# Beach, The (2000)

### reviewed by
Shay Casey

    ** out of ****

    Year: 2000.
    Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Virginie Ledoyen, Guillaume Canet, Tilda
    Swinton, Paterson Joseph, Robert Carlyle, Peter Youngblood Hills, Jerry
    Swindall.
    Screenplay by John Hodge.
    Directed by Danny Boyle.
    Rated R.

I'm not 14 years old, and I'm not female, but I'm pretty confident in claiming that in his new movie "The Beach," pretty boy Leonardo DiCaprio is looking just as dreamy as ever. (And just to deflect any potential pithy comments, no, I'm not gay either -- not that there's anything wrong with that.) There's plenty of stuff here for Leo fanatics to get worked up over. There's Shirtless Leo, Romantic Leo, and a fair amount of Leo Sex. But such fans may also be disappointed, because "The Beach" is no airy, ultimately tragic romance á la "Titanic." It's an edgy, violent, highly-stylized film that says something about humanity and civilization. At least it thinks it does. The trouble with "The Beach" is that it's saddled with a clashing of goals: Leo fans may want a film that offers an opportunity to gaze at their, like, most favorite movie star ever (and no doubt the studio pushed for that), but it's clearly coming from source material that has higher purpose in mind. This film, a thematically confused affair, never reconciles the conflict.

DiCaprio plays Richard, a bored American looking for adventure by touring the world. He arrives in Thailand, finding a world just as commercialized as the one he came from. At his flea-ridden hotel, he meets Daffy (Robert Carlyle), a crazed Scot who gives him a map detailing the location of a hidden island, upon which a beach lies, one purported to be paradise on Earth. After Daffy commits a gruesome suicide, Richard convinces the French couple living next door, Étienne (Guillaume Canet) and Françoise (Virginie Ledoyen), to embark with him on a journey to the fabled beach. When the trio reaches their destination, they find an island half owned by Thai marijuana farmers, with the other half owned by a group consisting mostly of Europeans that live on a beautiful beach and have formed their own community. They work to maintain their paradise, but spend a great deal of their time partying. To Richard and his pals, it seems like the perfect life, but like all perfect lives in a movie like this, it can't last. One of the more ominous figures is Sal (Tilda Swinton), the overbearing community matriarch, whose stubborn desire to keep her perfect community secret may be its downfall.

Leo performs reasonably well in this film, and contrary to what many of those who got sick of the "Titanic" hoopla might think, he's actually a pretty good actor. Too bad his role in "The Beach" is not a good one for him; when the script forces him to "go primitive," it's positively silly (more on that later), and much of the artistic merit has been compromised by the producers' more commercial desire to get their golden boy into yet another troublesome love triangle. Consequently, Richard's romance with Françoise feels painfully tacked-on, especially considering it lasts about 20 minutes before being forgotten altogether. And Étienne is probably the calmest ex-boyfriend in history: Is he really going to give up a babe like Françoise that easily? Either he's a wimp or merely the consequence of a Hollywood script contrivance, one dealing only with the desired end result and paying little attention to the logic of getting there.

"The Beach" starts off well enough. There's a nice "Apocalypse Now"-inspired opening sequence, and Robert Carlyle's appearance is delightfully batty, despite the fact that I could hardly understand a word of it. In fact, most of the movie's first act is quite entertaining, mainly because it's actually moving toward a goal: discovery of the island. Had it kept with this premise -- an adventure-romance in a tropical locale -- the film might have worked. It wouldn't have been deep, but still fun. Unfortunately, "The Beach" runs into pretensions of thematic depth in its second hour, and when this film gets deep, it gets silly. We get muddled messages about humanity's destruction of nature and the fleeting quality of paradise, and they don't take hold because it's clear screenwriter John Hodge doesn't know what he wants to say. He waffles around, first making Richard a disenchanted antihero, then a romantic lead, and finally an animalistic jungle boy. The last of these choices is by far the worst, and it's sadly the one Hodge goes with at the end. The major problem with Richard's transformation into Mr. Primeval is that the entire episode doesn't make an ounce of sense. Leo's character goes nuts at the drop of a hat, and then turns back to being civilized just as abruptly. Nothing is ever explained about his sudden lapse into insanity, and what's worse, DiCaprio is decidedly not the right actor for the part. Would you be scared if a shirtless, headband-wearing Leo growled at you from underneath some bushes? I'd laugh and move on, but the people in "The Beach" actually take him seriously.

Director Danny Boyle is a great talent, and his use of rapid-fire editing techniques and creative shot selection is still as proficient as ever, but he really doesn't know what to do with material that has no real focus. I've never read the Alex Garland novel upon which "The Beach" is based, but it seems the point has been lost, and Boyle doesn't know where it is. In an effort to cover this up, he overloads his film with stylistic flourishes. This isn't a bad strategy; if nothing else, "The Beach" remains visually interesting for most of its running time. But I'm not sure if there's ever been a filmmaker with enough style to entirely cover up for utter failure in the writing department (well, maybe Tim Burton), and likewise Boyle's stylistic decisions don't hold up to close scrutiny. There is a scene with DiCaprio running around the jungle like a character in a video game (unsubtly set up by early scenes of Richard playing his Game Boy) that is awfully amusing at first glance, but when I thought about it, I couldn't come up with any earthly reason why it was included. Nor did I understand why Richard started having dreams about Daffy taking him into war, and why everyone welcomes the original trio with open arms but freaks out when four surfers, accidentally led by Richard, come to the island. There isn't much internal logic in "The Beach," just a lot of inexplicable things necessary to move the plot along, which are otherwise known as "contrivances."

Some might find the issues brought up by "The Beach" timely and fascinating, provided they've never read "Lord of the Flies" or seen "Apocalypse Now," but for me, it was an old message delivered in confusing fashion. There are some redeeming virtues, namely some breathtaking cinematography and a technofied musical score that adds to many of the scenes nicely. Too bad the film's story goes from decent to bad to awful: The ending of Garland's novel apparently involved a violent bloodbath, and while that might not have made the film much better, it might at least have made a little more sense. The ending of this version (involving a bunch of iMacs) regretfully destroys whatever confused messages the film might have been delivering and serves to turn Leo's character into even more of a brat than he was at the beginning. Did Richard learn anything from his descent into the heart of darkness? According to this "Beach," no.

    -reviewed by Shay Casey

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