Coppola blurs the meaning of ‘Beguiled’
Of the movies that I saw last week, I decided to review the Sofia Coppola film "The Beguiled" for Spokane Public Radio:
As a filmmaker, Sofia Coppola is a curiosity. Yes, she’s the daughter of one of the great filmmakers, Francis Ford Coppola – the man who gave us “The Godfather” trilogy – but that’s hardly her only distinction.
Over the past 18 years she has directed six feature films of her own. And those films – from her first, a 1999 adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel “The Virgin Suicides,” to her latest, an adaptation of Thomas Cullanin’s novel “The Beguiled” – have earned Coppola her own measure of acclaim.
Yet if the mark of a filmmaker depends both on style and substance, Sofia Coppola is stronger on the former than she is on the latter. It’s not that her films don’t contain themes, one major one being women attempting to define themselves in a sometimes hyper-masculine world: Think of Scarlett Johansson’s character in 2003’s “Lost in Translation” searching for meaning while roaming the streets of Tokyo. No, it’s more that those themes often are portrayed through as much thematic soft focus as the actual visuals she directs her cinematographers to use.
Soft focus, for example, is a major stylistic highlight of “The Beguiled,” thanks to Philippe Le Sourd, a French cinematographer who received an Oscar nomination for Wong Kar-Wai’s 2013 film “The Grandmaster.” Le Sourd’s camera work – again, at the behest of Coppola – is what gives “The Beguiled” its overpowering sense of gothic Southern sensibilities.
Set in 1864, during height of the Civil War, Coppola’s “The Beguiled” begins innocently enough. A young girl (Oona Lawrence) walks though the lonely woods, pausing here and there to pick mushrooms. The camera haunts her, close enough to feel almost claustrophobic, certainly threatening. And sure enough, she stumbles onto a wounded Union soldier (Colin Farrell), who hurriedly assures her that he means no harm and, instead, would appreciate any aid she could give him.
Reassured, the trusting girl returns home – with soldier in tow – to the Southern girls’ school she attends. When they arrive, her head mistress (Nicole Kidman) tends to the soldier’s wounds. And then, she, the head teacher (Kirsten Dunst) and the five remaining students – all others having left because of the war – must decide what to do with their enemy guest.
That’s when the beguiling of the film’s title begins. Cullinan’s 1966 novel was adapted once before, in 1971 by director Don Siegel, starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Paige. A noted action director, Siegel – whose best known film is perhaps “Dirty Harry” – couldn’t be more different from Coppola. Yet the question explored in all three versions is who, exactly, ends up beguiling whom.
Farrell’s soldier is clearly afraid of returning to battle, the vestiges of which are all around – in the rolling echoes of cannon fire, wisps of distant smoke and the occasional roving patrol. And so he reaches out, one by one, to each of the two women and five girls. Each, for her own reason, seeks his attention in return.
Do any of them get what they need? Or deserve? Unfortunately, Coppola’s answer to those questions are, like the very ending of her movie itself, lost in soft focus.