Monday, March 25, 2013

Scrogins Acres

The Beguiled (1971)
directed by Don Siegel
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
watched on Netflix Instant

The Beguiled sounds like The Uninvited, which is to say it sounds like a ghost story. It isn't, not explicitly, but no one is ever really alone in her room. The movie begins with an image of Abraham Lincoln from the Civil War, and the whistle of a train comes in on the soundtrack. A twelve-year old girl picks mushrooms in the woods, and finds a wounded Union soldier growing out of an oak tree hung with Spanish moss.

Rather, he is stuck - shot and fainted - but that it isn't what it looks like at first. Clint Eastwood sings a song, but not on camera: a tuneless, unaccompanied rendition of "The Dove She Is A Pretty Bird." The song hangs and flutters in fits, like a crow tied to the balcony with string. The girl lives in an old plantation, and she is the youngest in a group of women under the protection of a headmistress who tries to keep them safe from the dangers of a war-torn world.

The girl's age is relevant because Eastwood's character kisses her, both to keep her from screaming (he is a Yankee and Confederate soldiers are close) and because he can. She leads him back to the house - past the iron, enchanted gates of the seminary - where he is returned to life and mended. But John McBurney is not an honest man, and brings about a great deal of trouble.

Shadows ebb and flow. Someone is always lighting candles in some corner of a room. I don't think I've seen another Malpaso production quite like it. The movie is more than a "Southern gothic" about repressed female longing and more than a parable about war. McBurney is a confidence man, but a trickster, too - something nearly supernatural.

He is only ever seen by the women in the movie, except for the man who shoots him. But that scene is told in flashback. I thought of some minor deity walking invisible through a battle, interfering with mortal man to pass the time. Perhaps a bullet meant for someone else finds the small god instead, and alights on the one spot where it hurts him. He is trapped someplace he did not expect to be, and languishes there, and, like all bored gods, wants his revenge.

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