Some reviewers have found fault with the erasure of important issues such as slavery from Sofia Coppola’s version of The Beguiled based on a novel about a southern girl’s school set during the Civil War. The school is on a beautiful ante-belum estate surrounded by magnificent trees and woods that let us know we are in a place where innocence will come to a reckoning far more primal than politics. In the opening scene which captures the essence of so many fairy tales, a young girl with pigtails is walking through the deep woods gathering mushrooms in her basket. Instead of a wolf, she comes upon a wounded Union soldier and out of compassion for his plight, helps him back to the school There, he is confronted with a handful of girls and women, all of whom will eventually be implicated in his fate.
The Irish have St. Patrick’s Day, Columbus Day holds special meaning for Italians as does the Israel Day for Jews and the Steuben Day for Germans. Why then did the LGBTQ community drop the Gay from their parade? And why is that the only one singled out for all New Yorkers? New York Pride implies that all residents of this city feel a special respect for the gay minority above all other minorities who live here and have their parades without our city’s name attached to them.
In berating UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn for not having shown the “moral courage” to support the unprovoked 1999 attack on Serbia, Conservative MP Dominic Raab misses the irony when he writes that Mr Corbyn’s pacifism is “no way to defend Britain or international law.” (“Pacifist or not, Jeremy Corbyn is not fit to be labelled the heir to Robin Cook,” May 12)
It’s often said that perception is reality - and, no doubt, there’s something to that old adage. But we also know that from time to time, upon a closer look, our assessments can be wrong - very wrong.
