‘The Beast’ (dir. Bertrand Bonello, 2023)
There is an astonishing smorgasbord of new offerings on the Criterion Channel in August to drown your Olympics-are-ending sorrows. But the one that deserves your attention immediately is Bertrand Bonello’s triptych masterpiece, even if it actually debuted on the channel in the last days of July in a major “live” streaming premiere event. Premiering at Venice last year, “The Beast” is the kind of just-go-with it ramble in the mode of “2046” or “Cloud Atlas” we need way more often: In 1910, a rich love blossoms between married Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay), though they decide not to act on it. Their intimacy is such, though, that Gabrielle confesses to him the sense of doom that hangs over her life, her fear of a calamity taking place that’s caused her to obsess endlessly over it — anyone born with a pit of dread in their soul can relate to this, this “Beast” of the title it shares with a Henry James novella that loosely inspired this film.
Calamity indeed ensues for Gabrielle and Louis, and again in their next lives 100 years later when Gabrielle is now a model housesitting in LA and Louis is a murderous incel stalker after her. They were important in each other’s lives the first time around and now again in a very different way. And finally, we see them in 2044, when AI has taken most of the world’s jobs, and the only satisfying employment left requires everyone to purge their emotions and become robot-like via a surgery.
The mix of emotions and moods throughout “The Beast” runs a vast spectrum: One minute it’s an Edith Wharton-esque tragedy, the next a literal slasher movie about a woman alone in a house being menaced. And it has the single best use of green-screen in a movie since “Holy Motors.”
If you need something else to taper off that high following “The Beast,” Criterion has similar epics for you to immerse in: A major Paul Thomas Anderson retrospective on the streamer features “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” “There Will Be Blood,” “The Master,” and “Licorice Pizza.” That lineup features a fair bit of overlap with a new Philip Seymour Hoffman collection as well, which adds “25th Hour,” “Capote,” “The Savages,” and “Synecdoche, New York” to the mix. Plus there are tribute collections to Egyptian pioneer Youssef Chahine and screwball maestro Preston Sturges, a lineup of films about photographers, and “vacation noir,” a rundown of films like “Leave Her to Heaven,” “The Lady from Shanghai,” and “Niagara,” where the pursuit of fun and recreation goes to very dark places. Many of those are whirlpools of emotion comparable to “The Beast,” and as dangerous to fall into. —CB
Available to stream August 1.
Other highlights:
-“Magnolia” (8/1)
-“The Savages” (8/1)
-“Rear Window (8/1)
