Wife wanted to see The Beguiled with Colin Farrell, having not seen the original. I have seen the original but back in '71. So we watched it (the re-make) and she was in love with the dreamy gothic-ness of it.
Last night she proposed we watch the Eastwood version… Whoa! Does not hold up well, imho. I know things need to be held against their time (or should they?) but this was quite jarring.
First of all Clint kisses his 15 year old co-star on the mouth. Ka-ringy.
Then there’s the brother-sister incest stuff.
And when the the girls are working in the garden, they refer to it as “N-word work” (Not to mention referring to the actual black actor’s character as a “N-word”).
Maybe I’ve become a prude in my old age, IMDb gives the original a 7.1 score (the remake 6.3), but it was hard to stay in the film getting jarred out of it so often.
I remember it being a deliberately off-putting movie, but I only ever saw the censored version on A&E (which used to play it every other week, seemingly).
It’s been a while since I’ve seen The Beguiled, but from from what I can remember, it’s biggest sin was that it bored the hell out of me. I myself don’t always have an easy time separating gratuitous from non-gratuitous sex and violence. Did those scenes advance the plot or tell you something about John’s character? It’s a disturbing story involving a lot of bad people trying to take advantage of one another.
I saw it on TV - I think a cut version - but on video later when I went through a bit of Clint binge. I felt that part of the intent was to inject ugly reality into what would, in some perspectives, be seen as a fairytale scenario - lone man with lots of women. It could have been completely sanitised and even given a happy ending, but instead they opted for a mix of 19th century reality and 20th century perspective on power and social norms. In that sense its probably a poorer attempt at myth-busting that he did so much better in the Unforgiven.
I did find it slow going on rewatching, and feeling a story idea was being padded beyond its inherent merit.
I’m cracking up inside from this Eastwood quote about the film (lifted from Wikipedia):
“Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino play losers very well. But my audience like to be in there vicariously with a winner. That isn’t always popular with critics. My characters have sensitivity and vulnerabilities, but they’re still winners. I don’t pretend to understand losers.”
Dude, your character was murdered by school girls with toxic mushrooms! You weren’t the winner! You did get the participation trophy. And your character was a rapist.