September 9, 2017 (Toronto International Film
Festival), April 27, 2018 (United Kingdom), release dates
Directed
by Michael Pearce
Screenplay
by Michael Pearce
Music by
Jim Williams
Edited by
Maya Maffioli
Cinematography
by Benjamin Kracun
Johnny Flynn as Pascal Renouf
Geraldine James as Hilary Hanford
Charley
Palmer Rothwell as Leigh Dutot
Hattie
Gotobed as Jade
Trystan
Gravelle as Clifford
Olwen
Fouere as DCI Theresa Kelly
Imogen de
Ste Croix as Melissa Healey
Tyrone
Lopez as Nuno Alvarez
Distributed
by 30West
Produced
by Agile Films, Stray Bear Productions
A serial killer is terrorizing a small unnamed
seaside community, and young women are the victims. At first, the plot of Beast doesn’t focus much on this part of
the story; it becomes much more important as the narrative unfolds, after the
main character Moll meets and falls in love with someone that her family
members and friends disapprove of immediately. His name is Pascal, and the
narrative thread about the serial murders is taken up again later in the film when
Pascal becomes a suspect.
The
credits begin, one by one, over outdoor scenes, including flower and candle
memorial sites for young women. After the credits, Beast starts with Moll singing in a practice choral session. Her
mother, viewers find out later, is the choral group leader. She tells Moll that
she needs more from her, which comes across as a criticism in front of the
choral group. As the camera closes in on Moll, the sounds of choral singing
fade into dissonant sounds. Then the film cuts abruptly to the film’s title in
Gothic type on a black background.
The film
cuts from this title shot to Moll getting dressed in her room at home. While
she talks in voice-over narration, the film cuts to scenes of an outdoor party
and some shots of Moll looking very uncomfortable and unhappy: “I was obsessed
by killer whales when I was a kid. They always seemed to be smiling. You know,
they travel a hundred miles a day in the ocean. But in captivity, their
soundwaves bounce off the walls and they become deaf and dumb. Some even go
insane. I read about one whale that broke all its teeth trying to break free.
It just got too much for him. He didn’t want to smile anymore.” The fact that
viewers do not know to whom the voice-over narration is directed underscores
the oddity of Moll’s words.
The party
is for Moll’s birthday, and during this party, her mother makes her get out the
champagne because Moll’s sister has just announced that she is expecting twins.
Thus, the sister steals the limelight from Moll, and her mother celebrates the
sister’s news by giving the sister the place of honor at Moll’s party. When
Moll goes into the kitchen to get a drink of water before retrieving the
champagne, she accidentally drops a glass. She picks up several of the glass
shards and squeezes them to cut her hand.
(This
blog post about Beast contains
spoilers.)
By now, I
had a lot of sympathy for Moll. She is portrayed as a tortured soul, trapped in
a repressive family whose members don’t seem to value her or care about her
happiness. But the film slowly reveals that Moll is not what she appears to be.
In fact, her affinity for killer whales and the way that she describes them the
night of her birthday party could very well be a description of her own place
in the world. She is living in her own form of captivity, but the way she
decides to break free turns out to be more destructive than a few broken teeth.
Moll has
a nightmare that someone comes into the house and stabs her with a pair of
scissors. She is often plagued by nightmares, but viewers eventually learn that
they originate from her own misdeeds. When she was still in school, she stabbed
a classmate with a pair of scissors. In her dreams, she plays the part of the
victim, but in reality, Moll is the perpetrator.
I found
myself asking the following questions as I watched the film:
◊ Does the film’s title refer only to the serial
killer who is terrorizing the small seaside community?
◊ Is Moll’s mother Hilary a beast for beating her
daughter? Moll mentions this in a conversation with Pascal, but is she a
reliable narrator?
◊ Are all of Moll’s family members beasts for
treating her, one of their own, as a pariah?
◊ Is Moll herself a beast for stabbing her
classmate with a pair of scissors?
By the
end of the film, the meaning of the title is a bit clearer; by that I mean that
it could apply to many characters for many different reasons, but I think it is
meant to apply to Moll specifically, which came as the biggest surprise to me.
Before I saw Beast, I had read that the film is
difficult to categorize, and I agree with that observation for the most part. I
am not at all fond of categories or categorizing, so this is hardly a drawback
from my perspective. I do think a case can be made for calling the film a
neo-noir, with its understated violence, constant threat of violence, fear,
angst, alienation, and the feeling from the main character Moll that she cannot
fit in.
The
lighting in the film is another reason that I think Beast can be called a neo-noir. It throws viewers off kilter with the
use of unusual colors: yellows, reds, blues. Moll lives in what seems like an
idyllic seaside town, but some of its inhabitants have a dark side. Some of the
bright sunny outdoor scenes are juxtaposed with scenes lit in unnatural colors,
which adds to the sense that so much, and not just the violence occurring
around the town, is out of kilter.
Beast is also a bit old-fashioned: So much of the violence
happens off screen and thus is left to the viewers’ imaginations. It reminded
me of low-budget films noir from the 1940s in that regard. I couldn’t find any
information about the film’s budget online, so I’m not sure that this is an
accurate comparison as far as budget is concerned. But the technique of leaving
much of the violence off screen also adds to the unease and the feeling that
the threat of violence is a constant in the story.
The narrative holds
lots of surprises, which I always count as a plus for any story, on film or in
print. The most
intriguing detail for me was that both Moll and the viewers go through a
transformation over the course of the narrative: Moll begins to accept the
beastliness of her nature, and viewers experience a transformation in their
understanding of Moll’s character. I said before that the film cuts abruptly to
the film’s title (Beast) in Gothic
type on a black background, and this happens right after Moll sings choral
music with her fellow choir members. This small detail turns out to be an
important clue about the title of the film. For the duration of the film, I was
waiting for violence to come to Moll; I never expected her to be a perpetrator
herself.
No comments:
Post a Comment