As artificial intelligence reigns, emotions have become a threat; to get rid of it, Gabrielle must purify her DNA by diving back into her past lives; she finds a great love there as well as a bad feeling.
The Beast is directed by Bertrand Bonello director of Nocturama (2016), Zombi Child (2019), Coma (2022), On War (2008) and a few others.
The Beast is a powerful one, dealing with many themes such as loss, narcissism, loneliness and much more.
To start off the performances are all fantastic here Léa Seydoux and George MacKay bounce off of each other during their conversations in a very natural way that's quite beautiful and moves the story along at a beautiful pace. But it's the performance by Seydoux that's the standout and is honestly a career best worthy performance, she is able to adapt to the film's many themes and time periods the film uses. Each new period we learn something new about her character Gabrielle which she gets more and more investing as the film goes on.
Seydoux also blends incredibly well with the film's mysterious atmosphere, I've talked before about the sense of the unknown in some other reviews, this film uses that cleverly. Each time period, each scene or even dialogue you never know what's going to happen. The film challenges the viewer to look at the film closely and try to figure out what exactly is going on here, it takes a lot of turns that I most certainly wasn't expecting but glad the film made the decisions it did.
The script is incredibly well written, it tackles the themes of loss, loneliness and such incredibly well. Particularly loss, throughout these time periods there's this sense of the characters losing parts of their lives, given what ends up happening in the film that does seem to be the case. It's haunting yet beautiful portrayal of loss that is quite different from how other films portrayed it as. Loneliness mostly comes from the atmosphere and just the storytelling, it really seems abandoned especially towards the end that really hits you with the loneliness feel. It's quite scary, raw but at the same time beautiful.
Speaking of which the film itself is beautifully shot, it's one of the best looking films so far this year and that really comes from just how fluently the film moves, how the story adds to the cinematography, the character's movements and so much more.
The Beast is definitely not going to be for everyone, as it does take a lot of time to get going. However if you are patient the film rewards the viewer greatly, it's a fascinating film that I do highly recommend checking out.
The Beast is available on all VOD platforms.
10/10 A+
No comments:
Post a Comment