Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later continues its theatrical run (I reviewed it here a couple of weeks ago), so I thought I would re-visit Boyle's mostly misfired 2000 film The Beach. This review originally appeared on Film.com that year. I interviewed Boyle a few years later, an encounter that left little doubt that the manic energy you see on screen in his movies is very much embodied in the man himself. Of course, to expand your experience with Boyle you can sift through Scarecrow's holdings, where the director of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting is well represented.
The Beach begins with backpacker Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) slouching through Thailand, drinking snake’s blood and fighting off the exotic bugs in his hotel. Then a loony (Robert Carlyle) in the room next door offers him a hand-drawn map to a secret island where peaceful hippies frolic in the surf and smoke pot all day: Carlos Castaneda by way of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Naturally, Richard heads off to the spot, which is almost impossible to reach, the final couple of kilometers accessible only by swimming. He’s joined by a French couple he met in Bangkok, half of whom (played by Virginie Ledoyen, from Late August, Early September) he lusts after. They find the beach commune—you were thinking perhaps they wouldn’t?--and settle in to be lotus-eaters. There’s trouble in paradise, as there always is, but it doesn’t come from the fact that Richard and the French girl kiss while swimming amongst the phosphorescent plankton; her boyfriend gives up the romance with a shrug (oh, those worldly French). No, the conflict comes from the sharks that won’t stop biting commune members—that’s the metaphorical part—and the craving for secrecy that eventually destroys this South Seas Woodstock.
Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge, of Trainspotting fame, don’t seem terribly interested in the utopian aspects of this community. They can’t wait to get to the ruin. Because (unlike their hero) they don’t buy into the dream, the movie is oddly flattened out; when Richard is banished from the commune, we don’t feel any particular loss. Meanwhile, the decline of the island’s happiness leads to the least comprehensible section of the film, with Richard warping off Apocalypse Now and morphing into a video game—the latter a cool visual, but a trite concept. Evidently this is from the cult novel by Alex Garland, but the movie feels like a mixed-up collection of high points from a book.
The Beach is photographed by the amazing Darius Khondji (Seven), and the soundtrack is a cool jumble of pop hits we’d expect from the Trainspotting boys. DiCaprio has matured out of kid-dom; he looks more like a leading man now, and very much willing to take chances. Too willing, maybe, because his more dramatic moments come off as hysterical. His other problem, which is not his fault, is a lack of anybody to play against. Ledoyen speaks English awkwardly, and eventually the movie lets her slip into the leafy background; the other beach people are generic.
The exception is Tilda Swinton, as the unsentimental leader of the community. Now here’s a worthy, ferocious adversary. In one scene, Richard is swimming in the lagoon and must kill a shark with only a knife; I’m not sure I believe Leonardo DiCaprio could do that, but I know Tilda Swinton could. Unfortunately, except for a trip to the mainland where she exploits Richard for his boy-toy aspects (“I may wish to have sex again before we eat breakfast”), Swinton’s character makes very little sense.
The opening reels here promise something big, but the movie settles for a sour, predetermined funk—The Lord of the Flies as imagined by a Nintendo junkie. Maybe Werner Herzog should have directed it, to give it a true sense of the madness of going to the jungle. As it is, The Beach is stranded on its own desert island, stuck between big ambitions and bad vibes.
July 4, 2025
