film fatales #203: the beguiled (sofia coppola, 2017)

This is the twenty-ninth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 29 is called "'We Come to This Place for Magic' Week":

We come to LSC Theaters to laugh, to cry, to care. Because we need that, all of us. That indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim, and we go somewhere we've never been before. Not just entertained, but somehow reborn, together. Dazzling images on a huge silver screen, sound that I can feel. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this. Our heroes feel like the best parts of us, and stories feel perfect and powerful. Because here, they are. LSC Theaters: We Make Movies Better.

This week's challenge is to watch a film either starring Nicole Kidman or set in a movie theater.

For those of you who don't go to AMC Theaters, here is the inspiration for this week's challenge:

Sofia Coppola makes some interesting decisions when making her version of The Beguiled. She returned to the original novel, stating her movie was not a direct remake of the 1971 version with Clint Eastwood (a movie I apparently saw and didn't like ... according to the IMDB, I rated it 5/10 but I have no memory of this and as far as I can tell I have never written about it). There is a slave in the novel and '71 film that is the only person of color in either ... I'm not certain I understand her reasoning, but Coppola removed this character from the story ("(y)oung girls watch my films and this was not the depiction of an African American character I would want to show them."). Coppola and cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd opted for a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, slightly different from today's standards, to make the movie look claustrophobic. Perhaps most important, Coppola chose to tell this story of a wounded soldier during the Civil War who ends up at a girls school in Virginia from the point of view of the women.

As I say, these are interesting decisions. But in the end, I didn't care for the movie despite those decisions. There's nothing I can put my finger on, but neither could I figure out why this story was being told. It is entirely possible that it's all on me; there is nothing "wrong" with The Beguiled.