Respond to these rapid questions in our The Beguiled quiz and we will tell you which The Beguiled character you are. Play it now.
The women are standing on the front steps of a dilapidated Southern plantation house, staring out at the muddy road beyond the gate, a road that has been traversed back and forth by battered Confederate troops on their way towards or away from the shifting “front.” Outside the gates, everything is in a state of constant motion; inside the gates, everything is in a state of stasis. “The Beguiled,” a film directed by Sofia Coppola that is a remake (sort of) of the 1971 Don Siegel/Clint Eastwood film, is full of such tableau. The “meaning” of the images is not explicitly stated, although you could infer a great deal from them if you wanted to (the women are glimpsed between the iron bars of the gate, isolated from the world of men, etc). With its title-card looming over the screen in a swirling pink font, like a flourishing header in the diary of a melodramatic teenage girl, “The Beguiled” tells a fairy tale about beautiful spirited women and girls who are locked away from the larger world (some by choice, others because they have nowhere else to go), and how a man disrupts their quiet; how much turbulence a man can bring. “The Beguiled,” which was beautifully photographed by Philippe Le Sourd (in his first collaboration with Coppola), lingers on its images, giving us time to become immersed in them.
The film opens with a haunting sequence in which an 11-year-old girl (Oona Laurence) goes mushroom-picking in a quiet woodland. The sound of distant cannon fire pierces the stillness of the air. Later, she comes across a wounded Union soldier named John McBurney (Colin Farrell), who had fled his regiment when the battle was at its climax, an unmanly act for which he is ashamed. The child decides to accompany him back to the girls’ school where she is a student (“Are there any men around?” McBurney inquires of her). A teacher named Edwina is still employed at the school, which is run by Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman), and there are only 5 students remaining (frequent Coppola collaborator Kirsten Dunst). They lock McBurney up in the downstairs music room, where Martha tends to his leg wound while Farrell bathes him, the scene unfolding in a series of lovingly erotic shots of Farrell’s chest, forearms, calves, and neck. Martha, with a briskness covering up her fluttery reaction to McBurney’s presence, tends to his leg wound while Farrell bathes him.
Meanwhile, all throughout the house, the students—particularly the languid Alicia (Elle Fanning), a teenager but already over-ripened, flushed with need, and bored out of her mind—huddle by the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the HUNK, who is lying half-clothed on the fainting couch in the dim interior and trying to get at least a brief glimpse of him. Coppola takes great pleasure in the situation, treating it with affection, as evidenced by the students suddenly appearing with pearl earrings in their ears, dressing up, or sneaking into his office to give him gifts. Miss Martha looks on in horror as all of this unfolds and tries to maintain control of the situation. Hormones, on the other hand, will hormone. (In the book, Martha has a complete and utter dislike for men. Coppola approaches it with a more relaxed attitude.)
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The novel A Painted Devil by Thomas Cullinan (originally titled A Painted Devil) served as the inspiration for the 1971 film of the same name, which was released the same year as “Dirty Harry.” The 1971 film is an entertaining rooster-in-a-henhouse fantasy wrapped in Southern Gothic histrionics, and it includes incest, bed-hopping, amputation, poison, and multiple shots of Eastwood’s smooth exposed chest, among other things. The film’s director, Don Siegel, explained that it was about “the fundamental desire of women to castrate men,” which was a pretty clear expression of male anxiety during that particular era. Coppola’s adaptation departs significantly from the original source material as well as from the earlier film (there has been much debate over her decision to cut out Matilda, the slave who works at the school; however, the absence of the incest sub-plot is even more radical, given how prominent a role it plays in the original story). Edwina, a character in the multi-narrator novel who develops a special bond with McBurney (the problem is, he develops a special bond with each of them), muses in the book: “… spreading like ripples in a stream to villages and towns and solitary lonely houses all over the country with each rumble of the cannons and each swirl of smoke… a sign of great trouble. The trouble that the wounded boy is experiencing could potentially spread and infect people thousands of miles away.”
The Beguiled Quiz
Depending on who you ask, McBurney represents something different to each of them, and he’s a shape-shifter who can be friendly or flirtatious at any time, sometimes polite, sometimes earnest. In this role, Farrell, a gifted and fluid actor, is ideal, and it’s difficult to imagine another actor performing it as well as Farrell does. You can’t just make charm up out of thin air like that. Kidman and Durst are both amusing and intense, combining Martha’s steel-magnolia energy with Edwina’s ladylike delicacy to create a hilarious and intense duo. Faced with her own teenage yearning, Fanning is one of the most talented young actors working today, her sluggish movements hinting at restlessness on the verge of bursting into flames.
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There is a slight lack of melodrama in the film (particularly in the case of Martha’s backstory), but if you are unfamiliar with the original or haven’t read the book, this may not be a significant flaw. This is Coppola’s film, and Coppola’s fingerprints are all over it. Here, she is interested in the ridiculousness of repressing one’s sexual drive, which is something she is interested in when it comes to the fleeting and difficult to say (at one point, Edwina is so turned on she almost collapses against a wall). Everything in the film revolves around that house: the pewter-toned lighting inside, the way that sunset reflects off the tops of the columns, the women floating through the overgrown yard, the younger girls lying in the same bed, their limbs intertwined, which has become something of a Coppola trademark by this point. Within is the female domain, where women reign supreme and the male lies in repose, ready to be gawked at and fussed over by onlookers. The women are strong and resourceful (“Edwina, please bring me the anatomy book”), but they are also ready to tear each other apart in order to get to the man in the room who they are after.
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She is not particularly interested in explicit commentary or contextualizing larger issues; rather, her interests lie in the peripheral; in what happens when things are quiet; and in the way bodies are arranged in the frame. It can be seen throughout all of her films. In “Lick the Star,” Coppola’s first short film, a teenage girl propped up on her slender thighs sneaks a peek at V.C. Andrews’ “Flowers in the Attic,” a painting by V.C. Andrews. In the film “The Virgin Suicides,” the five blonde sisters flopped around in a pigpile of long limbs and long hair. In the film “Lost in Translation,” the young woman is curled up on the windowsill of her hotel room, her body floating above the cityscape below her feet. The identical strippers in “Somewhere” twirl around poles, their bodies undulating in a surreal and almost serene beauty as their bodies undulate in the wind. ‘The Bling Ring’ depicts a teenage burglar who is dabbing her throat with perfume and staring at her reflection in a trance so deep that she appears to be disconnected from reality. Even though these moments don’t “lead anywhere,” they have a tremendous amount of resonance.
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You won’t be able to write a thesis statement for the film “The Beguiled” because of the plot. That’s not the type of movie this is. Nonetheless, it’s the kind of film that stays in your head for days afterward, much like the best fairy tales do.
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