Janus Contemporaries: The Beast

[Ribs]

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

They’re really trying to make themselves competitors to Cinema Guild and Grasshopper Films, huh?

[bad future]

Considering that I don't think Bonello's last feature ever got picked up for US distribution at all, I welcome Janus/Sideshow's incursion into that ostensibly crowded space!

[Matt]

It’s got to be an attractive proposition for filmmakers and their sales agents knowing their film will get competent theatrical, streaming, and physical media distribution and probably a strong awards push too. Even A24 can’t guarantee that.

[CSM126]

Janus posted a teaser for Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast on X.

[jwd5275]

Janus page for The Beast

[Matt]

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone here talk about this film. Has no one seen it or is it just not good? The trailer makes it seem like very much my thing (weird, French, time-jumping), but I don’t want to spend an hour drive each way plus a 146-minute runtime to find out it’s not.

[Red Screamer]

I had a good time with it but I suspect mileage will vary. The film is split into three time periods and I found the contemporary section much stronger than the others. It’s too one-note and shallow to achieve the James adaptation/statement movie/Seydoux tour de force it’s striving for, but those same qualities help make it an effective, dissonant Lynch-lite horror movie with a bunch of potent mood setting.

[senseabove]

I'll put it this way: I enjoyed The Beast enough to see it a second time within a week to try to figure out what didn't quite work for me. I think Bonello made three of the best films of their decade with L'Apollonide, Saint Laurent, and Nocturama, and while I don't think it reaches their heights, I still think Bonello's one of the most interesting working directors. I assume the unprecedented accolades it's getting are because the guiding, if not commandeering, spirit (like late Bresson was Nocturama's) is Lynch. But I don't think Lynch's strength's are Bonello's, whom I find most fascinating when he explores how emotion is inherently, if unconsciously, political (a theme I sincerely hope Lynch stays far, far away from). And unfortunately this movie feels untethered—not unaware of politics, but they're video game politics, there because it would be ridiculous to pretend they're not, but unengaged; it creeps in around the edges of the (roughly) contemporary plot-line because it can't not, given the (non-James) source extensively and directly quoted, but the past and future storylines feel too distant and curtailed—the weight behind them evaporates just as it gathers.

All that said, I, as an avowed Bonello fan, seem to be among the least fond of this one of folks I know, and though it didn't meet my expectations, I still quite liked it. Seydoux's expectedly great, Mckay's unexpectedly (for me, at least?) really good, and Bonello still has a wonderful flare for the unnervingly piquant. Not to make it sound more middling than I mean it to—I just had insanely high expectations after all the hype for the new one from the director two of whose films were high-ranking orphans on my 2010s list. So if it sounds up your alley, it's probably worth catching. It's a bit dawdling while still being a bit grandiose on a small scale, if that makes sense, so I do think a theatrical setting is a benefit.

[therewillbeblus]

I don't have a ton of experience with his work, but thought Coma was one of the most audacious "covid" films I've seen (if you can even define it). Really curious to explore their other work. I haven't seen The Beast yet, but it doesn't sound like the type of film one leaves and regrets giving it a try (which only happens to me when receiving confirmation bias after entering a movie with low expectations, or when I feel the artists kept things too safe)

[therewillbeblus]

I had a good time with it but I suspect mileage will vary. The film is split into three time periods and I found the contemporary section much stronger than the others. It’s too one-note and shallow to achieve the James adaptation/statement movie/Seydoux tour de force it’s striving for, but those same qualities help make it an effective, dissonant Lynch-lite horror movie with a bunch of potent mood setting.

It reminded me of Fukunaga's miniseries Maniac more than any other filmic or auteurist influence. A boldly elliptical, poetic canvas of the pathos and horrors inherent in both loneliness and brewing connection, and the fear-based parts of us that obstruct possibilities for sustaining the latter beyond fleeting doses of diluted intimacy.. cataloging risk, desperation, and the fatalistically ill-fitting nature of relationships, which are derived from wills and expectations within the lone 'self' before an attempt to 'join'. If there's one thing wrong with the film (and there is), it's that it's too full of ideas and too brief to fulfill its vision with the richness it deserves. I wish this was longer with more segments like La flor, or in the miniseries format like Maniac, but it's still good and worth seeing. Scholarly extras would be cool for a future Criterion release, but this'll probably just get stuck as a barebones Janus Contemporaries title

[black&huge]

So I'm actually right in the middle of watching this right now and I wanted to chime in because they...

Spoiler

reference Elliot Rodger

Which is so.... odd

[spectre]

It's definitely tonally weird!

Spoiler

If I understand correctly, the character is quoting Rodger verbatim in all his pieces to camera, so it’s less a reference than a full-on detour into his disturbed psyche.

