The Beguiled (2017)

First, two dimensional performances by everyone. 2. No sexual tension between Kidman and Farrell 3.No suppressed sexuality in the younger cast members which the earlier film was notable for 4. Photography consists of oaks, with dripping moss, mist and slanting sun or moonlight, again and again

Fmovies: I have seen the original version of this film, which starred Clint Eastwood, many years ago and remembered it as being atmospheric and full of sexual tension so was looking forward to seeing this. Unfortunately I was in for a huge disappointment. The pace was slow, dialogue laboured, scenes so darkly 'lit' my overwhelming impression of the film is endless greyness. Even the beautiful and talented Nicole Kidman couldn't lift it out of the gloom. The characters had no flesh on their bones, there was no back story of any depth and I cared so little for any of them that I fell asleep. I was saddened to wake from my slumber and discover I had only slept for a few, too brief, minutes and this turgid film was still playing. I decided I must try harder to get on board as it was my time and money after all and I could sleep for free at home so concentrated on staying awake and waiting for the excitement, as every film has at least a little bit of excitement, but not this one. It is one-paced, boring, dull, nothing of any import happens at all. Save your money, stay at home and watch the original, it's a far better film than this drivel.

Honestly, I can appreciate a slow building drama that takes its time to build characters. Unfortunately, this remake of the film gives us very little in the way of conflict or tension after the setup and introduction of the characters.

There is some decent acting here from the cast, but I found it nearly impossible to see any detail in their faces due to the choice of shooting in very low light or artificially creating the effect in post. While I can't place blame entirely on the film as our local theater may have had issues with their projection system. Still, I prefer to see the expressions in actor's faces, otherwise I might as well be listening to a radio play.

The film could have been a full stop brighter and adding some fill light on the faces still would have allowed the look to be dark and drab as it was apparently intended.

By the time we get to the third act we still aren't rooting for our protagonist and frankly it's not completely clear until the climax that it's supposed to be Kidman's character. The editing is unimpressive.

This remake of "The Beguiled" isn't anything special. I suspect the jurors who awarded Coppola "Cannes Best Director Award" must have not have seen the film. For me it was best summed up by a phrase I overheard by a nearby audience member, "Is that it?". Yes... I'm afraid so.

The Beguiled fmovies. I have some lovely scenic videos on my camera, does that mean I can win Best Director at Cannes also? All seeing this film did was remind me of how much I enjoyed the trashy, tawdry original movie, which didn't even have to try half as hard as this one needed to to achieve atmosphere, characterization, and coherence.

Sofia took a simple story of love-starved ladies and adolescent girls alone with a handsome scoundrel who uses and abuses them until they turn the tables on him, and won an award for changing it into a confusing, dull, illogical mess of a movie with some pretty scenic views scattered here and there. Apparently this story was supposed to be told from the women's point of view, but there was no point at all.

There is also no point in viewing this film, so stick with the original.

A double-bill of THE BEGUILED, Thomas Cullinan's source novel is a civil-war drama positing a tantalizing scenario where a wounded union soldier fetches up in a southern all-girls' school, nurtured to recovery by the apparently good-willed women but also subjected to temptations from female gazes and one false move, he will go through purgatory of his sorry life.

The 1971 version is directed by Don Siegel, the third of his five collaborations with Clint Eastwood, who plays the Yankee Corporal John McBurney, and is discovered by a 12-year-old Amy (Ferdin, an absorbing talent), to whom he indulges with a peck on her lips, a blatant way to take away a child's first kiss (also pretty provocative by today's regressive yardstick), instantly, what Siegel hammers home to viewers is that he is not a humdinger, and through glimpses of fleeting flashback interleaved into the narrative, John emerges as a congenital liar, flippant and manipulative, currying favor from his petticoat accompany to slough from a possible fall of incarceration, whether it is Miss Marsha (Page), the headmistress of the seminary school, Edwina (Hartman), the virginal teacher to whom he claims his attraction, a nubile 17-year-old student Carol (Ann Harris), who is sexually active, even the slave Hallie (Mercer, a defiant soul hampered by her identity), cannot evade his come-ons.

The advent of a hot-blooded albeit bedridden male inevitably causes an erotic disruption among the exclusive distaff clique, whose members are circumspectly secluded from the battlefield merely outside their perimeter and sexually repressed, for pert, callow girls, they are inclined to project John as a perfect specimen of their untested sexual allure versus the opposite sex, in the cases of Edwina and Carol, one is the prudish committed type and the other is a wanton nymphet. But the most complex character amongst them is no doubt Miss Marsha, whose incest past and subliminal lesbian proclivity get a full treatment in the audacious script and visual presentation, the latter is even coalesced with a flagrant religious connotation to soup up the film's maverick idiom. When the crunches arrives, a man's conceit in his potency is punished by blunt castration and signifies a rude awakening of the priapic worship.

On top of his virile stallion credence, Clint Eastwood imbues a cunning, almost overweening facade which audience isn't familiar with, not cut from the same cloth from his hard-boiled tough-guy legend. Geraldine Page, emboldened by her matriarchal gravitas and demanding onus, doesn't shy away from any extraneous intrusion (the Union and the Confederacy alike) and builds a palpably beguiling tension through the mind games she plays with Eastwood yet holds the rein from stem to stern in unyielding resolution of taking the escalating situation in her own hands. Elizabeth Hartman, the fragile Oscar-nominated actress whose premature demise was a harrowing tragedy ripe for cinematic transposition, brings about something equally tangible and visceral as she is bedeviled by the discord between a man's promise and his action, but still holds out the last remaining benevolence out of her own impressionable nature.

Crowned BEST DIRECTOR in Cannes, Sofia Coppola's remake is an aesthetically beguiling psychological intrigue, superbly recreates a mystical Gothic quaintness in the closing days of the civil war entrapped within the terrain of a majestic mansion of the antebellum south, which certainly is a scintillating upgrade f

Yesterday I watched the remake of The beguiled and I found it much less impressive than the film made in 1971, but I couldn't remember so well the older version because I watched it more or less 20 years ago so I decided to watch it today to make a comparison. I find that the new version was completely spoiled by PC fanaticism. I don't understand why Sofia Coppola left out Hallie the slave, slavery was a key point on the American Civil war and Hallie was an important character with lots of interesting dialogues. She also left out the scenes of the crush between the soldier and Amy, the 12 years old girl in order to not shock people with paedophilia. The incestuous memories of Martha were also left out. In summary, she impoverished the characters, their relationships and their thoughts to avoid shocking PC people and replaced the interesting varied characters by a group of pretty blondes. The first version is much more thrilling and interesting. It's a shame that now with much better make up and photography the core of the film was spoiled.