Wounded and near death, a young Union Army corporal is found in the woods of Virginia during the height of the Civil War and brought to the nearby Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. Almost immediately he sets about beguiling the three women and five teenage girls stranded in this outpost of Southern gentility, eliciting their love and fear, pity and infatuation, and pitting them against one another in a bid for his freedom. But as the women are revealed for what they really are, a sense of ominous foreboding closes in on the soldier, and the question becomes: Just who is the beguiled?
★★☆☆☆
Union Army Corporal John Patrick McBurney, 20, is found wounded / near dead in the Virginia woods by thirteen year old Amelia Dabney while she's out mushroom hunting. Amelia decides to take John back to her nearby boarding school, the Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. Regarding the history of the school, the story goes that Farnsworth Estate (now school) went to seed some years prior when Martha's father chose to spend his time reading, hunting and chillin' on the porch rather than do anything to properly tend the land for profit. To make matters worse, his son and initial heir, Robert, developed a gambling addiction that further ruined the family finances. In desperation to save the ancestoral home, Martha decides to make a school of the place in hopes that wealth will once again come to the Farnsworth name via wealthy parents willing to pay handsomely for a good education for their daughters.
At the start of the story, Martha (who, btw, is not all that well liked in her community) is out doing a supply run, so John is already comfortably laid up in the house by the time she first meets him. There's an understanding at the school that enemy soldiers are to be reported immediately, but John's in such bad shape it seems only right that he be fixed up before any decisions on that topic are fully made.
Sixteen year old Emily Stevenson is typically left in charge during Martha's absences. Though a grown woman, there doesn't seem to be a lot of trust for Martha's younger sister, Harriet. It's also hinted that she might be a closet lush. But on "Team Harriet" we also meet fifteen year old Alicia Simms ("not Alice," as she likes to say, though the other students seem to insist on calling her that). Alicia is one student whose family doesn't come from money. A sort of charity case, she lives on the 3rd floor in what basically amounts to a storage closet, and she often feels Harriet Farnsworth is her only real friend.
Right from the start, John's presence causes quite the stir among the young ladies of the household, all in their late preteens to teens, the eldest being seventeen year old Edwina Morrow. Edwina, knowing her power and influence at the school revolves around her family's money, is not beyond tattling or blackmailing to get what she wants, a personality flaw that will later get her into a good dose of trouble when it comes her interactions with John.
Mattie, the last of the Farnsworth family slaves, works as the cook and general housekeeper for the school. One look at John being brought onto the property and she immediately senses no good is going to come from this newcomer. But for various reasons she chooses to remain silent and just watch how everything plays out. As the story unfolds, we get little asides and observances from Mattie here and there as she sees the effect of Martha keeping her students so isolated from general society for so long. Not only do the ladies become practically hyper and swoon-y at the presence of John, but high emotions also quickly stir up fierce jealousies, rivalries, you name it. Things that were perhaps prior minor petty disagreements between the ladies are now becoming the basis for displays of malicious backstabbing. And as John's wounds heal and he becomes strong again little by little, it's clear that at least on some level he revels in so many fair ladies ready to fight over him. John plays along with what he thinks is a game --- flirting, toying with the hearts of all the ladies, playing them against each other, convincing each that they've truly won his heart --- realizing only too late the hornet's nest he's got himself enmeshed in.
Beguiled is not laid out in the traditional chapters format you see in most novels. Instead, the reader is simply given a name break in the middle of scenes to indicate when perspective has switched either to a different student or one of the Farnsworth sisters. This sometimes means the reader is given the same scenes multiple times, but from different angles.I gotta be honest, it was often a struggle to maintain interest. I went into this story expecting MUCH more of a thriller element to be worked in, but in actuality it was mainly a plot bogged down with a ton of boring conversations and SO MUCH extraneous detail. For the most part, this story just dragged way too much for me. But it did have its moments here and there.
There's some interesting discussion on race. Not surprising, this being a Civil War-era novel. In one scene, housekeeper Mattie has her suspicions that Edwina is actually mixed-race and tells as much to Harriet Farnsworth. In another, John and Emily discuss what it really means when wealthy white citizens claim their black servants "are just like family".
There was potential here for a gripping thriller centered around what can happens when emotions run high and old disagreements are left unsettled. That's certainly the way it was marketed. But like I said, the writing just got too weighted down by unnecessary attention to minutiae and only mildly entertaining dialogue.
NOTE: This story has spoilers for Shakespeare's Macbeth.
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MOVIE NOTES
Well, I've now sat through both screen adaptations of this book. So how'd they hold up?
