The Beast from filmmaker Bertrand Bonello based on a story he co-wrote with Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit, which itself was inspired or loosely based on Henry James’s 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, takes a bit of work and active viewing to get into, but once you are in, it is well worth the effort and the 2 and half hour running time.
Told over three distinct time periods (1910, 2014, and 2044), the film unfolds almost like vignettes in this near-fi film that envisions a future where AI has taken over and through the promise of better employment seeks to override the emotions from the humans. It views emotionality as a threat to society. Throughout the film I’d argue it does a good job of making a case as to why from the AI’s perspective (and some who go through the process) may find this to be true but why we the audience are still supposed to reject this perspective and cling to our emotions (the things that make us human) as we follow Gabrielle (played by Léa Seydoux) as she is confronted throughout time by Louis (played by George MacKay); they are drawn together in every timeline.
Time in the 2044 timeline is the most fragmented as it more of a framing device for the other vignettes as it appears to be the active present. The first vignette you spend a lot of time in is the 1910 one, with it playing out like a typical tragic romance film. The only thing that made it seem like an altered or fantasy 1910 rather than the actual 1910, is that climate disaster and rising water was a big part of the storyline and added to the sci-fi/dream elements of this otherwise very period storyline. A storyline that had period accurate story element about the changing of doll production from porcelain to the more flammable but economical celluloid.
In the 2014 storyline, the entire audience knew the trajectory of Louis, and thus Gabrielle, in from his first line reading. There was a vocal reaction, particularly from the ladies present, a giggle that went up, because we knew who this guy was, and while that guy isn’t funny in real life (they are scary), it was more the collective of knowing together that made it funny. And then that safety of knowing what was to come, so that we could be in that horror movie catharsis of being upset when Gabrielle does not see the threat that he poses to her. There is never anything like having a collective experience with an audience, where you are all on the same page. It’s one of the joys of going to the movies. And during this vignette we were all together telling Gabrielle to get away.
The 2014 vignette was also ripe with humour, which served it, and the movie at large, well because in a 2.5-hour movie, having a nice tonal shift in the latter half reinvigorated the audience, keeping us engaged until the end. There was a noticeable lean in for this vignette, and just a lot of vocal reactions.
The effectiveness of the near-fi 2044 timeline is that you can almost forget about it when you are in the other timelines. The device doesn’t detract from the storylines taking place in the vignettes themselves, but they all enrich each other when looked at as a whole, and you even get some callbacks.
The Beast is currently in limited release in the US and is scheduled to release in Canada on April 19.
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