The 2000's Movie Project: The Beach

The Beach (2000)

Directed by Danny Boyle

Written by John Hodge

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoye, Robert Carlyle

Release Date February 11th, 2000

The Beach is a deeply odd movie. Directed by Danny Boyle, The Beach stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Richard, an American traveling in Thailand. While staying at a cheap motel, Richard meets a crazed weirdo named Daffy (Robert Carlyle) who gives him a map to a hidden island paradise. Later, after finding Daffy dead, Richard goes to a pair of strangers he’d been vaguely stalking and asks them if they’d like to try and find this hidden paradise with him.

The two French strangers are a couple, Etienne (Guillaume Canet) and Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen). If you haven’t guessed that Richard chose this couple because he’s developed a crush on Francoise, you’re the only one. You can guess it just from what I wrote but in the movie you couldn’t miss it as Danny Boyle is not subtle about showing Richard staring holes through Francoise on a regular basis.

Regardless of that lack of subtlety, the couple agree to join their American friend for the trip and they set out for the hidden paradise. Finding the island, the trio also almost finds themselves dead when they stumble into a curiously well manicured marijuana farm. I don’t know why they thought rows and rows of marijuana grew naturally and that they could just take and smoke what they want but they sure quickly find out how wrong they are. The marijuana belongs to a group of Thai drug dealers who aren’t exactly welcoming to pothead visitors.

Narrowly escaping undetected from the well armed drug dealers, the trio venture deeper into the island hoping to discover a legendary lagoon. What they find first however, is a group of people living in peaceful harmony in this island paradise. They bring the trio into the fold and for a time everything appears as if life could not be better. Hanging over the story however is how Richard can’t seem to get over Francoise and how their eventual affair will ruin the harmony of the camp. Oh wait, that doesn’t happen. I am not going to spoil this 22 year old movie. Let’s just say that the resolution of this plot is weird and leave it at that.

Tilda Swinton co-stars in The Beach as Sal, the leader of the weird island cult. Okay, not a cult, more of a commune but considering all of the weird rules that she eventually begins to reveal, they may as well be a cult. Sal has a boyfriend named Bugs (Lars Arentz Hanson) but she prefers sport sex with many different men and sets her eyes on Richard. Again, this plot is not subtle and what happens between Sal and Richard is predictable even as it is played… oddly. The consequence happens off screen because… your guess is as good as mine.

Repeatedly throughout The Beach, Virginie Ledoyen’s Francoise has big moments that happen off screen. Whether it is her break up with Etienne or finding out what happened between Richard and Sal, it’s clear that director Danny Boyle did not trust the young French actress to be part of the most significant moments in the development of her characters. I don’t want to be unkind to Ledoyen, but based on the minimal lines of dialogue she has in The Beach, he was probably right to keep her on the sidelines.

The final act of The Beach is complete manic chaos and it’s actually the best thing about the movie. Banished to guard duty well outside the bounds of the commune, Richard begins to go insane. In a clear homage and updating of Apocalypse Now, a film referenced multiple times during The Beach, directly with an actual clip and subtly with visual touches, Richard’s mind snaps and he begins to go native.

In an honestly bravura sequence, Richard begins to envision Robert Carlyle’s late Daffy and the two share their insanity. DiCaprio going mad in the jungle, including a bizarre video game sequence, is the most fun to be had in The Beach. Sadly, the rest of the movie is completely lacking this kind of energy and excitement. This sequence of complete madness, the most truly Danny Boyle sequence in the movie, feels completely out of step and out of place with the rest of The Beach.

The ending of The Beach appears to have come from studio notes. It’s not hard to see where Boyle wanted the ending to go but you can’t do that in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Thus we get an ending that really doesn’t make much sense. It’s a deeply unsatisfying coda that appears to pretend everything that came before it did not matter in the least. I don’t know that I would call it a happy ending but it is certainly not the ending this movie needed.

What is wrong with these turn of the century movies? The Beach, Eye of the Beholder, and Next Friday are baffling movies, bizarre takes on familiar material, terrible homage to film classics and strangely somehow, experimental and completely awful. The Beach is undoubtedly the best of the group, but it’s just as weird and off-putting, in the end, as Eye of the Beholder and Next Friday. It’s as if filmmakers at the turn of the 21st Century were eager to experiment with form and then had a very limited number of good ideas as to what those experiments would be.

The Beach is streaming now on Peacock. Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.Blogspot.com. You can also follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean and follow the archive blog at SeanattheMovies. You can also hear me talking about movies on the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast on your favorite podcast listening app.