Women in Film: No (Wo)man Is An Island
(Wonder Woman and The
Beguiled - a quick comparison / contrast)
(Warning: Spoilers
galore – best to read after viewing!)
A couple of movies just came out each featuring a society of
women isolated from the outside world where a major war is in progress. They
are keenly aware that their equilibrium could be shattered at any moment by any
invasion from the outside, and endeavor feverishly to protect it.
In each movie, one of the youngest women finds and saves a
man, a soldier, from the outside and brings him into the previously protected
environment. Oops.
Wonder Woman
Our guy in this one is a principled altruistic fellow
seeking to help mankind survive the horrors of “The Great War” (see, that
wasn’t so hard - in “Pearl Harbor” one of the characters anachronistically and
hilariously calls it World War I, as if he returned from the future knowing
there’s another one headed right down the pike).
Wonder Woman, against her mother’s will, leaves her ‘safe’ environment
with him after a fierce battle with German bad guys. She’s convinced that she
alone can defeat and kill the God of War, in the name of love, and end such conflagrations
once and for all. Once in the real world, remarkably with no other female help,
save from a sweet secretary, our heroine sort of one-ups the god of war (after
killing someone she mistakenly thinks is him) and countless others in a very militaristic
and manly way. It’s also worth noting that the only other female character on
hand after WW leaves the island is a cartoonishly evil scientist who’s bat-shit
crazy.
Okay, it’s a woman who kicks ass from top to bottom, but can anyone explain to me how this is to be considered a genuine feminine empowerment movie when all she
does after leaving home is behave like a ferocious male warrior (once again, in
the name of “love”) only better, and only with lots of male (no female except
the secretary’s) help?
Oh well, at least the male lead is conveniently ruled out
for the sequel.
The Beguiled
Our interloper in this flick is a desperate Union soldier,
wounded and on the run in 1864 Virginia, wholly focused on his own survival.
The women in the school near where he collapses, tempting
fate, take him in and keep him hidden so they might heal him - in the name of
Christianity, but also because they are fascinated by and eager to experience …
a man. The war has rendered men less than a scarce commodity in their
environment.
Under their focused and fetishized care, the mostly healed deserter
begins to display troubling signs of manipulation and deceit. Yet the women continue
to protect him and ramp up the competition for his attentions. Nobody will be leaving
this island, and a fierce power struggle between the corporal and the women -
and indeed among the women themselves – reaches a fever pitch (in spite of how
dreamily fairytale-like Coppola presents it).
After being discovered in bed with one of the girls, he
pulls out a gun and says he is now in control.
After a frenzied bout of lovemaking and a hastily planned toxic
mushroom meal later, the women return to their cloistered life.
Unlike in Wonder Woman, (and more like Big Little Lies), this
insular society of women is allowed to develop and ripen during the film. They
work menacingly together as a group, even when at harsh odds with each other, to
handle a serious threat.
