The Beguiled…remake?!

I’m a big fan of Clint Eastwood, actor and, to a somewhat lesser degree, director.  Mind you, he’s directed some very fine films but it is his magnetic screen presence that gets me whenever I think about him.  He’s made plenty of films.  Some, like his Italian “Dollar” Trilogy, the suspense classic Play Misty For Me, and Dirty Harry (to name but a few) were outstanding classics of cinema.  Some, like Pink Cadillac and Heartbreak Ridge, to name but two, were gawdawful.

And then there’s the 1971 film The Beguiled.

If one were to look over the history of Clint Eastwood, actor, it is my firm belief this film stands out as one of his strangest works.  Sure, its weird to see Mr. Eastwood in a musical and actually singing (1969’s Paint Your Wagon) but that film was what it was: A musical.

The Beguiled, though set in Civil War times, is about as far away from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, another Civil War time-frame set movie, as can be.  Based on a novel by Thomas P. Cullinan, The Beguiled features Clint Eastwood as John McBurney, an badly injured Yankee soldier who stumbles upon -and is helped by- women in a Southern boarding school.

I don’t want to get into SPOILERS, even though they involve a 45 year old film, but suffice to say this is a film fraught with sexual tensions, jealousies, and, ultimately, very dark, dark psychological issues.  Because Clint Eastwood is the “star” of the film and because of its Civil War setting, the movie slyly plays with your expectations of what to expect in his character.

If one looks through Mr. Eastwood’s acting career, he has played the “good guy” (though morally shifty) in most of his films, in this one he can be called an out and out “bad guy,” though using the term feels like it diminishes the dimensions he brings to the role.  Suffice to say Eastwood’s John McBurney is a bad man who takes advantages of his situation and ultimately pays for the way he treats/uses those around him.

This is not some “action” film.  It is a work which focuses on human interactions and the darkness that can arise out of sexual tensions.

It is a provocative work and, as I mentioned above, easily one of the more startling and daring works he’s ever acted in.

The reason I point all this out is because it was announced a remake of this film is in the works:

Sophia Coppola will remake The Beguiled with Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning

The article above is from Slate.com and the headline essentially states everything there is to know, so far, about the film.  We have our three female stars but, at that writing, there is no news as to who will play the Clint Eastwood role.

I’m intrigued but also curious if the film will be quite as…daring…as the original.  It’s also a daring step forward for Ms. Coppola, who I don’t believe has made anything quite this gothic and macabre before.

We’ll see!

The trailer to the film, presented below, shows just how hard the studio had it when it came to advertising the movie.  What do you say?  How do you go about saying it?  They tried.  They failed, IMHO!