The Beguiled (2017)

Some Real Southern Hospitality
or
"Seems Having the Soldier Here is Having an Effect"

One can't mention Sofia Coppola's film of The Beguiled without saying that it is a remake of the 1971 collaboration between Clint Eastwood and his favorite director Don Siegel—the film credits the source novel by Thomas Cullinan (originally called "The Painted Devil"), but also the original's screenplay by Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp (both written under psuedonyms). It is one of the few box-office failures of Eastwood's career, but it is one of his favorites as it was Don Siegel's opinion that it was the best film he had directed. Universal Studios' handling of the film's marketing caused a rift between them and their star, which led to him leaving Universal for Warner Brothers, and one can only speculate why it did so poorly. Eastwood was Universal's biggest stars at the time and it was thought because the film was marketed as a typical Eastwood action film that it didn't succeed, being decidedly different in scope and purpose, and because Eastwood spends so much of the film laid-up from a war injury. Whatever the reason, The Beguiled is well-regarded as an atypical Eastwood film by both fans of the star and Siegel. That it also features a great performance by the legendary Geraldine Page doesn't hurt, either.

If it is so well-regarded, why the hell re-make it? Good question. The story, about a wounded Union soldier who is found and harbored by a Southern Seminary for young women, hasn't changed. It is still quite solidly in the Southern Gothic tradition. But, times have changed, and with it, the angle that Coppola approaches the story from.

It's a bucolic Virginia morning as Amy (Oona Lawrence), a young student of Miss Farnsworth's Seminary for Young Women, goes about her morning duties, picking berries, mushrooms, communing with nature. What she doesn't expect is that she'd come across Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell), a Union soldier of the 66th out of New York, splayed out under a tree, suffering from a nasty bullet wound to the leg. She's curious, a bit wary, but her instinct is to take him back to the seminary. "do you want to go back (to the Army)?" she asks him, as he leans on her for support. "Maybe," he says in a thick Irish brogue "when me leg stops bleeding."

The women are in the middle of a sewing lesson when he's collapsed onto the path before the front entryway. His wound is checked and it's bad. McBurney has just enough presence to say "I am grateful to be your prisoner" before he passes out. The head of the seminary, Miss Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman) gives instructions to the girls to lift him into the house to the parlor on the first floor. There, while the other girls gather like sparrows outside the locked door, she cleans his leg and stitches the wound, which is a bloody mess.

Miss Farnsworth's first instinct is to alert the Union soldiers who occasionally pass by, putting a blue rag on the fence that separates the seminary from the road out front. She is persuaded by the girls not to do so, at least until his leg is healed. To this, she agrees, but only for a limited time. When McBurney becomes conscious, he tells her that he deserted the battlefield after becoming wounded, and was only there because he'd accepted $300 to take another man's place in the Union army. He acquiesces to Miss Farnsworth's plans to send him away, but it's quite clear he doesn't want to go back into the service. Her loyalties become confused when a pair of Southern soldiers come to the house for food, and no word is mentioned about their unexpected guest.

The girls of the school become quite taken with Corporal McBurney, finding any excuse to be close by when anyone enters the room in order to sneak a peak at the soldier. Amy feels closest to him and protective as she's the one who found him. But, it is Miss Edwina Morrow (Kirsten Dunst), who has the deepest feelings for him. For his part, McBurney, fearing that he could be turned over to the Rebel soldiers at any time, tries to gain as many allies as possible in the house, concentrating on Miss Farnsworth, who has the most to lose by keeping him there, and Edwina, to whom he professes great affection. But, he is in the thoughts of all of the girls, and relations inside the house become strained with similar, if differing agendas. During evening prayers, one of the girls (Elle Fanning) sneaks to his room to give the Colonel a long, lingering kiss good-night.

When McBurney is recovered enough to be able to amble about with the use of a cane, Miss Farnsworth and the girls decide to throw him a dinner, show him "some real Southern hospitality." A well-intentioned idea on the whole, but in the particular, all of the girls try to out-do each other in impressing the Colonel, wearing their finest clothes and jewelry and trying one-up each other by telling him who made what in the dinner.

The evening ends with music and McBurney is treated to a performance by all the women, each of whom appraise him with their own thoughts—he must think he's in the luckiest position he could be in, but he is still a prisoner, and is probably losing that realization.

"...similar, if differing agendas"

As his strength grows, he starts to make a case with Miss Farnsworth that he could be useful as a groundskeeper, and begins to clear brush, trim trees, and generally tend to work that has been neglected during the war. All the time, he continues to make advances on Edwina, while not betraying anything but trustworthiness to Miss Farnsworth, who starts to see McBurney as a needed presence.

This can't come to any good, and with so much temptation, and a misguided idea that he might be gaining favor and some control over the situation, McBurney makes an error in judgement that further cripples him and causes the situation at the seminary to deteriorate at a rapid pace. He fails to realize that he is at the school's mercy. And the quality of mercy in times of war can be quite strained.

Coppola's direction is austere—far more austere and far less heated than Siegel's direction of the previous version. Siegel brought a quality of guignol and even a bit of horror to his version, while Coppola's is all surface gentility, betraying good manners that are always presented up-front, while their opposite simmers underneath. It is most interesting that, given the time interval between the versions, that Coppola's adaptation is not afraid to present that veneer of civility practically all of the way through—she is very much on the girls' side (and although one can hardly say that Siegel's film is on the side of McBurney, we are much more privy to the Eastwood's versions private reactions than we are to Farrell's, who only betrays any duplicity in times of desperation. Eastwood's corporal was a smiling fox, while Farrell is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Coppola isn't afraid to show the fractured relationship of the girls, without a hint of judgment or condemnation that they might work against each other for their own ends. Each one sees a different side of McBurney, the one he wishes them to see, and that they act on instinct and are all individuals makes it a bit more understandable, empowering, but hardly feminist.

All's fair in love and war, Coppola's version of The Beguiled brings that home in one dark combination of both.