Under the Peony Blossom is a 2017 film directed by Sophia Coppola and the most controversial of all her works.
The film is set during the Civil War, when Mary, a schoolgirl, takes her back to school after meeting her seriously wounded soldier Mike Bernie, but the sudden appearance of this handsome man brings temptation and threat to miss Martha's hard-earned "women's paradise" - students and teachers can't hold back their restlessness, and after tearing and fighting between light and dark, the story slowly ends in the soldier's "formal castration" (sawing off a leg).
The film's original English title was "The Beguiled", which literally translates to "a coaxing" and other similar meanings, and some regions have translated it as "beautiful poison" or "charm". However, the translated name of the mainland version is quite poetic - under the peony flower, people can't help but think of the famous yuan song "peony flower dies, and the ghost is also flowing". Because this sentence has been misinterpreted for a long time, the translated name makes people feel that the whole movie is about "a man who broke into the peony garden and 'died' after doing a period of affair".
In fact, whether from the translation of the name or the film narrative, this is a film that has little to do with lust, and its deep theme is only expressed by relying on the shell of "male and female relationship", and the core of the story mainly focuses on the "power struggle". Next, starting from the three aspects of the movie name, the comparison of the old and new versions and the plot of the movie, we will analyze in detail what kind of movie "Under the Peony Flower" that makes Sophia Coppola in one fell swoop.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > "Under the Peony Flower" is from "Jade Hibiscus", which is originally a woman's song about herself</h1>
For a long time, when people said that "peonies die under flowers, ghosts are also merry", the first time they will associate it with men, thinking that it is used to describe the state of mind of men who die without regrets after achieving some of their goals. Before understanding the true meaning, let's enjoy the original text of this meta song:
Lonely for a few hours to rest, looking forward to the music book sky.
Add people sick yellow bird branches, help people worry about the decline of the city.
The spring river is full of tears, and there are not many sorrows.
If you have to return and go along with them, you will die under the peony flowers, and you will be a ghost.
The song is called "Jade Furong", which is said to have been written by a talented geisha. The "peony flower" in the original text refers to the ultimate beauty under the moon before the flower, not the "kaleidoscope of flowers" as most people in modern times understand it. Combined with the context, this song mainly depicts the boudoir woman alone to taste the pain of lovesickness, missing each other to the point where "if you can walk hand in hand under the moon before the flower, it is worth dying".
That is to say, this so-called "peony flower", the protagonist is not a man, but a woman. From this point of view, the translated title of the movie "Under the Peony Flower" is simply very good.
From the very beginning, the film depicts the daily life of the girls' school from the perspective of a fixed-point shot, and what kind of lifestyle and principles each woman has in it. The man who appeared by chance later was just an "imported product", he was just an extra part of the scene, and he was not the protagonist from beginning to end.
Suppose from another angle that if the film camera has been following the northern soldier about how he was injured in the battle and mistakenly fell into the "kaleidoscope", then the theme of the film is more inclined to the view that "the women who appear in their original form after the appearance of men" are shared by many people.
You can try to combine "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" to associate, because Snow White is the protagonist, so is the camera and the main body of the story always focused on Snow White? If from the beginning of the story, it is written how the seven dwarfs work and live, until one day a princess who is hunted down by her stepmother breaks into their house, then doesn't the protagonist of this fairy tale change immediately?
In the same way, "Under the Peony Flower" is originally a "woman-based" movie, and the meaning of "wounded man" for plot promotion is more inclined to "props" rather than "characters". After watching this movie, you will find that changing this role to any man may cause the same consequences, but none of these women in the confined space can be replaced.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > from the differences between the two editions of "Under the Peony Flower", we can glimpse the true intentions of Sophia Coppola</h1>
If it was an adaptation of the screenplay, Coppola had publicly refused to admit that the film he directed was a remake of the 1971 version, and repeatedly stressed that it was just another film based on the original. That said, it is very likely that she copied the story framework and character combination of the original film, but made a large degree of adjustment in the details.
First point:
The setting in the original version actually has a certain directional meaning in the construction of the character, that is, the headmistress is not so "ascetic" and conformist, and what she does and what she asks of others depends largely on the environment she is in and where she is located.
Then in the 2017 edition of "Under the Peony Flower", the disappearance of this setting means that the headmistress is more full and convincing in terms of authority and authenticity (consistency). Because only such "thin affection" and the usual indifference to male and female love will not hide the biggest theme of the film in the carnal instinct. (The real theme of the film will be explained in detail in the third paragraph)
Second point:
Such changes largely avoid the complication of the situation, and also focus all plot conflicts on the game and suspicion between men and women. Some say that such changes make the whole story thin, and the whole school seems to have nothing to do with the Civil War in full swing outside. But this "meat-cutting" change better focuses the camera on the power game between men and women.
