A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Search This Blog

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

The Beach (Danny Boyle, 2000)

Leonardo DiCaprio, Virginie Ledoyen, and Guillaume Canet in The Beach
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoyen, Guillaume Canet, Robert Carlyle, Patterson Joseph, Lars Arentz-Hansen, Daniel Caltagirone, Staffan Kihlborn, Jakka Hiltunen, Magnus Lindgren. Screenplay: John Hodge, based on a novel by Alex Garland. Cinematography: Darius Khondji. Production design: Andrew McAlpine. Film editing: Masahiro Hirakubo. Music: Angelo Badalamenti.

Danny Boyle's The Beach turned a novel by Alex Garland into a vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio, coming off the success of Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). The protagonist, Richard, who was British in the novel, becomes a disaffected young American (DiCaprio) searching for adventure in Thailand, who manages to get hold of a map to a secluded island with a white sand beach and all the marijuana one could wish. But his arrival on the island disturbs the detente between the native cannabis farmers and the hippie-style communards who have found their way there. Violence (and a little sex) ensues. The movie can't seem to decide whether it wants to be an adventure tale, a satire on tourism, a commentary on human nature, or a fable about utopianism, and an intrusive narrative voiceover by Richard doesn't clarify much.

Posted by
Links: , , , ,