The settling is 17th Century Salem, Massachusetts. A group of spoil teenage girls fearing in getting in trouble for meeting in the woods at midnight for a secret love-conjuring ceremony where the town minister mistook it as witchcraft. Instead of love, psychopath Abigail Williams (Winona Ryder) wishes for the death of her former lover's John Proctor (Daniel Day Lewis) wife. The girls are accused of witchcraft, but to save themselves they accused others. Soon the entire village is consumed by hysteria, and innocent victims are put on trial, leading to a accusations flying, judgments are pronounced, and sentences are quickly and ruthlessly carried out. The only person whom can save them is Mary Warren (Karron Graves). The Crucible isn't a pretty film, but Nicholas Hytner's grim movie version of the classic Arthur Miller concerning the Salem witch hunts is a tragedy and in some what could be also be called a horror/thriller movie. It explodes into a melodramatic but never less than gripping story between both John Proctor Vs Abigail Williams. Ryder is wicked insidious, as the angry, hysterical Abigail, caught up in a conspiracy of lies from which there's no escape looking for revenge against him. Daniel Day-Lewis gives us a stubborn yet vulnerable John Proctor. He gives one of the best lines in the film toward the end. Joan Allen delivers a heart-breaking performance as the anguished Elizabeth, a fervently religious woman unable to disprove the allegations made against her and her husband.it's pretty evident (if you read the book) that Elizabeth did forgive John Proctor. if she hadn't, she wouldn't have blamed herself partly for the affair. their relationship is very complex, but in the end she does forgive him. this draws on one of Miller's main themes of forgiveness. This story really shows how far people will go in their words and actions when they are motivated by blind fear. The Crucible was written as a thinly disguised attack on the McCarthy anti-communist Red Scare "witch hunts" of the 1950s America.! This is so dramatic and powerful my heart clenches every time I see this, so check it out.

"The Crucible" is based on a play written by Arthur Miller. His goal was not to present the Salem witch trials verbatim but to use it in order to attack the McCarthy hearing....and as such, he made a few changes here and there to the facts of the case. I mention all this so that you understand his motivations and occasionally the story does stray from the facts as we know them today.

So is the story worth seeing? Well, yes, though if you are looking for something fun, light or intended to pull you out of a depressed mood, you are certainly considering the wrong picture! The acting is quite good, the direction also quite nice. No complaints about anything other than the liberties taken here and there with the actual facts.

Arthur Miller is gone now, but he lived long enough to see his master work The Crucible finally on the big screen. Back when it was on Broadway it was deemed too controversial in those paranoid days of the Fifties. The Crucible was Miller's answer to the witch hunting House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee of Joe McCarthy. He saw parallels between the Salem Witch Trials where several people were put to death in that sad town for the elusive crime of witchcraft. Miller even got to adapt his work to the screen and did it so well that the stage origins aren't even noticeable.

One of the things I marveled when viewing the film was Miller's mastery of the Puritan culture. He must have done some heavy research into it to capture so well the spirit of those times and how they paralleled the McCarthy Fifties.

But I would take a different tack in talking about The Crucible. It is a wonderful condemnation of a religious based society as the Puritans were in those days. These people came to the new world to seek freedom of conscience to worship the Creator/Deity in their own way. No sooner do they get here than a society is built by them excluding others who don't buy into their view of things. It would be another century before the novel idea was seriously raised about having NO established religion. It hasn't taken fully hold yet as witness by the Moslem theocratic states like Iran or the newly found influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in some of the former Soviet Union. Not to mention here where after thirty or so years the influence of bible beaters in the body politic seems finally to be receding.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays John Proctor the farmer who is by no means an ideal hero is the man forced into martyrdom simply because he won't denounce his neighbors as witches and warlocks. Joan Allen is magnificent as Mrs. Proctor who pays for her husband's indiscretions with teenage flirt Winona Ryder.

All of this gets started when Ryder and several of her peers go out to dance in the moonlight, strictly forbidden in the Puritan society. Who led them into this is Charlayne Woodard, an African slave and recently over from Africa where she remembers her customs from her tribe. The girls get spotted and all that follows come from some young girls who rather than face punishment for breaking their strict code say the devil made them do it and start naming friends and neighbors as witches. This whole business gives the girls an opportunity to escape punishment and settle some personal scores. And it spreads to the adults who ought to know better.

I've also thought that Arthur Miller might also have been influenced by Lillian Hellman's These Three which is also about tattle tale young girls and the harm they cause. The parallels are too obvious to ignore.

Though it took half a century to make it to the screen, The Crucible was worth every second of the wait.