. Maura and Michael come to exemplify the pursuit of knowledge as a way to expand one’s horizons. But it’s not without its risks: to become truly experienced in the world is to pursue a sort of death. Maura may have great potential, greater than anything her family or community members might have believed in her, but that prospect still frightens her. Though one thing is for sure: maybe let’s workshop that whole busking gig a little more before just jumping in on it; the choreo could use a little polishing.
This has a certain quality to the nature of the storytelling as if the film were in a reverie. Interludes of natural imagery—trees and rocks and rain-dappled brooks—hint at the earthy, pagan roots of Scarf Michael, and brief perspective beats thrust the viewer into the shoes of Maura, giving a subjective and uncertain air to things that could be and yet are not. Michael does have a certain magic to him, vanishing from sight as he disrupts the attempted drowning of Maura, and visiting mischief upon nocturnal carousers, but the most profound magic is incited by Maura herself as she brings peace to a dying old man or experiences the totality of existence on the top of a cliff. Robert Wynne-Simmons was influenced by the work of William Blake, and indeed that poet’s specific mysticism bears its mark on the overall feel of the narrative.
THE RULES
SIP
Someone says 'God' or 'Scarf Michael'.
Voice-over narration begins.
Musicians start to play.
BIG DRINK
Maura messes around with a potato.
POV shot in a scene.
