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Southern gothic

The Beguiled – No Serpent Needed in This Garden

August 5, 2017 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“You’re our most unwelcome visitor, and we do not propose to entertain you.”

What is it that corrupts our lives? In The Beguiled, Sofia Coppola’s Southern Gothic film set in the Civil War, there seems to be a world that is pure and innocent. But is it really? Is this a fall from grace, or was there a state of grace to begin with?

The film opens as a young girl goes through the Virginia woods picking mushrooms. She is startled to find a wounded Union soldier, barely conscious. She helps him to Miss Martha’s Seminary for Young Women, a school with a handful of young women who have nowhere else to go. Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) agrees to take Corporal McBurney (Colin Farrell) in and nurse him to health before turning him over to the Confederate troops as a prisoner. (It is, after all, Christian charity.) But his presence in the school is the opportunity for lust and jealous to grow, particularly among Miss Martha, the school’s other teacher Miss Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), and the oldest student, Miss Alicia (Elle Fanning).

As McBurney regains his strength, he manages to endear himself to the women, perhaps playing them against one another. But things will not go smoothly. In time, the tensions will lead to an accident that will complicate the story even further and lead to a very dark conclusion. By the end of the story, all innocence has been stripped away from these young women.

Coppola makes great use of nature throughout the film. We often hear birds and insects that make us think this is a very pristine world. But even then we hear the far off sounds of warfare. We are reminded that this is already a fallen world. The very fact that McBurney is a soldier tells us that pain and suffering already exist. The fact that the women see him as an enemy shows that they participate in this reality, even as they use the language of Christian duty to justify their actions.

As I began to think about the film, my first thought was that McBurney was a serpent that brought corruption to this Eden. But I soon realized that all the seeds of sinfulness were already present and growing in Miss Martha’s Seminary. McBurney merely sped the growth. Of course it’s also possible to read Genesis in the same way. The Serpent didn’t bring evil into the Garden. That potential already existed within the Man and Woman that God had placed there. The Serpent simply brought out what was already within them. The depth to which all the characters descend in this story is not the work of an outside source of evil. It is the fruition of a darkness that already inhabited them.

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: Civil War, Colin Farrell, Elle Fanning, Kristen Dunst, Nicole Kidman, Sofia Coppola, Southern gothic

Rectify: TV with Theological/Philosophical Chops

January 16, 2016 by Darrel Manson 1 Comment

Rectify is my new all-time favorite TV drama. You haven’t heard of it? That’s understandable; it is a Sundance TV original series. But the first two seasons (of three so far) are streaming on Netflix. A fourth and final season is in the works. Lest you think I shift my favorites frequently, the TV drama it displaces as my favorite is Hill Street Blues (which went off the air in 1987).

Daniel-Holden-Rectify-303-05-1000x594

Rectify is the story of Daniel Holden (Aden Young) who was convicted as a teenager of raping and murdering his girlfriend. Having spent half of his life (and all his adult life) on death row, he is released after conflicting DNA evidence is revealed. He is not exonerated, but the court determines there is enough doubt that he should be released until a decision is made about retrying him. He returns to his childhood home where his mother still lives with her new husband (Daniel’s father died while Daniel was in prison). Also key parts of the story involve his sister Amantha (Abigail Spencer) who has believed in his innocence all these years, his step-father’s adult son Teddy (Clayne Crawford) who is a bit threatened by Daniel’s return, and Teddy’s wife Tawny (Adelaide Clemens), a very sincere, but somewhat naïve, Christian.

He is very much out of step with the world, having spent the last nineteen years in a death row cell. As he tries to adapt to his new freedom, he is in a very awkward position. Most of the community still consider him a murderer. The prosecutor who sent him to jail is now a state senator and very powerful in the town. The current sheriff was a young officer when the crime occurred. He is suspicious of Daniel, but he really is concerned with justice being served—whatever that means in this case. Over the first two seasons Daniel begins to make his way through the obstacles of family, community, and his own understanding of the world.

Tawney-Talbot-Rectify-302-09-1000x594

While in prison, Daniel read extensively—especially philosophy and theology, so he has a very different perspective on the world than most of the other characters. He doesn’t seem to harbor anger at the (possible) injustice that has been done to him. In his search for deeper meanings to what has happened, Tawny takes him to her church to meet her pastor, who is a bit uncomfortable in Daniel’s presence. Throughout the show, Tawny, while not perfect by any means, tries to model grace and acceptance in relationship to Daniel, even when that brings her into conflict with her husband.

What pushes this show to the top of my list is the way it allows us to think in a variety of ways about the situation. There are legal questions, but actually, those are more of a minor subplot most of the time. The real questions deal with family and community, with compassion and forgiveness, with justice and redemption, and even with the place of God in the lives of people. It is never preachy. It never makes things seem too deep. But it does take us out of the intellectual shallows that exemplify most TV fare.

Photos courtesy Sundance TV

Filed Under: DVD, Featured, Reviews, Television Tagged With: Abigail Spencer, Adelaide Clemens, Aden Young, Clayne Crawford, legal drama, Southern gothic

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