director
Danny Boyle
screenwriter
John Hodge
based on
the novel by
Alex Garland
producer
Andrew Macdonald
cinematographer
Darius Khondji
music
Angelo Badalamenti
editor
Masahiro Hirakubo
cast
Leonardo DiCaprio (Richard)
Virginie Ledoyen (Françoise)
Guillaume Canet (Étienne)
Robert Carlyle (Daffy)
Peter Youngblood Hills (Zeph)
Jerry Swindall (Sammy)
Tilda Swinton (Sal)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 119m
u.s.
release: February 11,
2000
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other danny
boyle films
reviewed on this website:
- a
life less ordinary
- shallow
grave
- trainspotting
- 28
days later
|
Every
year, Hollywood breaks out a fable explaining why nature would
be, like, really cool if it weren't for us darn humans running
around spoiling everything. (Which may be true, but what business
does a multi-million-dollar, resource-hogging movie have preaching
to us about being kind to Mother Earth?) Last year brought the
insipid Instinct,
with its gutsy stance that we should leave the nice gorillas
alone and not slaughter them; the year before that, The
Thin Red Line, in which men went to war with parrots,
tall grass, and their own florid voice-overs.
At least we're getting this year's model out of the way early.
The Beach, a mad assemblage of earlier, better bungle-in-the-jungle
stories (Lord of the Flies, Apocalypse Now, etc.),
is well-crafted drivel -- certainly easier to sit through than
the abovementioned eco-dramas. Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting)
does all he can do to keep the screen alive and humming, and
in purely cinematic terms -- the assaultive shotgun wedding of
image and sound, the lush scenery bumping against relentless
techno music -- the movie isn't bad; some of it is even compelling.
It's the spine beneath the style that weakens and cracks. The
consensus is that The Beach, adapted for the screen by
Boyle's regular scripter John Hodge, parts ways considerably
with the theme and emphasis of Alex Garland's acclaimed novel;
not having read the book, I'll take everyone's word for it and
assume Garland's Beach is purer than Boyle's, which would
not be hard. The corruption may begin with the casting of überhunk
Leonardo DiCaprio, who once seemed such a risky actor, as the
story's hero Richard, who seeks paradise and thinks he's found
it on a remote island near Thailand. DiCaprio seems to be out
to prove he can do mainstream action-movie shit. His defining
moment here comes during a sprightly sequence in which Boyle
turns him into a video-game character; it's Run Leo Run.
Richard is tipped off to the island by a crazed visionary named
Daffy (an underused, barely comprehensible Robert Carlyle), who
leaves Richard a tattered map. Richard and a young French couple,
Étienne (Guillaume Canet) and Françoise (Virginie
Ledoyen), swim to the island and swiftly settle in after a misadventure
with local marijuana farmers. A society has been set up in the
jungle; its ideology boils down to "Keep everyone else out."
People get sick or die because they can't leave the paradise,
which is ruled with a quiet iron hand by Sal (Tilda Swinton),
a potentially interesting character as ill-defined as everyone
else in the movie.
The Beach sketches in a love triangle -- Richard and Françoise
cozy up to each other -- only to abandon it; the movie pretends
to have bigger fish to fry (sometimes literally; we get to see
Leo vs. a baby shark). Richard eventually sees that this idyllic
society is as ruthless and violent -- as red in tooth and claw
-- as the jostling city world he fled; the only major difference
is more sand and less asphalt. For a while, the movie toys with
alienation as Richard holes up alone on the outskirts of the
village, staring across the water at newcomers who haven't swum
over yet. Bad things are in store for the newbies. Richard witnesses
brutal death on the island, and he has a startling revelation:
the movie's almost over, and he should really head back to the
village in time for a big dramatic climax.
Who knows what the movie is saying about civilization and nature?
Perhaps that when more than two people get together, disaster
is inevitable. There's nowhere, not even paradise, that you can
go to escape the greed and callousness of mankind. Here and there,
Danny Boyle appears to be working subversively: Richard isn't
really a hero -- he's either passive or running away. But what
is he running away from? He doesn't seem that unhappy
in an urban setting, and the lurid scenes in downtown Bangkok
are unavoidably more exciting than the picture-postcard island,
where people mostly get stoned; when they're feeling particularly
robust, they assemble for some volleyball on the beach, while
a villager is left to die of a shark bite miles away. These people
don't deserve paradise; neither do any of us, I suppose. The
Beach is a high-toned bummer disguised as a primal hipster
drama. |