Well not surprisingly, I watched the more recent one first, since I probably wouldn't even be aware of this book at all if I hadn't been intrigued the first time I saw the trailer for Sofia Coppola's 2017 interpretation.
Things that were changed from book to screen:
* Martha's introduction into the story. In the book, she's first out running errands, comes in several pages after the introduction of John. In the film's opening, Martha (played by Nicole Kidman) is seen on the school grounds working in the garden. Kidman also plays Martha much calmer than I remember reading her in the book, but that could just be in part due to the chill demeanor Kidman brings to most of her characters in general.
* Book John McBurney is described as a pale Irishman with red hair and freckles. Screen version, viewers get dark Irishman Colin Farrell. On this point, I'm not mad.
* What happened to Harriet? Cut from the story entirely? I didn't see her mentioned at all. A quick look on IMDB shows no "Harriet" on the cast list, so I guess so. Edwina (played by Kirsten Dunst) is bumped to second in command. But in the screen version, Edwina is given more of the characteristics of Harriet, while Alicia is made to be more like book Edwina, as far as the temptress role. It all gets a little confusing.
* Well, staying true to the pace of the book I guess, the movie is crazy SLOW.
* Okay, what was up with the production crew? Were there budget cuts somewhere? The sound quality is crap. The actors mumble half their lines and the sound in general goes in and out. And WTF are all the lights?! This is just a tough movie to watch at all because it's literally a struggle to see the scenes at all! The only thing I can figure is that Coppola, at some point, said "Oh, we're going to be 100% authentic and only work in natural light, maybe a candle here and there." But girl, they had oil lamps back then that threw light fairly well. Even outdoor scenes were dark as shit. I didn't get it and it annoyed me. Can you tell? LOL
* But if you hang in there, you get a blip of ACTION, of all things, at the 1hr13 -- 1hr33 mark! But then it's gone.
*The ending was switched around a bit.
Then I tried out the earlier 1970 version starring Clint Eastwood as Corporal John McBurney. And I only found out about THIS one because of my reading of Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb, where it's mentioned that the main character is watching this movie on tv one night. The title itself is not given, but having read Beguiled, I recognized the description of the plot. But it said it starred Clint Eastwood? A quick search online and I soon tracked down a way to watch this version.
OMG, does this one ever have the 70s vibe to it! Prepare yourself for lots of artsy, misty looking cutaways backed by dramatic, screechy instrumentals. LOL Oh, and a crap ton more nudity than the 2017 version... and not in a good way! My eyes were not ready!
So, about those changes:
*opening credits were kinda cool, the way they were rolled over actual Civil War photos and enhanced with era-appropriate sound effects; be aware though, throughout the whole of the movie, the level of background music can get distracting at times.
*There was a TON of reworking done to the opening scene. Though it initially looks like it's staying true to the book's opening, it turns weird real quick. In one of the most disturbing bits, there is a line used that IS pulled from the book, but where they take it from there is full on BLECH. There is a scene in John's first conversation with young Amelia where he asks her age, she says she's 12, and he replies, "old enough for kissing." In the book, that's as far as it's taken. It's just a brief moment of John being mildly, harmlessly flirtatious in a line of conversation, and then everything continues on in a entirely platonic manner. You get to the Eastwood version of McBurney, he sees soldiers looking for him, he says the line, gets the reply, and then proceeds to shove his tongue down this young girl's throat! Ok, he doesn't want her voice to give away his location, but my god, man, just lightly cover her mouth and she'll probably take the hint!
*So in just the first 15 minutes, at various moments, this film has already touched upon themes of pedophilia and incest. I can't stress enough just how much creative license was taken in this version! I thought that was going to be the worst of the WTF moments in this show but nah, remember it's the 1970s, people are still riding on the high of sexual liberation and minimal grooming of the body hairs. There are later scene sequences that seriously border on softcore. Not even kidding. One dream sequence suggests a menage a trois going down at one point. Again, not even remotely mentioned anywhere in the book. Not at all.
* If you're able to watch this on DVD, there's actually some interesting behind-the-scenes stories that I enjoyed quite a bit more than the film itself. One portion touches on how Eastwood initially took on this role in hopes of it being a kind of bridge movie between his westerns and cop films, to highlight his acting range. When he later saw the film was a bit of a flop, he commented that it might have done better without him.
* The BTS info also mentions that this film was shot on location at the Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (even though the novel is set in Virginia).
I might've been bored with Coppola's version, but that 70s mess just left me wanting a good scrub!
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