A legacy of witchcraft, widows, and wickedness
Practical Magic started as a novel by Alice Hoffman but quickly became a cult classic in the form of the 1998 film starring a young Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Directed by Griffin Dunne, the film features two sisters who are outcasts in their small island town, estranged because of the generational curse that makes the men they fall in love with die — the same curse that took their father’s life. The sisters are bonded through curse and oath, swearing to spend the rest of their lives together as lonesome spinsters, convinced that any hope for love will only end in tragedy.
The film never garnered much praise from critics but was adored by audiences for its charming aesthetic, themes of sisterhood and woman kinship, and blend of genres. While it’s officially labelled a rom-com, the disturbing domestic violence between Gillian (Kidman) and her sadistic boyfriend, Jimmy, make it teeter toward a drama. Love is still a revolving theme throughout the film, but the sisters understandably harbour anti-romantic sentiments; when the romance happens anyway, it has darkly comical results. The men are destined to die — and most of them do — for falling in love with an Owens woman.
The film explores contemporary witchcraft with a grimoire (a book of spells), the use of herbs and their properties, and depicts magic as a force that requires intent to cast and belief to suffer. In 2017, the director revealed in an interview with Vulture that he had an actual witch consultant on set who threatened to curse him, the film, and the producer if she wasn’t paid more for her consultation. Her volatile voicemail unnerved him and the legal team so much that they paid her an undisclosed amount. Dunne then hired an exorcist to ward off any lingering dark magic. While most modern witches would caution against hexing, it is sometimes done for important causes; for example, a global initiative to cast a binding spell on Donald Trump as a means to keep him from causing harm to others was widely covered in the news after his 2016 presidential win.
While I can’t say enough good things about this quirky Halloween flick, the sisters’ aunts in the movie cross a ton of ethical boundaries in their efforts to meddle in people’s love lives. The topic of consent goes unexplored during the film’s few mentions of love potions and enchantment spells, despite the fact that Sally’s first marriage was manipulated by her “well-meaning” aunts. Because of the family’s curse, Sally is understandably terrified to fall in love, but the aunts see this fear as something that holds her back from happiness. Their use of magical coercion leads to tragic disaster, ultimately alienating their niece when Sally learns that her late husband, the father of her two daughters, was merely bewitched to fall in love with her.
Despite this undiscussed hiccup, if the strange amalgamation of genres and witchy backdrop appeals to you, Practical Magic is a cozy October watch. During a time of necessary isolation, what budding hermit wouldn’t want to hide away on a small island, in an enchanted home crawling with ivy and a garden large enough to hide the body of a serial killer?
