The Beach
Drama. USA / UK, 2000
Director: Danny Boyle
Writers: Alex Garland (novel), John Hodge (screenplay)
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoyen
A good movie if you can read between lines and see the spot-on analogy with the current society. Intense, interesting, paranoid, still with many flaws, but a good choice for many reasons.
The Beach is the story of Richard, a young guy disenchanted with the world, and searching for new adventures in Asia. Accidentally, he meets a loony man who tells him about a perfect place to live, a beach, where people live happily, and tells him how to go there. But when he reaches to that utopian place with another young couple, he slowly discovers that utopia might not be there. As the tagline for the movie says, “Paradise has its price”.
If you have seen Cube, and you can see beyond its surface, you might consider it, as I do, an accurate portrait of the society, and the roles assigned by it to individuals. I consider The Beach pretty much in the same way, where that perfect beach is our personal utopia, where it’s easy to fall in selfishness and hedonism, becoming promptly glad to sacrifice the individual for our own commodity, justifying it as “the good of the community”.
The analogy can be carried more. The members of the utopic society of the beach don’t want to know anything of the outer world, even when they still need it for various reasons, and reluctantly return to it sparingly. Yet they are and want to keep isolated, hating anything which can diminish the happiness in their seemingly perfect lives.
However, all that hides a deep sense of selfishness, where each one tries to keep what it’s theirs, while trying to steal what others have. Which is more or less an accurate description of our “first world”.
I’m not going to analyze the movie more in that aspect; either you get what I’m saying (if you saw the movie) or you don’t. If you do, then there’s no need to explain more. If not, watch it again with more open eyes, and maybe you’ll get a different, deeper and better experience out of it.
Regardless of the pseudo-psichological readings of the story, and counting that I’ve not read the original book, it’s a more than decent movie. The first part is an adventure searching for paradise, with beautiful views. The second part is a bit paranoid and surrealist, reminding me the style of mentally ill feelings of The Fight Club. The story varies greatly, carrying you in different directions each time, but always being interesting, making you think. The ending is quite good. In short, it’s more than a movie with beautiful beach views and cute girls in bikinis.
I have to say that the actors perform well. DiCaprio does good, and Virginie Ledoyen is absolutely delicious. There’s quality in this movie, great photography and everything. I just have to blame it for not being more homogenous; somehow the movie parts don’t fit perfectly with each other. I feel that the book is rather different and has more plot which is missing in the movie. Don’t misunderstand me, the movie is good, but it’s not excellently great and awesome. I found it more than interesting, but the movie as a whole is far from perfect, and some of its stuff (not only what, but also how) can be strange or uninteligible.
My score: 7/10. Not for all tastes, but intense and interesting
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