The Beast (2023)
Written and directed by Bertrand Bonello
Co-written by Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit
This movie is partly an early 20th century romance, based upon Henry James’ 1903 novella “The Beast in the Jungle;” partly a recent-past cautionary tale set in 2014; and partly a strange science fiction story (or part of one) set 30 years after that, when AI runs everything.
The Henry James source novella is about a man who lives with a crippling sense of foreboding. He meets a woman who befriends him and offers to be a stabilizing influence, someone who will “watch with” the fearful man; of course, his fears become hermetic and self-fulfilling. This movie reverses the roles. Léa Seydoux plays a young married pianist, Gabrielle, and George MacKay a gentleman about her age, Louis. He’s convinced that they’ve met before, at which time she confided her fear; he’s the one who will watch with her against it.
Scenes of their conversations as they drift around Parisian salons and gardens are interspersed with scenes from the year 2044. Here Gabrielle appears as a young woman with less complicated hair; she doesn’t have the nameless fear but she still has too many emotions for the AI, whose approval is necessary for her to get a decent job at a time when there’s vast unemployment thanks, of course, to AI. (These cautionary moments about life after the singularity are surely going to become standard fare in movies and TV in the years to come.) But it offers her a solution: by having her float in a viscous fluid and giving her an injection, AI will “purify her DNA” of karma from past lives so that she’s no longer emotional. (Yes, that’s ridiculous, but for the moment we accept this mumbo-jumbo.) Once purified, she can take her place as a productive member of society.
Well. I wouldn’t mind seeing that movie, the one set entirely in 2044, but so far we’re seeing snippets from it between the scenes from the previous century’s first decade. (The film depicts a great flood in Paris, which actually took place in 1910.) We suppose that the Edwardian-era scenes depict one of those past lives that are still bothering the woman in 2044, but otherwise there’s little to connect the two narratives. Nevertheless, I found the moral questions contained in the future narrative compelling, and when the Edwardian-era story ended I hoped that the rest of the movie would center them.
No such luck. Along came a third narrative, set in 2014, in which Gabrielle is an under-employed model and actor in Los Angeles, and Louis is an incel. He records a video diary lamenting his regrettable virginity and saying how much he hates women, along with any evidence of coupled happiness, such as an inoffensive couple in love who “spoil” his view of the beach on a nice day. This timeline’s Gabrielle, though she is still bilingual in French and English, doesn’t have the pervasive fear that she did during her past life as an Edwardian; in fact, as the modern incel Louis begins stalking her, she doesn’t seem to be wary enough.
In any case, the way the script paints the incel version of Louis is very unimaginative, and I didn’t want to watch what happens next, so with ten or so minutes left in the movie, I left.
Sorry; not sorry. The first hour-plus of the film was engrossing but it didn’t seem that the director was going to land it anyplace good. I’ve grown very resistant to stories about women written by men — unless, of course, they’re really good. I can’t think of an example of a good one at the moment but I’m sure there are some. I will, as Louis promises in the first iteration, keep watch.