Review: The Beguiled

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review: In the opening sequence of Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, the camera pans slowly down through the top of a canopy of oak trees, their branches dripping with Spanish moss. When it reaches the trunks, the camera zooms out to gradually reveal the dirt path they line and down which a young girl saunters. A child of about twelve or so, she hums a melody that hovers hauntingly in this secluded, bucolic space. The persistent, pulsing buzz of cicadas fills the air, and the faint but distinctive sounds of rifle fire echo in the background, a distant and vaguely ominous metronome that measures the rhythm of her song. Mist—presumably smoke from those distant rifles—rolls through the trunks of the oaks. The scene is incredibly atmospheric, yet it also serves as a very pointed metaphor for what is really the film’s central concern: the diffuse and sometimes impalpable ways that men’s actions can seep into the everyday lives of women.