The Beguiled

Wait, we're missing a Fanning sister

Grade: B –

Director: Sofia Coppola

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice, Oona Laurence, Emma Howard, and Addison Riecke

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 36 min.

The Beguiled is how Wonder Woman might have turned out if Steve Trevor never left Themyscira. An injured soldier lands on the doorstep of an all-woman world, both beset by suspicions over the other’s motives. While out picking mushrooms in Civil War-era Virginia, twelve-year-old Amy (Oona Laurence) stumbles across Union corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell), separated from his regiment and his leg badly wounded. Amy helps John stagger back to Miss Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies, an erstwhile plantation home that’s now a boarding school housing its titular headmistress Martha (Nicole Kidman), head teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), and five female pupils in varying stages of maturation and development.

All express initial consternation over the arrival of this dastardly “blue belly,” but they agree to nurse John back to health before turning him over to Confederate authorities. Their Christian charity gradually segues into undercurrents of infatuation and sexual tensions, sourced from a combination of John’s fawning and a cloistered setting devoid of male presence. Amy melts under John’s assurance that she’s his “best friend” in the house. The otherwise reproving Jane (Angourie Rice) basks in John’s praises of her musical skill. The comely Alicia (Elle Fanning) openly flirts with the visitor. The widowed Martha avails herself of John’s company under the guise of courtly hospitality and appears mildly jealous of his open fondness for Edwina. The uneasy milieu of manners unravels one night when John is caught in one of the lady’s chambers, triggering a macabre cascade of events.

This is the second film adaptation of Thomas Cullinan’s Southern Gothic novel, “The Painted Devil,” following Don Siegel’s 1971 version starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page.  It’s easy to see why director Sofia Coppola is attracted to a narrative that revolves around feminine empowerment and self-discovery, often in a privileged environs, à la her previous films Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere, and The Bling Ring. Here, Coppola shifts much of the male perspective in the 1971 adaptation to the female viewpoint, with mixed success. This comes at the expense of historical or cultural context. We hear little about the toll of the war, and even less about about John’s background. Coppola omits the slave character Hallie, present in both Cullinan’s book and the first film.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “beguiled” as to charm or enchant, sometimes in a deceptive way. It’s difficult, perhaps intentionally, to determine who is being deceptively charming in The Beguiled. The likely answer is everyone. But while the southern surroundings—filmed in Louisiana—hang heavy with mist and moss, the intoxicating atmospherics subsume the story. John and Edwina’s coupling progresses without much prompting—for example, his profession of “love” flies out of nowhere, as does the sharply emotional to and fro of their relationship throughout. Meanwhile, John and Martha’s increasingly corrosive interplay feels forced, born from narrative necessity rather than plot. While the ravages of war are fought far away, Miss Farnsworth’s wards don’t appear to want for food, shelter, or lace—their lone casualty is an untended garden, the double entendre undoubtedly intended. The film’s dubious lesson is that a patina of deportment and divinity cannot stifle the deep divides of gender and culture. Affairs of the heart, like toadstools, sometimes turn out to be poisonous.

Super 8

Scenes from the making of "Bonnie and Clyde II"

Grade: B

Director: J.J. Abrams

Starring: Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, and Riley Griffiths

Running Time: 1 hr. 42 min.

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Of the dozens of films Steven Spielberg has produced without directing over thirty years of filmmaking, never has his stylistic influence been so wholeheartedly appropriated as in Super 8. The latest thriller from director J.J. Abrams (whose Star Trek reboot was also an example of updated homage) is not just a cater-cousin to Spielberg’s iconic canon. It is a nostalgic paean whose fervent devotion is both its forte and, in part, a conspicuous shortcoming.

Beyond tiptoeing through the Spielberg’s cinematic tulips, what Super 8 accomplishes best of all is managing to mix and maintain childlike charm amid its chills and thrills. In other words, it’s a resurrection of the spirit of Spielberg’s films pre-The Color Purple, the unofficial start of his unabashed chase for acceptance as an auteur.

The technical similarities to Spielberg’s late-1970s/early-1980s work are obvious – indeed, the film is set during 1979 in a small town in Ohio, Spielberg’s home state. From a subfusc palette to distinctive camera pans, zoom into close ups, and lens flares, you feel as through you’re watching a revival of Spielberg’s early thrillers.

Moreover, there are the familiar themes of father-son relationships, suburban settings, and adolescent maturation, friendship, and first-love. It’s a story about otherworldly forces discovered by a bunch of kids just trying to make their first homemade movie.

Abrams also borrows Spielberg’s ever-keen ability to speak volumes with a single camera frame, starting with the opening shot of a worker changing a steel mill’s “Days Since Last Accident” tally from 784 down to 1. Four months after the untimely death of his mother, Joe (Joel Courtney) remains emotionally adrift and otherwise disconnected from his dad, Jack (Kyle Chandler), a deputy sheriff who still blames his wife’s demise on the town’s drunken miscreant, Louis (Ron Eldard).

Joe’s intermittent joy comes from palling around with his schoolmates as they try to make their own low-fi zombie flick, including portly, fast-talking director-in-waiting Charles (Riley Griffiths) and Alice (Elle Fanning), an ingénue who steals all the boys’ hearts with her fetching looks, access to a car, and ability to cry on cue.

While filming a nocturnal scene at an abandoned train station, the children witness the calamitous derailment of an Air Force locomotive, deliberately caused by a truck driven by their middle school biology teacher. His dying warning to them, coupled with the train’s mysterious cargo and the sudden arrival of military heavies, send the preteens into a state of panic that morphs into curiosity once something starts scaring away all the local canines, stealing electronic and mechanical devices, and attacking local townsfolk.

You can make a game out of ticking off the Spielberg and, yes, Abrams archetypes. There’s a creature whose menace is heightened by the fact that it goes unseen for the opening half film (Jaws along with Abrams’ smoke-monster in Lost and the beast in Cloverfield, which Abrams produced). Like Roy Scheider in Jaws, Jack is a small-town cop forced to confront forces beyond his job description and control – you’ll immediately recognize a scene in which Jack scampers down a city street, navigating menial concerns being lobbed in his direction to while en route to more pressing concerns.

And, there’s a science-fiction backdrop that Abrams uses to turn the clock back from Spielberg’s post-9/11 dread (War of the Worlds) to his post-Cold War themes of coexistence and innocence. Specifically, there’s a close encounter with – spoiler alert – an extra-terrestrial whose violent terrorizing turns out to be the consequence of human mistreatment and the being’s innate desire to go home. Indeed, the E.T. homage extends to the kid-centric protagonists – Joe even resembles an Elliott clone.

Be warned – Super 8 is not a film for small children, for both its violence (seen and unseen) and salty language. However, the strengths of this Spielberg simulacrum are as basic as the obsolete film technology from which it draws its title. Capable, enthusiastic acting, character development, smart cinematography, and actual storytelling combine for an enthralling, rewarding movie. The audience remains engaged, from the bone-rattling train wreck and the ferocious razzing of a gas station, to quiet, introspective moments, like Joe delicately applying zombie makeup to Alice or the two kids watching home movies of Joe and his mom.

The regrettable byproduct of this myth-raking is that Super 8 ends up feeling less a sturdy standalone than merely evocative of the films it photocopies. It’s also a predictable demerit that the climax is both derivative and incapable of living up to its buildup.

Regardless, it is the best big-budget movie thus far this season, conjuring not just the spirit of summertime youth but also summertime cinema. Indeed, it says something about the state of movies that the completed amateur film submission that’s finally played over the closing credits is easily more entertaining than most fallow superhero-of-the-week rubbish.

Neil Morris