The Beguiled

[osprey_archer]

I rarely rewatch movies, but I rewatched Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled this week, and liked it just as much as the first time - although I pined slightly for the space of the big screen where I first saw it: The Beguiled is so heavy on atmosphere that the immersive experience really does make it richer.

All of Coppola’s work is atmospheric, but some of her earlier movies are nothing but atmosphere (Marie Antoinette comes to mind). The Beguiled, meanwhile, is a gothic thriller, which means that it comes equipped with a plot (Coppola adapted it from a Clint Eastwood movie, adapted from a novel), and gives the movie form and shape and at the same time makes even stronger Coppola’s main strength: the atmosphere. What good is a decaying mansion isolated in the woods without a little peril to bring out its full gothic potential?

In fact, I think Coppola’s really found her genre with this movie. The gothic utilizes all her strengths (not just atmosphere, but also sad blonde girls) and compensates for her weaknesses and offers so many different possibilities - not just decaying Southern plantations but crumbling Italian villas, Revolution-scarred French chateaux, Nantucket whaling captain’s mansions lashed by the howling winds from the sea that drowned the beautiful blonde widow’s husband within sight of land, one November night, as she stood on the widow’s walk and watched his ship go down…

I am agnostic about whether the captain’s widow should be a loving wife broken by grief, or else secretly responsible for bringing the ship down through witchcraft. Either seems potentially delicious.

It’s possible that The Beguiled isn’t Coppola finding her genre so much as me realizing that the gothic is one of mine. (How much Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart can one girl read before realizing this? Apparently a lot.) Although if Coppola decided that she wanted to direct gothics for the rest of her life, I certainly wouldn’t try to dissuade her.

Comments

[sovay]

I am agnostic about whether the captain’s widow should be a loving wife broken by grief, or else secretly responsible for bringing the ship down through witchcraft. Either seems potentially delicious.

I see no reason you couldn't have both.

[kore]

Like good Democrat grandmother Hillary Clinton in her white pantsuit by day, enemy-poisoning nation-building skyscraper-scaling evil Hillary Clinton in her black pantsuit by night!

[osprey_archer]

I really think we should be envisioning Evil Amy March here. When there's a storm coming in she likes to stand on the widow's walk of her house, her jet black gown flapping in the wind coming off the frothing bay. People say that she's looking for her husband, because he was lost on just such a day and it sent her a trifle mad, poor thing, but really she's gathering power for her spells.

[kore]

YES
JUST YES

maybe she makes sweet little anti-wreck charms for captains to wear on their watch-chains or something. "It will keep you safe from harm!" Little do they realize that it is draining all their spiritual essence into her, er, vessel of power. One cabin-boy swears he sees a white witch with gold hair floating along the rigging up to the top of the mast and laughing. He is told to lay off the grog.

[osprey_archer]

Does she kill him because she's driven mad by jealousy of his true love, the Sea? Only to realize that in drowning him she has merely sent him forever into the bosom of his other lover, oops.

[kore]

Or the captain's widow is in love with the sea, and the ship is a courting gift. (The ship's cat escapes.)

[kore]

I kept meaning to see that, it looked like a really interesting updating of the original.

[osprey_archer]

I hope you do! I really liked it.