The Beguiled (2017)

Film: The Beguiled (2017)
Stars: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning
Director: Sofia Coppola
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The films of Sofia Coppola run the gamut between movies that I adore for all-time (Lost in Translation) to the best of the year (The Bling Ring) to pictures I don't quite get the hype surrounding (Marie Antoinette), but they're always worth the time investment.  For some reason her films are always greeted with criticism that they are too similar in focusing on the world of rich, white women (suspiciously a criticism that isn't levied at Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, or Paul Thomas Anderson, but you draw your own conclusions there), and while there is some truth to that, her movies still have a feminism in them that few other mainstream pictures have, and I rarely leave uninterested in the movies.  Thus, I caught The Beguiled with an ardent fan's interest, curious to see where her latest film (one that has largely disappeared at this point from the film year conversation) ranked in my personal estimation.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in the waning days of the Civil War, where Martha (Kidman) runs a girl school within the ruins of a largely abandoned South, assisted by a dowdy Edwina (Dunst), who dreams of getting out.  One day, one of the girls in the school comes across a handsome, wounded Union corporal, John McBurney (Farrell), who has abandoned the battlefield and is in desperate need of medical treatment.  Despite trepidations, Martha and the students decide to let him stay at the school, and slowly there's a game of cat-and-mouse, with John seducing the lonely women who have been neglected of attention through the war, and starts winning their favor until Edwina, who has become madly in love with him and views him as her escape from "spinsterhood," finds him having sex with the eldest student Alicia (Fanning).  She pushes him down the stairs, and in the process he breaks his leg badly, to the point where Martha (whom he has also spurned) feels like she needs to amputate the leg.  It is never entirely clear whether this was the only option, but Corporal McBurney is convinced they crippled him out of spite and vows revenge, eventually getting a gun and holding the women hostage until Martha finds a way to poison him, even though Edwina has forgiven him and plans to marry him.  Corporal McBurney dies, to the devastation of Edwina, who viewed him as her only way out of this existence, and the film ends just as it began, with the women alone in the house, with no implication of how this random man has changed their lives, if at all.

The film functions almost best if you view this as something removed from the South.  Aside from the two teachers, five students, and the corporal, there is only one other allusion to actual humans in the outside world, when the Confederate soldiers come looking for the soldier.  Part of me wished that they had skipped this portion of the picture, as it could just as easily be a strange Purgatory or Hell, a punishment for the misgivings of war or of the soldier himself, as the isolation of the picture is its best attribute.  The movie ends so closely to the beginning you could view this as a sadistic Groundhog Day, and suddenly later that day they will find a different wounded soldier in the woods.  These women quite literally only have each other when the corporal comes into the house, disrupting their fragile ecosystem of boredom and trying their best to carry on in the face of a seemingly never-ending war.  When the film plays with this idea, of them trying desperately to end a cycle that seems too oppressive to overcome, it makes for very interesting film.

But it doesn't seem as intrigued by this concept, and when reality strikes, it feels a bit too soft.  The motives of Corporal John appear too accidental, and that of Martha perhaps a bit too strained.  It isn't entirely clear what Corporal John did to deserve the ire of these women except refuse to love them all, and in the process it's hard to tell in the first half who exactly the villain is supposed to be.  When Corporal John goes mad and puts a gun on the students in the second half, it feels almost like a copout, with the hanging question of whether they have just maimed a largely innocent man (albeit one with a wandering eye) for no reason other than jealousy.  Coppola doesn't play with this idea enough, and the ending becomes a bit predictable and doesn't idle around in the fascinating way the first half of the picture does, like a long plantation version of Marienbad, but that doesn't mean there aren't some fine elements in the picture, and overall I was a fan, even if it never approaches the heights of something like Lost in Translation or the sharpness of The Bling Ring.

Those were my thoughts on The Beguiled-how about yours?  At this point I'm assuming a lot of you have caught the picture, so anyone else want to weigh in on where they thought Coppola was going with the movie?  Share your thoughts below!