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A review by clare_tan_wenhui
The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan
4.0
More of a 3.5. This will be a mix of a book cum movie review, because I read the novel immediately after watching the recent 2017 film adaptation version, and my views towards both versions are sort of intertwined together.
The novel is definitely much more complex, with the characters fleshed out warts and all. All of them are quite deplorable in their own way, and you emerge not having much liking for any of them. Upon concluding the book, I was filled with a certain poetic grimness of how things have went.
The film trimmed quite a lot of the characters as well as their backgrounds and agenda. Nicole Kidman's film version of Martha Farnsworth is a condensed version of Martha, Mathilda Farnsworth and Emily Stevenson (both not present in the film), Kirsten Dunst's film version Edwina Morrow is more of a fusion of the characters of Harriet Farnsworth (not in the film version) and Edwina Morrow, and Elle Fanning's Alicia Simms seems to have been merged with some characteristics of the book's Marie Deveraux. No matter as this trimming and condensation were done, such that despite rendering the characters to be more simple-minded and innocent in their motivation and actions, this precisely amplifies the horror of the consequences when things go drastically south.
Both the novel and book are not for the fainthearted, especially if you are not ready to face the terrifying side of being human.
The novel is definitely much more complex, with the characters fleshed out warts and all. All of them are quite deplorable in their own way, and you emerge not having much liking for any of them. Upon concluding the book, I was filled with a certain poetic grimness of how things have went.
The film trimmed quite a lot of the characters as well as their backgrounds and agenda. Nicole Kidman's film version of Martha Farnsworth is a condensed version of Martha, Mathilda Farnsworth and Emily Stevenson (both not present in the film), Kirsten Dunst's film version Edwina Morrow is more of a fusion of the characters of Harriet Farnsworth (not in the film version) and Edwina Morrow, and Elle Fanning's Alicia Simms seems to have been merged with some characteristics of the book's Marie Deveraux. No matter as this trimming and condensation were done, such that despite rendering the characters to be more simple-minded and innocent in their motivation and actions, this precisely amplifies the horror of the consequences when things go drastically south.
Both the novel and book are not for the fainthearted, especially if you are not ready to face the terrifying side of being human.