‘The Beguiled’ (2017) ****/*****
Youth smiles without any reason
The Beguiled began its life as a 1966 novel by Thomas Cullinan, went on to become one of the bleak 70s films directed by Don Siegel, and now finds new life as the first remake from modern directing titan Sofia Coppola. It’s a story about a small boarding school for girls in the Civil War South, and the process by which their simple and isolated way of life gets torn asunder once one of the young students finds a wounded Union soldier out in the woods and brings him back home so he can be nursed back to health, rather than die out in the elements or in the harsh conditions experienced by prisoners of war. Much better to be a prisoner of a girls’ school, you see. The man, Corporal McBurney (Colin Farrell), is certainly a charmer, and maybe a rogue, and the girls of the school are the coddled sorts of naives who are bursting at the seams with repressed desires, which is a recipe for disaster. Basically, this is one of the horniest movie that I’ve ever seen.
If one was pressed to describe The Beguiled in a condensed sound bite, they might call it a slow burn thriller that’s heavily rooted in character. This is a beautifully shot, moody little piece of work, aesthetically, but most of its intrigue comes from the strained interactions of its characters. As Farrell’s McBurney regains his bearings after his critical battlefield injury and starts to get the lay of his new land, he begins to test the boundaries of his cage by getting the number of each of his female captors, perhaps to figure out how they can best be manipulated. Not only does this conceit introduce a fun little guessing game into the film as to McBurney’s intentions, it also works as a great device to let us get to know each of the characters. Despite the fact that everyone he meets is a waifish white girl buried under plain period garb, it isn’t long before we can tell each lady apart, and can say a little something about who they are and where they’re coming from.
Nicole Kidman plays Miss Martha, the headmistress of the school, and she’s very clearly a woman with pain in her past who handles it by projecting an image of strength and maintaining as much strict control over her environment as possible. Because of this, she’s the slowest to warm to the chaotic presence that’s suddenly invaded her sanctuary, but she gets there. Kidman’s bread and butter at this point is playing icy and restrained characters, so she was a great choice for the role. Kirsten Dunst’s Edwina is Martha’s second in command, and she seems to be a woman who has resigned herself to living a disappointing life of simplicity and even-keeled stability, right up until the moment that this charming foreigner comes into her life and reintroduces her to the hopes and possibilities that she’d given up on. They’re the fully grown women who realistically could have a chance at maybe building a relationship with McBurney. Then you have the children.
Elle Fanning’s Alicia can’t seem to perform the simplest of tasks without turning them into a body language foghorn of flirtation that announces to everyone around her that she’s open and available. She’s electric on the screen, which should be an asset that she’s able to tap into even more as she gets a bit older. Oona Laurence’s Amy is the moral center of the film, the only one whose interest in McBurney comes from pure intentions, which seems like it should be a heavy load for an actress of her age to shoulder, but she makes it all look effortless. She feels natural on the screen and she has a great face for emoting. This is basically her movie, and she’s going to get a lot more work because of the way she steals it.
The rest of the younger girls don’t quite get as much to do as the older and Laurence, but they still get important moments where they contribute to the goings on. Addison Riecke’s Marie embodies innocence, which the film takes great interest in meticulously subverting, and her sweet face makes her perfect for that role. Angourie Rice plays Jane, the skeptic who’s quick to judge and quick to label someone as an other, and there’s something wonderful about her delivery that hints at a childhood growing up in a house of privilege and prejudice. Her character is really the only place where the film addresses the issues of race that fueled much of the Civil War. Emma Howard rounds out the cast as Emily, and, okay, maybe I exaggerated when I said that the film establishes each of the girls well, because I can’t recall anything about her.
The Beguiled is very good about hinting at where it’s going, without giving anything important away. A graphic depiction of a wound being treated early on let’s you know that it’s not going to shy away from dealing in gore. The introduction of a gun in the first act is basically Chekhov tapping you on the shoulder and letting you know that things are going to get violent. In tone and intention, the film never plays its hand though. Everyone is polite. Their interactions are gentile. Things don’t get crazy until they suddenly get very insane. What the movie does do is let you in on the fact that every word every character is saying is loaded, and that everyone has selfish intentions that they’re playing close to the vest. These girls are too Southern Polite to come right out and enter into open competition with one another, but it’s very clear that they’re going to do whatever it takes to promote their position with the new man in their lives and to diminish the positions of everyone else.
These girls are sheltered, and repressed, and putting a man in the center of their very closed off world is the equivalent of the Coke bottle dropping into the middle of the isolated tribe in The Gods Must Be Crazy. There’s a lot of lurking and scowling going on. As competition elevates to see who’s going to win the favor of this Northern gentlemen, the veneer of politeness fades away, interactions gradually get more openly contentious, and a good deal of tension starts to be built. The slow burn buildup is what’s good about The Beguiled. What’s great about it is that the exact moment where you’ve had enough of the build and you start to think that you’re watching a movie where nothing is going to happen, things go off the rails in the most sudden and shocking way imaginable.
The Beguiled is gorgeous to look at, it’s well-acted, it grabs you emotionally and takes you on a ride from its first frame to its last. Coppola knocked it out of the park. She’s managed to infuse a period piece with personality, without resorting to any of the gimmicks that made Marie Antoinette divisive. She’s told a dark story about flawed characters without getting sunk in the nihilism that made The Bling Ring unpleasant to watch. She’s recaptured the melancholy vibe and bittersweet tone of The Virgin Suicides that everyone responded so well to without feeling like she’s repeated herself. She’s layered quite a bit of dark humor into her storytelling, but not so much that the weight of what’s happening gets subverted. She’s soaked every one of these characters’ interactions in dread, but she never milks the situation of so much tension that it turns into generic horror, allowing you to predict where the story is moving. This movie is a delicate balancing act that’s constantly threatening to topple into chaos, which eventually happens in the most sudden and satisfying possible way. It’s the best and most entertaining thing she’s done since Lost in Translation.