Looking at all of Sophia Coppola's works, it seems that there is a natural "author's feeling". Because her female identity is destined to be different perspectives, it is largely unable to achieve the resonance of the vast majority of the audience.
Third point:
The original intention of the previous change seems to be roughly the same, that is, to remove the war-related , whether it is choices or emotions , such a plot push seems to become more pure and more "understandable". But in the eyes of many viewers, the 1971 version involved the Civil War several times and there was a black man among the main actors, so the version seemed to be "bigger" and more in line with the "small to see the big" and "combine current events" of most films.
But what if (in fact) Sophia Coppola wanted to talk about something from the beginning that had nothing to do with the outside world? This was evident shortly after the 2017 edition began with a single sentence about slaves leaving school, and there was no talk of blacks and races. What Sophia Coppola wants is this "absolute purity", because this version of "Under the Peony Flower" wants to talk about things that cannot accommodate the existence of other elements.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > power structure in which individuals and groups check each other, and "Under the Peony Flower" reflects the current social situation with the affairs of men and women</h1>
As explained in the first half of the article, this film clearly reflects that "Under the Peony Flower" is a female perspective to look at the world from a female perspective, and also from a female perspective to tell the whole story. As a result, compared to the 1971 version, the soldier's scenes were compressed, the image of the headmistress was glorified and simplified, and the story did not hesitate to delete almost all information related to slaves and the war.
Coppola, who has participated in "The Godfather" since birth, bears a huge aura and also bears the world's more stringent eyes and even doubts, as one of the most powerful female directors in contemporary Hollywood, almost all of Coppola's works highlight the unique perspective of being born as a woman, "Under the Peony Flower" is without exception a film with a strong feminism. But the feminist color embodied in this work is not simply "female subject desire", "rebellion against male gaze", "violent jedi counterattack" and so on. From this shallow and easy-to-understand point of view, the 1971 version looks more like a grand party — even with war and race, it can't hold up the thin core, and can't hide the strong asymmetry.
Sophia Coppola uses the male intrusion into the female world in "Under the Peony Flower" as the starting point of the turning point of events, reflecting the limitations and confusion of women at that time from the female thinking mode and behavioral motivation wrapped in the times. Such a tight and dense "palace fight drama" is precisely the natural reaction after the balance of power is forced to tilt.
The whole story takes place in an enclosed space, and the so-called "enclosed space" is actually the key word that runs through the entire movie of "Under the Peony Flower":
The headmistress constructed her own system of rights with a closed school, and the interloper easily upset this balance;
The door of every room in the school is closed almost at any time, unless someone deliberately peeks;
Even the "telescope" in the movie is actually a symbolic prop, which is similar to the searchlight in prison in other film and television works.
In addition, every meal that appears in the film has a special meaning, and it also has its own exclusive meaning in the promotion of the plot - from the dialogue at the beginning as if it has been rehearsed in advance, to the feeling and conflict in the back, to the final silence. This invisibly staged an "illusion of peace" - a "sudden riot" - a social narrative of "calm after suppression". And friends who have seen the movie should remember that the headmistress even made detailed and corresponding regulations on what color and style of clothes each person wears...
All of this points to an obvious established fact: the school of the headmistress is actually a condensed authoritarian society. The soldiers who appeared at this time were destined to go from the "freshness" at the beginning (compared to the ancient changes and revolutions) to the final "withering away". When the film comes to the end, the headmistress saws off the soldier's leg with a saw, which is not simply "physical castration" and "mental oppression", but more of an oath and expression of the previous dictatorship, and the "abuse of lynching" of the blasphemers.
The female students' admiration for the soldiers in the movie is not hormonal, but more of a figurative of a rebellious tendency. This interloper breaks the inherent order and dull life, and while following the fresh stimuli, he can gradually issue a silent self-deprecating challenge to the authoritarian authority painstakingly constructed by the headmistress. One of the female students chose to follow after the soldiers were "castrated", which is actually a good proof of the real reason for this emotion - in order to break away from the closed environment built by the headmistress and find a broader space for the construction of self-subjectivity. In other words, the soldier is nothing more than a tool by which she escapes to the outside world, and has nothing to do with love or carnal desire.
Finally, I would like to say that Sophia Coppola has completely condensed the thoughts, behaviors and mentality changes of people in a totalitarian society through the story of several women and a man in a school. Filmed in just 26 days by Philip Lessell, the cinematographer of "A Generation of Grandmasters," the film did not want to talk about "the ghost under the peony flower" from the beginning, but pointed to the person who built the "peony flower garden".