In ‘The Beast,’ the past is another country — and the future is, too
Several key adjectives give a sense of what “The Beast” is like. Bertrand Bonello’s film is futuristic. Some of it is set in 2044. It’s dystopian. No way you’d want to be around in this version of 2044. When people go outside they wear what look to be gas masks, and unemployment is at 67 percent. It’s timetraveling. Some of it is also set in Belle Époque Paris and Los Angeles, in 2014.
At least one key adjective isn’t obvious. “The Beast” is also Jamesian — as in of or pertaining to the fiction of Henry James. The film takes its title, and the meeting of its two chief characters, from James’s great novella “The Beast in the Jungle.”
James’s story is about a man who comes to realize that the defining event he’s awaited all his life is his life . . . lacking a defining event. “The Beast” would seem to reject that donnée, as James would call it, since the movie in no way lacks for events (a dress ball, a fire, drownings, an earthquake, even some green-screen scenes where what you see is just that, a green screen in the background). But in how their expectations, let alone their hopes, get fulfilled those two characters have in fact more in common with James’s protagonist than just how they meet.
Those characters are Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay, “1917,” “Munich — The Edge of War”). Depending on what year it is, she’s an uneasily married concert pianist, an aspiring actress-model, and a candidate for DNA “purification.” He’s alternately an English toff, a college student who’s a self-proclaimed incel, and himself a DNA-purification candidate. That process and the prominence of AI in 2044 contribute to the film’s futurism being so dystopian.
Clearly, “The Beast” gets around: in time, place, theme, incident. Jamesian as it may be in origin, in execution it’s Lynchian, as in David, and Garlandian, as in Alex. Movies, no less than movie characters, have DNA, and purification has nothing to do with it.
There’s a lot — meaning, a lot —of “Mulholland Drive” here, and not just in the LA portions. Hearing Roy Orbison on the soundtrack (in this case “Evergreen” rather than “In Dreams”) nods to “Blue Velvet.” As for Alex Garland, whose “Civil War” also opens this week, there’s a similar chilly, even pitiless intelligence to go with the sci-fi elements. Beyond Lynch and Garland, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” pick your version, has its place here, too.
Like Lynch, Bonello proceeds more by association than reason or explanation. That’s how dream logic works, and dream, of sorts, is what “The Beast” is. The film can be mystifying at time, even confusing, with all that switching around and lack of explaining, but it’s never confused. Keeping an eye on Seydoux’s hairstyles is the best way to follow when’s when and where’s where.
Seydoux spends much of the movie looking bewildered. This is as it should be: Gabrielle has a lot to be bewildered about. With his long, lugubrious face, MacKay looks almost parodically British. This remains true even when he’s speaking excellent French in the Paris scenes. He comes into his own in the LA sequence, effortlessly shifting from cosmopolite to Southern Californian. He delivers a spot-on American accent.
“The Beast” is an unusual film: challenging, ambitious, and inward. Even when inscrutable, as it often is, it holds the attention, though less so the longer it lasts, and it lasts nearly 2½ hours. Considering the distances “The Beast” travels, though, that may not be all that long.