# Beach, The (2000)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

THE BEACH (20th Century Fox) Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoyen, Guillaume Canet, Robert Carlyle, Paterson Joseph. Screenplay: John Hodge, based on the novel by Alex Garland. Producer: Andrew MacDonald. Director: Danny Boyle. MPAA Rating: R (sexual situations, violence, nudity, graphic gore, profanity, drug use) Running Time: 116 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

When we are introduced to Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), the young American protagonist of THE BEACH, he says, "My name is Richard. What else do you need to know about me?" He tries to convince us that he's a blank slate, a walking receptor for experiences using his backpacking trip through Thailand as a way to shake up his life. It's an intriguing start, except for one small problem: There's a lot more we need to know about Richard. In fact, there's a lot more we need to know about virtually everyone and everything in THE BEACH. Director Danny Boyle's travelogue-cum-human nature treatise proves to be a tremendously frustrating experience -- it's a lazy film that thinks it's being profound.

The titular beach is a hidden cove on a remote island off the Thai coast, a place that has become a sort of myth among tourists in Thailand. Richard learns the truth when Daffy (Robert Carlyle), a crazed former resident of the island, hands over a map to its location. Accompanied by a young French couple named Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) and Etienne (Guillaume Canet), Richard makes the difficult journey to the island, where they find a community of self-imposed outcasts from civilization. It all seems to be a paradise on earth, except for the presence of a pseudo-benevolent pseudo-dictator named Sal (Tilda Swinton) whose paranoia over keeping the island secret is rivaled only by her libido, and the unsettling willingness of the residents to leave their dying in the middle of the jungle. Soon Richard begins suspecting that the threats to the community from without -- edgy marijuana farmers, more Americans -- may be less troubling than the threats from within.

During its first hour, THE BEACH does an effective job of setting tone, largely through the efforts of superb technical craftsmen. Darius Khondji works his now-typical magic with darkness, adding a shadow of creepiness to Richard's cynical vision of tourism in "exotic" lands. The island locations are spectacular, and Donald McAlpine's production design of the islanders' camp is a tidy marvel. THE BEACH wants to set up an initial dichotomy -- the pasteurized pleasures of most tourist destinations compared to the raw glory of the island -- that eventually proves to be false. On a visual level, it's hard not to argue that Boyle and company succeed.

Unfortunately for Boyle and company -- and for you, John or Jane Q. Potential Audience Member -- the characters eventually have to play a role in the film. When they do, it becomes quite clear that nobody understands why anybody is doing anything. Richard's vague motivations and frustrations over sanitized tourist experiences seem provocative as the film begins, but soon the script begins dropping in details about his past -- e.g. he's a video game junkie -- without bothering to explain why that matters except as an excuse for Boyle to include an admittedly creative fantasy sequence. That complete apathy over exploring motivation spills over into every other character, as screenwriter John Hodge never bothers with the tiny matter of what the islanders want their paradise to represent, or why Sal above all others treats the place as a holy secret. The characters -- including DiCaprio, whose performance is about as good as you can expect in a role so under-written -- generally appear to be occupying space and serving plot functions, to the ridiculous extreme that the head marijuana farmer gives a knowing nod after his solution to the film's climactic problem proves him a worthy successor to Solomon in the despotic wisdom department.

Of course, letting the complexities of the characters come to the surface would have required some actual effort, as opposed to offering up the premise as it stands. THE BEACH comes to the staggering conclusion that a perfect society is not possible when imperfect human beings are involved (particularly when some of those imperfect human beings happen to be surly neighboring marijuana farmers). It's ridiculously obvious thematic material, yet the makers of THE BEACH seem convinced that presenting that theme is enough to earn them philosophical style points. Ultimately, style points are all they earn, though they earn those style points in impressive quantities. There are several instances when THE BEACH has the power to grab you viscerally -- the squeamish might want to turn away after the consequences of a shark attack -- but the concept clearly wants to grab you intellectually as well. And THE BEACH just can't do that, not when its creators decide the characters' names are all you need to know about them.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 sons of beaches:  5.

                       Visit Scott Renshaw's Screening Room
                        http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/
                                       ***
                 Subscribe to receive new reviews directly by email!
     See the Screening Room for details, or reply to this message with subject
                                   "Subscribe".

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews