The Beguiled loses lustre of the original
The Beguiled
(out of 4) Starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence and Angourie Rice. Written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. 94 minutes. 14A Sofia Coppola’s remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 Civil War psychodrama won her the director’s prize at Cannes in May, and who are we to argue with the wisdom of the Palme d’Or jury?
Perhaps we might inquire why Coppola’s The Beguiled didn’t win for its cinematography or art direction. Redolent of white lace, green moss, filtered sunlight and muted candlelight, it’s a great-looking picture, as artfully and moodily conjured as all Coppola’s films have been since her 1999 debut The Virgin Suicides, whose lead actress Kirsten Dunst costars in this new one. The story is briskly told — it’s 11 minutes shorter than Siegel’s version — with good performances that alternately amuse, seduce and shock.
Extolling Coppola’s direction is problematic, though, because she doesn’t do much to Siegel’s original other than take things away from it. She dropped a slave character from the film, and excised subtexts of incest and rape that made Siegel’s film — and its incongruous male lead Clint Eastwood — seem like art house porn.
Coppola’s The Beguiled is downright becalmed, even more so with her decision to have wounded Yankee soldier John McBurney, now played by Colin Farrell, be a hapless Irish immigrant caught in a war for which he has no quarrel. He’s a more sympathetic figure than Eastwood’s lecherous deserter.
The teachers and students at a Southern girls’ school are much the same as in Siegel’s incarnation, although Coppola emphasizes the gilded-cage feeling — a career trademark — with repeated shots from outside the school’s imposing gates.
Nicole Kidman crisply plays headmistress Miss Martha Farnsworth, a Bible-reading patrician who is not afraid of violence (or other extreme measures) and who may be open to lustful temptation.
She’s assisted by lovelorn French teacher Edwina (Dunst), who seems afraid to look people in the eye but desires male attention. They have but a handful of students, preteens to late teens, ranging from precocious nature lover Amy (Oona Laurence) to flirty thrill-seeker Alicia (Elle Fanning). McBurney’s presence isn’t nearly as disruptive as Eastwood’s version was 46 years prior, or as deserving of female vengeance.
Yet The Beguiled hits much the same dramatic beats regardless, leaving anyone with a memory of the original film puzzled as to what Coppola was trying to achieve. Peter Howell You may not know much about 20th-century art manifestos, but you’ll know what you like with Cate Blanchett’s stunning turn as13 wildly diverse characters who explore them in Manifesto.
German visual artist Julian Rosefeldt reimagines his wonkily creative 13-channel film installation into a 90-minute feature, an art film in the purist sense. It won’t be for everyone, but open minds will be rewarded with a mind-tickling trip carried on engaging visuals and enthralling work from a shape-shifting Blanchett. The Australian actress has done this type of work before, embodying Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. Here, she takes on a whirl of personas, accents and looks, from a homeless man hollering in a Scottish burr to a sneering Russian choreographer lecturing a dance class of Alieninspired chorines on Fluxus.
There’s also room for humour, especially Blanchett’s suburban American mom reciting Claes Oldenburg’s “I Am for an Art . . .” as grace while her fidgeting kids and husband wait for a desiccated chicken to be served. Linda Barnard It’s a madcap day in the life of a Farsi-language radio station based in San Francisco. But suffused throughout Babak Jalali’s wonderfully wry tale is a sense of sorrow and loss, the exile’s longing for return to a homeland. Mohsen Namjoo embodies manic hilarity as Royani, the station’s programming director, a novelist struggling to make the best of expat existence. His big coup: bringing Kabul Dreams, which is actually Afghanistan’s first rock band, to “jam” with their idols, Metallica. It’s just one of the story’s many comical absurdities.
The station owner is more interested in wrestling than broadcasting while his daughter, Maral (Boshra Dastournezhad) seeks to inject some sanity into a chaotic environment. There’s a whole slew of oddball characters, including long-suffering Reza (Mohammad Talani) and dear old Miss Sherbet (Bella Warda), whose long-held grief is unleashed during an unexpected on-air appearance. Jalali has constructed a true comic gem elevated by a deep sense of poignancy. Bruce DeMara Asked to shoot video in 2011for director Zaradasht Ahmed’s doc on Iraq after the U.S. military pull out, emergency hospital nurse Nori Sharif insists on filming patients and kids rather than himself, saying other lives are more interesting than his. It turns out otherwise.
He opens with contentment and hope. Bloody turmoil soon follows. There are suicide vests, sticky bombs and finally, a Daesh takeover, forcing Sharif to evacuate with his family, eventually reaching a desert refugee camp.
As an emergency medic, he captures often-graphic scenes of violence perpetuated by unknowable enemies. He’s desperate to stay at the hospital, even after the doctor leaves, until fleeing with his family becomes imperative. Sharif struggles to be strong; the only time he weeps is when he returns to see the hospital destroyed.
An emotionally powerful examination of the price of conflict, Sharif is honourable and brave, both as filmmaker and the symbol of a suffering people who long for peace. LB Texas auteur Terrence Malick’s disregard for storytelling and conventional cinema structure seemed inspired in his Palme d’Or-winning The Tree of Life in 2011. His output since then makes indifference approach arrogance.
Song to Song is loosely based on the music scene in Malick’s vibrant home city of Austin, a topic and locale that by rights should offer some kind of artistic rejuvenation.
No such luck. Bereft of ideas and anything resembling a script, Malick sets loose his A-list cast — including Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett — to wander listlessly amidst couplings and uncouplings that are more tiresome than tragic.
Musical pursuits become incidental to the proceedings.
“I was desperate to feel something real,” Mara’s character Faye whispers in a voice-over about her life. Viewers of Song to Song can nod in weary agreement.
Extras include “The Music Behind the Movie” featurette. PH