The Beguiled (2017)

What looks like is going to be a Gothic horror set in the Civil War period, turns out to be a psycho-sexual drama with a slightly demented finish. I was not fooled by the trailer or other marketing, because I'd seen the original version of the story from 1971. There are a few changes in the film which were supposed to alter the perspective from the soldiers point of view to that of the women in the story. I guess that would be the justification for remaking a film that was not particularly compelling the first time out. Let's just say for the moment that they may have altered the perspective some but they have not overcome the issue of the film lacking a need to exist in the first place.

Sophia Coppola is a director that many admire but I have found most of the films by her, that I have seen, to be cold and disengaging. They are beautifully shot and "The Beguiled" is certainly beautiful. Set in Virginia during the last year of the War between the States, the story concerns a wounded Union soldier taken in by a girls academy. The school is run by matron southerner Nicole Kidman. She is assisted by a younger woman played by Kirsten Dunst and they are in charge of five young women and girls who are being educated in a traditional form for young ladies. As they learn French and penmanship and sewing skills, their life is disrupted by the war around them. The introduction of Corporal McBurney (a solid Colin Farrell) into their island  of antebellum etiquette throws things into a tizzy. Since it is a Sophia Coppola film however, it is done at a languishing pace with each frame posed as if it were a still life being painted for the wall of another plantation.

The pacing of the story is so agonizingly slow, but still interesting, because of the mores and cultural rules the people of that time operate in. Even when he is being chastised by Kidman,  the dialogue between the two consists of polite and well thought out vocabulary. The inflections and tones contain the reprimands more than any word does. McBurney slowly courts the Dunst character and again it is done in a manner reflecting the times. In the original film, Clint Eastwood is much more clearly manipulative and he is wooing multiple women simultaneously. Farrell's version of the character seems sincere in his approach to Edwina, but Kidman's Miss Martha is also drawn to him and Elle fanning as the recalcitrant Alicia is the most brazen of the girls who have sexualized the Corporal in their heads. The little girls are fascinated by him as well but it is his Irish Charm and status as a Union soldier that holds their interest. As the story gets closer to the dramatic elements, it feels like it wakes up in a burst of energy and tries to accomplish everything the movie set up in the first ninety minutes in a two minute segment. There is a betrayal on a couple of levels, but those come rapidly and are followed by a resolution that seems to have been arrived at capriciously. The film feels like it is missing the second act.

Farrell and Dunst are the two standout performances. They are tentative and then passionate and frustrated and anguished in very effective moments. Kidman seems a little miscast. She is older but certainly desirable rather than repressed and desperate. Her delicate bathing of Farrell when he first arrives was the strongest part of her performance but in the manner she shows herself during the rest of the film, she feels a little stiff. The biggest unpleasant surprise from the actors comes from Elle fanning, an actress that i thought was special in  Super 8, but here she looks like she is play acting and although she is an aggressive flirt, she does not give off the impression of lustfulness that would justify the Corporal's behavior.

The only way I see this film as being a more feminist version of the original is that only one of the women completely falls under the sexual power of the man, and he is the one who is manipulated by two of the other women. That's about it. This is a good film but not a great one. It retells the original story but without much justification for doing so. It also makes the languid pace of the original seem frenetic by comparison.  The only music in the film occurs on screen when the girls are singing or performing, with the exception of an occasional synthesizer note held for a long period as a prelude to a couple of moments near the end. That may be another reason the fil feels longer than it should, without a melody it feels plodding. This is a film for Coppola Completists  or someone who has missed the original and has already seen everything else playing. I am largely indifferent on it.  

Maleficent

Disney is doing it's darndest to exploit all their properties and keep us entertained at the same time. A traditional retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" could have worked fine, just as the live action "101 Dalmatians" did a dozen or so years ago. Somewhere in the bowels of the Imagineering Department or in the Production agreement with big movie stars, someone has decided that a straight remake is not cool, and a story needs to be tweaked to make it fresh. The best known example of this in the recent past has been the musical "Wicked". A couple of years ago, Disney re-imagined "Alice in Wonderland". Now it is time for a classic fairy tale to get it's own variation and they have chosen one with a great villainess which makes the visualization a handy shortcut to the story.

There is a great deal to admire about this movie. I thought the opening section in which the character of "Maleficent" is introduced in her child form was really marvelous. The character was appealing and there is a nice romantic edge to the story line that is being developed. The character of Stephan however, is not quite as nicely developed and it was hard to see the conflicting choices he was faced with until the key scenes in the movie. The character development here was incomplete which makes some of the plotting a little muddled. Although a conflict between the two worlds was suggested in the narration, we are not really shown any of that except in a direct combat scene. One side is immediately presented as evil and as a result, they lose any interest as part of the story. A whole Kingdom becomes a cardboard cutout villain. The movie shows armies and battles but nothing that would back up the need or desire for those battles.

My daughter has watched "Once Upon a Time" and we have both seen "Frozen" so the twist in the movie is not as great as it should be. I liked it pretty well but she feels that it is almost becoming a contemporary cliche. The movie is aggressively unromantic and that trend may reflect blowback from all the years that Disney has been accused of brainwashing little girls about "true love" and the handsome prince. The switch in tone is meant to appeal to more modern audiences and ways of thinking, but it feels like something of the magic is being lost by doing this. The outcome does differ from tradition and while that might sometimes be appealing, it does feel strange when being thrust upon a story like this. In a way it makes the calculation of changing the character focus even more noticeable.

Angelina Jolie was obviously perfectly cast in the movie. She almost has the high cheekbones without the prosthetic and special effects makeup. Her eyes do a lot of the acting in the movie but her voice is also used exceptionally well. She is the main reason to see the film. She appears to be invested in telling the story and selling her performance. She has two emotional transformations that she has to pull off and both of them succeed pretty well. The second one is more subtle and takes up much of the storyline but it feels solid because it is allowed to play out. You can see the turn coming, but you can also believe that it might not get here, That is the value of her performance. It is a bit disconcerting that the bad guy has to be the hero and the reverse happens as well. I hope that the desire to tell traditional stories doesn't require us to subvert what came before every time. I'm willing to go along today because of the casting and performance, but screenwriters should be careful about going to that well too frequently.

This may have been a film where the 3D process would be worth seeing. I saw it in a regular two dimensional form and the edges of characters looked soft and artificial to me. I saw several spots where the extra dimensionality would be exciting in the scene, and make the events in those sequences more dynamic. The creatures of the moors that Maleficent is the de-facto queen over look a bit cartoonish and sometimes silly. There are long sequences where the beauty of the woods is supposed to be a marvel but it just looks conventional and weak. The best live comparison I could think of to make was Ridley Scott's "Legend". The enchanted forest in that film looked more real on the sets than anything in this CGI wonderland that has been created for the character here to inhabit.

You may notice that I've said nothing about Sleeping Beauty herself. Elle Fanning is a good actress, she was great in "Super 8" a couple of years ago. She is fine in this film but there is so little to her part that almost any pretty young actress would have been fine in the role. It has to be a thankless task to star in a fairy tale as the princess who is subject to a curse, and end up playing second fiddle to a character that might be mostly defined by her horns. The three good faeries are played strictly for laughs and between them and King Stephan, there is no emotional investment in what goes on with Aurora. There is more to say but it is late and I've been busy this weekend as you will see if you visit the other blog.  I may come back and add some more to this review but for now i can say it was an interesting experience that I can't quite warm up to, but did admire at times.