Foregrounding an incel character and developing him in different directions in the way the film does is interesting – though while it would have been one thing to base the character loosely on the real-life Rodger, the direct quotes felt a bit too self-consciously postmodern to me. That's really my only criticism of the film, though, which is otherwise great and easily one of the best things I’ve seen this year.

[domino harvey]

Confirmed as coming from the side label via Criterion email

[flyonthewall2983]

saw it mentioned on instagram, said it will premiere on the Channel soon

[Matt]

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone here talk about this film. Has no one seen it or is it just not good? The trailer makes it seem like very much my thing (weird, French, time-jumping)

Having now been able to see it in the comfort of my own living room, I can happily say that it IS very much my thing! The 1914 portion is a little dry, but it effectively grounds the later portions which get much weirder and more interesting. The Lynch influence is perhaps a bit too obvious, but it works. A couple of scenes are genuinely menacing and frightening in that kind of uncanny Lynch way, and the film never seems to be winking at the viewer in its references and repetitions.

I’m not sure it’s an instant 5-star movie for me (forgive the Letterboxd lingo) in the way that say, Pacifiction was (another movie which was very much my thing). More to say it’s not love at first sight, but I’m eager to watch it again as soon as I can to find out.

Léa Seydoux is building a career like Catherine Deneuve or Isabelle Huppert, working steadily in mainstream films and weird auteur films, and is probably going to keep doing so for (I hope) decades. She’s such a pleasure to watch (moreso in French films, which is generally true about Deneuve and Huppert as well).

[Finch]

BD dated for December 10.

[nicolas]

I have the French Blu-ray and it's such a remarkably beautiful encode that the film looks almost 4K-like in how sharp and detailed it is. I hope that the Janus BD is able to replicate that as good as possible.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I have the French Blu-ray and it's such a remarkably beautiful encode that the film looks almost 4K-like in how sharp and detailed it is. I hope that the Janus BD is able to replicate that as good as possible.

Does the French blu actually play the credits or show the QR code?

[nicolas]

I have the French Blu-ray and it's such a remarkably beautiful encode that the film looks almost 4K-like in how sharp and detailed it is. I hope that the Janus BD is able to replicate that as good as possible.

Does the French blu actually play the credits or show the QR code?

It shows the QR code.

[swo17]

It would be nice to have the credits as an on-disc extra as well, in case the link ever goes dead

[Rupert Pupkin]

"Coma" (the second movie (a short one) dedicated to her daughter (after "Nocturama"); should have been put in bonus (had this movie deserved a Criterion treatment rather than just Janus Contemporaries) - it is inspired (IMHO) by Todd Haynes movie with dolls (barbie) and "maisons de poupées" (which we find in The Beast too). I can see a lot of connections with "The Beast".
Am I the only one who thought about "Last Year In Marienbad" for the exterior scenes ? (Too bad Bonello did not used the same effect for the shadows; I would not have been that hard nowadays with video-effects.)
Regarding the QR Code; no extra on the French blu-ray (unless it was an Easter egg and I did not find it); so, when the link won't work; that's the end; so to speak.

[therewillbeblus]

Coma is the best Bonello I've seen yet, including this one. Expanded thoughts here

[Rupert Pupkin]

Coma is the best Bonello I've seen yet, including this one. Expanded thoughts here

will reply in the right thread.Thanks. I think that besidesD. Cronenberg and Alain Resnais there is also a Chris Marker influence ("Level 5") in his two recent movies (Coma and La Bête). "La Bête" (but I love the other one with Anais Demoustier which was released the same year) is my favorite B.Bonello with l'Apollonide. Saint Laurent is probably is best movie but not my favorite.
I think the first movie I saw was "Le Pornographe" with J-P Leaud. Almost the same story and character than in "Irma Vep" by O.Assayas.

[Rupert Pupkin]

I have just received "Paper Moon" UHD/BR combo (such a great packaging) and "The Beast"; which I have already seen three times (one in theatre).

Now the Bertrand Bonello interview was very interesting; and there are some video excepts of l'Apollonide (which brings me to the [-o< question : could Criterion release it one day on blu-ray ? This would be the Criterion collection since Janus is for the movies which just came out). Mind you, this movie is not available (as far as I can tell) on Blu-Ray except in Russia (but if I remember the ratio was not totally accurate (1:78 perhaps instead of 1:85). I had more luck with Céline Sciamma : I was able to order la "Naissance des pieuvres" in Germany on Blu-Ray (fresh new restoration) (some video excerpts can be seen in the Criterion "Portrait de la Jeune fille en feu" - which made me except "Water Lilies" on Criterion)