The
Beach
Rated R
Now showing
http://www.thebeachmovie.com
One question lingers after suffering through the lavishly
filmed, big-budgeted Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle The Beach:
How can a movie filled with so many potentially intriguing
ideas contain almost nothing of any relevance or resonance?
Blame it on Danny Boyle. The Quentin Tarantino of Britain,
Boyle, who directed the intermittently intriguing but over-hyped
Trainspotting, has managed to take a very cinematic
and entertaining concept for a movie and turn it into a choppy,
shallow, smug evocation of youthful, anti-establishment rebellion.
The Beach is an odd cross between The Blue Lagoon
and Lord of the Flies (plus a handful of others thrown
in), with emphasis on the fluffy Brooke Shields loincloth
epic.
The movie begins with a self-satisfied, nihilistic defiance
similar to Renton's "Choose life" Trainspotting narration,
minus the grimy charm. In an attempt to be both mysterious
and a representation of an angsty twentysomething, young
hero Richard (DiCaprio, who, sadly, is neither charming
nor compelling here) voices over with flat detachment: "My
name is Richard, so what else do you need to know?" Well,
a great deal more, but we hope to understand him better
as the movie rolls on. We never do, but the film attempts
to throw some trite clues our way. Richard is an American
traveler (not a "tourist"--this is a major distinction)
in Thailand who is as ready for adventure as a backpacked
kid away from his family can be. While staying in a scuzzy
hotel in Bangkok, Richard meets fellow "travelers" Francoise
and Etienne (Virginie Ledoyen and Guillaume Canet), a beautiful
French couple. Hopefully in lust, Richard seeks to break
up them up and steal Francoise. One night, while listening
to them making love next door, Richard encounters an insane
person who calls himself Daffy (Robert Carlyle hamming it
up to the nth degree). Daffy babbles on about some beautiful
lagoon off the Thai coast that represents paradise found,
untouched and uncorrupted by civilization. The next morning,
Richard finds a map tacked to his door on which directions
to the island are drawn. That he finds Daffy in a mutilated
suicide mess on the floor of his hotel room is of no concern
to Richard, who instead asks his French neighbors to join
him in a search for this mystical place. After innocently
leaving a copy of the map to two American stoners, Richard
and the couple easily (much too easily) make it to the island,
where they are met by a community of Europeans who look
like an advertisement for a J.Crew summer catalog.
After learning some history of the place, the three settle
into the group led by a shifty Brit called Sal (Tilda Swinton).
As Richard says: "I found my vocation: pursuit of pleasure."
With that come sex, fishing, swimming, GameBoy playing and
much male bonding--in other words, too many boring sequences
of no importance or substance. A definite, dark turning
point finally occurs, but after so much shallow meandering,
it feels weak and fits awkwardly with the rest of the movie.
Richard eventually begins to lose his mind when he starts
channeling the ghost of Daffy. These scenes deliberately
loot from Apocalypse Now, and it seems unintentionally
funny--but who knows? Given Boyle's usual abuse of irony,
maybe he meant it that way. Finally, in the last
45 minutes, the film begins making its "points" about modern
life vs. paradise. The meanings are so clumsily executed,
however, that these barbs come off like some kind of last-minute
shopping list for film resonance. Check and see if you have
all this in your cart: People are too corrupted by the comforts
and reality of modern life to make it on Gilligan's Island;
tourists are frat-house idiots; extreme naturalists are
a bunch of self-important hypocrites; communism doesn't
work; people are always weighed down by material possessions;
jealousy is a strong motivator for stupid actions; Apocalypse
Now was a really cool movie; and techno music is apparently
inescapable, even on a deserted island. Though these barbs
are deserved (after all, the movie never induces us to like
any of these characters), they are rendered with such a
lack of depth and innovation that they never strike viewers
as being important or meaningful. Even adding the theme
that computers and video games influence our reality (in
one obvious scene, the crazed Richard becomes his own GameBoy
character), Boyle's film reveals nothing we haven't seen
or read before in many other, more substantial movies and
adventure stories. The Beach is needlessly self-conscious,
poorly drawn and, worse, boring--not to mention badly edited
(it feels like some crucial scenes were excised). It's a
shame, because Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland were
obviously attempting to put a spin on the classic island-adventure
yarn. Their spin just never works. It's "What Leo Did on
His Summer Vacation," and it's silly...with a throbbing
techno beat.
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 16,
2000
|
