The Beach (2000) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoyen, Guillaume Canet. Directed by Danny Boyle. Rated R.
After a weirdly long two-year hiatus, the Titanic heartthrob is finally back on screen but with a whimper rather than a bang. He has chosen The Beach, an unusual film with a woefully confused script, one that obviously wants to say something but is not sure what. Leonardo Dicaprio's intense presence brings a visceral quality to the proceedings but doesn't make the movie any less pretentious.
Someone should explain to Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) why most directors take a few minutes at the beginning of the movie to let us get accustomed to the characters, because Boyle forgets. He jumps abruptly out of the starting gate with a voiceover from our protagonist, a young tourist named Richard (DiCaprio). Richard is in Bangkok -- why he is there and where he is from, we are not told. He is exploring, experimenting with the city's vibrant culture (this, of course, involves drinking some tasty-looking snake blood), looking for something bigger than himself. Sitting in his ratty hotel room one night, he encounters a crazy guy named, not surprisingly, Daffy (Robert Carlyle) who tells him about an island paradise, an idyllic world of white sands, clear waters and all the pot you can smoke.
Daffy also gives Richard a map, detailing how to get to the island. He recruits a French couple next door, Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) and Etienne (Guillaume Canet) and they are off in search of paradise. After no small amount of effort, they finally reach their destination only to be shot at by some mysterious marijuana farmers. They run off to the other side of the island where they find what they were looking for -- a society of settlers living off the land. They rarely get off the island and when they do, they are bound by a code of secrecy: the farmers on the other side agreed to let them stay under the condition that no other people come. The settlers, led by a mildly obsessed lady named Cindy (Tilda Swinton) accept Richard, Francoise and the foxy Etienne into their circle, but Richard realizes that he gave a copy of the map to a bunch of pot-smoking idiots back on the mainland, possibly endangering the future of this paradise.
There are, of course, chase scenes, shark attacks and other such diversions. These are handled quite well by both Boyle and Dicaprio. Boyle keeps the suspense up and Dicaprio is starting to show a real screen presence, even if he still isn't the most expensive of actors. Indeed the visceral level of The Beach has no problems at all, helped out in a big way by the gorgeous scenery. Filmed in Thailand, the movie is covered when it comes to sand and water. What it could have used to supplement the pretty pictures is a clear sense of where it was headed and what it was trying to say because the version that makes it onto the screen is hopelessly lost within itself.
About halfway through, the storyline curves sharply. The protagonist seems to become a modern-day Tarzan, going halfway insane and the movie becomes annoyingly self-conscious. Its final message -- that there is no such thing as paradise but the fun moments you have will last forever -- is outrageous. What fun times? Almost being eaten alive? Getting shot at? Having to leave a shark-bitten friend in the woods to die? I have a feeling Boyle is trying to kill too many birds with one stone here and as a result confuses himself -- and us -- completely.
Still, a lot of people are apt to walk away happy from this. Leo fans will be delighted, as will fans of suspense genre films. But The Beach overreaches its aim and when all is said and done, it falls flat on its face thematically, if not viscerally.
Grade: C+
©1999 Eugene Novikov
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