Exploring the power of women
Sofia Coppola goes goth as she modernizes ‘The Beguiled’
THE most appealing aspect of Sofia Coppola’s new southern gothic “The Beguiled” is how entirely focused it is on its own world. By premise alone, a story about a man threatening a female stronghold during the Civil War is rife with the overtones of identity politics — the film easily could have been about feminism and race.
But Coppola’s characters are too interesting, their dramas too rich, to need to speak to the world outside a girls’ school helmed by a domineering Nicole Kidman. Speaking over the phone recently, the director said that her intent for the film was to focus on the power dynamics within — and not without — this swampy domicile of lust and brooding rage.
It’s up to the audience to connect this film to larger themes.
It’s a testament to Coppola’s visual, rhythmic and dramatic talent that the problems she solves in “The Beguiled” sound purely artistic yet also modernize an old story: Coppola watched the 1971 original film starring Clint Eastwood, found it lacking and too focused on the male point of view, and sought to create a portrait of diverse female characters with each their own set of story arcs.
In Civil War Mississippi, Kidman heads a seminary for young ladies, including characters played by Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning. An injured soldier, John McBurney
(Colin Farrell), ends up recuperating at the seminary, setting off a chain of events and passions that reveal darker sides of the women who surround him. The result is a film with three acts, each equally surprising as it transitions into new territory.
Coppola spoke about the many themes bubbling below the surface in her film, which opens Friday:
Q: You listed fascinating films like “Under the Skin” and “Ex Machina” in your recent list of your favorite films of the 21st Century. Do you have an attraction to movies about dangerous women who also are sexy and seductive?
A: I never thought about that connection. Yeah, I think there is a lot of mystery between men and women and how we see each other. That’s intriguing and that’s the heart of those stories. They’re about the power between women and men and how it can kind of fluctuate.
Q: It seems like “The Beguiled” starts off where the men and women see each other for their sexuality and not their potential danger.
A: There are so many levels to that. They see him as a dangerous enemy, but they’re also human and have desire. They haven’t been around a man for a long time. There’s a lot of elements confusing them.
Q: Is there a difference between how a modern woman would interpret desire for a man, versus someone in a more sexually repressed society?
A: We talked about that, and the actors got that these characters are really repressed. Nicole was focused on her character being a religious woman torn between what she was raised to believe and her human instinct. And I loved that this story was full of tension, sexual tension under the surface in the heat of the South.
Q: Thinking of Elle Fanning’s character, she could easily exist in a modern film as a teenager just wanting to rebel.
A: The backstory in the book is that her mother raised her to get a rich husband and her role was to be attractive, and attractive to men. There’s definitely women still like that. So she can understand playing this specific kind of woman, whom she’s not like at all. And also at that age, she’s discovering her sexuality — and not having anyone around.
Q: The film has all these versions of female agency and desire. Nicole Kidman’s character seems so complex. She’s supposed to be the responsible one, but she’s the one who decides to have the soldier stay.
A: I love that she’s torn. Her main motivation is to protect these women, so she wants to get rid of him, but it’s so nice to have a man around. So there’s just this conflict going on which she’s able to convey so well. It makes her human.
Q: How did you think about the set? Were you happy to have the space isolated from the outside world?
A: I wanted them to be cut off from the outside, to have this claustrophobic feeling, and the setting was a big part of bringing that atmosphere. Shooting on location was an important part of that.
Q: Did you ask the question: Do I want to deal with American history or what the Civil War was about? And where women or other people in society stood at that time?
A: I was thinking about women in wartime. I didn’t want to go too deep into that or make a historical film, but I did want to show the war was going on and what it was like for these women, cut off from the world.
Q: Is there any way you thought about this film as a war film?
A: It definitely is taking place during wartime, but focusing on what’s going on at home. There is a brutality. And it brings up different things in the characters that another time wouldn’t have. That’s definitely an aspect.