The Beguiled (2017)

I had heard plenty of claims and counterclaims about whitewashing in The Beguilded before I went to see it, which never helps in trying to get into the right mood for watching a film. Should I have boycotted it out of principle? Am I supporting racial discrimination in Hollywood by showing my support? Was the director correct to get rid of the sole African-American character as it would have been more harmful to retain her? Was avoiding the issue of racism completely better than potentially being offensive by trying to deal with it?

Looking at the film cold, I wouldn't consider it a racist picture - at least it is not positively racist with its depictions (because there are none in any shape or form). The racism only exists by omission. So while it does not contribute to the conversation, it does not harm it per se - unless another director was lined-up to produce a more racially aware version and Sophia Copolla took that away from them - so I don't see that the film quite deserves to be boycotted for that reason alone.

On the question of whether the director should have gotten rid of the character, the answer is an ambiguous no. I can't say the character would have added to the story (I haven't read the book, or seen the earlier film of it, so have no comparison), but it certainly wouldn't have ruined it. It's a film where audience sympathy with the characters is already a shifting landscape, and I don't think the characters' possession of a slave would have altered the characterisation on display. In face it would have had the chance to focus it better - should the part have been written better.

The other accusation of whitewashing is that a mixed-race character was recast as Kirsten Dunst. I hadn't retained that information while I was watching, and the part was fine, but looking back at the film with that knowledge, the character's motivations would have made much more sense in that light.

Score 0 for Sophia.

Leaving aside the controversies, is the film worth seeing? It certainly looks pretty with its sun-filtering-through-the-trees lighting, although the film's colour pallet seems overbearingly white. I assume the heavenly aesthetic is supposed to create juxtaposition with the more carnal events unfolding, or maybe the director really likes white.

Story-wise, it's populated with largely unsympathetic characters - in some cases because that's what the story dictates, and in others because the director doesn't seem to have been able to squeeze a decent enough performance out of the cast (and to be clear, I'm laying the blame at the director's doorstep).

I think Don Siegel (director of the 1971 adaptation) said of his version something along the lines of the tale being about male castration anxiety, and certainly that felt to be the tone here (at least once the story finally picked up). In fact, knowing nothing about the story at the time, when I saw the trailers, that's what I thought we were going to get (which made the actual events feel much tamer than they perhaps were supposed to be). That said, it still left me with a slightly unpleasant taste in my brain.

Ultimately, this is a film I was happy to walk away from in all senses.