Written by Tyrone BruinsmaWARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! There are many films from 2022 that still linger with me. I'm still trying to fully understand and appreciate Three Thousand Years of Longing and how it comments on the nature of storytelling. I'm still engrossed by Jordan Peele's Nope that had so much to say on media, exploitation and spectacle. And I'm still amazed at the marvelous drone cinematography used in Michael Bay's Ambulance. But, if there's one film that's frustrated me the most, to where I cannot comfortably say if I enjoy it or not-it is The Menu. Directed by Mark Mylod, written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy (the latter developing the original story), produced by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell and released by Disney Searchlight Pictures, the film is a darkly comedic thriller about a prestigious chef who has invited guests to his exclusive island restaurant to be dined and killed. The film has received a large degree of praise from critics and audiences alike, even ending up on some critics' favorite films of the year lists. The frequent critic line used to describe the film is "Ratatouille meets Saw", which is both correct and not to the film's premise. It honestly feels close in tone and style to Jordan Peele's Get Out from 2017, but without any degree of commentary on racial politics. It's a film largely focused on food, its creation and consumption in relation to artistry, capitalism and the relationship between creator and consumer. While I cannot say the film is subtle in its exploration of these themes and ideas, I cannot say it is clear or concise on its thesis. While it's very easy to enjoy the straightforward narrative about a disillusioned chef seeking vengeance on those who he believes destroyed his work and a passion to cook, deeper analysis always improves a work. No matter what people (usually anti-intellectual, in-curious and outrage merchant grifters) say: all art and thus films have a deeper meaning. That meaning can be artistic, symbolic, sociological, meta-textual and yes: political. No matter how niche or broad a work is, it is more than the sum of its parts as a narrative. Even when a work doesn't intend to have any kind of statement or intent (as does any political stance/act) it still has one as we live in a political world. Art is made by people; people live in the real world and as far back as politics became a part of our world-it became a political world. By an artist's intent or not, their work carries meaning. I would get into the cinematic philosophies of "Auteur Theory" V.S "Death of the Author", but that would take too long so I encourage you to research those if you're curious or ask your film school friend who'll be more than happy to tell you. Short version is that Auteur Theory states that an author (the director) and their intent is the final word on a film, while Death of the Author is that a singular or collective audience decides what a film means regardless of the original intention. So, while I'll not be able to confirm if my reading is the genuine vision of the film's creators or my own attempt to evaluate what this means in my perspective-I still feel it's worth exploring the frustration I had in understanding this film. Because ultimately works that have more to say than just "please watch me" last longer in the cultural space than whatever dreck Steven Seagal was putting out from 2002 to 2019. First, I'd like to explore how meanings in films work to give a reference of where I'm coming from. Ever since I started engaging with films on a more than superficial level, I've developed a fairly good sense of what a film is saying (or appears to be saying) on sometimes a first viewing. I've been able to understand avant-garde art-house films like Only God Forgives, Mulholland Drive, Mother or Mad God. But this also applies to big blockbuster films most would consider artistically bankrupt. Independence Day is a film about how humanity uniting against a single enemy that tore down our symbols of division is better for mankind. Star Wars is a series about how embracing spiritual enlightenment and defying old ways can defeat fascist empires. The Matrix is bluntly a story about modern society's need to control and the importance of defying that system (as well the trans metaphor and the sequels self-deconstructing the original). And in one of the best recent versions - Avengers: Infinity War is a deconstructionist reaffirmation of the "Want V.S Need" story arc as it applies to the hero's journey often used in films (especially comic book films) that says why heroes shouldn't get what they want. And 2022 had plenty of small and big films that had a lot to say: The Batman, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Men and Mad God were the most interesting films for me to dissect from that year. So, what reading did I get from The Menu? To me, The Menu is a film about the difficulty a director has in preparing better films every time to appease audiences that gradually cease to enjoy them. The chef's targets in the film are: -A pair of snobby critics who make and break chef's careers. (The most obvious metaphor in the film for movie critics). -A pair of rich patrons who don't even remember the chef's works. (Film goers who watch and forget films). -Rich businessmen who've been illegitimately profiting off the chef as his angel investor has been both using the chef's business to grossly profit and modify his work. (Likely this is a jab at investors/studios/producers who profit off filmmaker's work and often try to change their art). -A pretentious fanboy who believes the chef can do no wrong but has no ability to create himself. (Film bro types who claim to know a filmmaker's work but could never actually understand or create the vision). -A washed up actor (played by John Leguizamo evoking Steven Seagal's assholish behavior-go look it up) who pretends to know the chef and whom the chef hates for having made a bad film that he saw on his day off. (I'm somewhat torn on this as it could either be people who pretend to know filmmakers personally for clout, but the "I saw your bad film on my day off so you should die" angle is really weird. The one unplanned for target is a woman named Margo who is the fanboy's date but is a substitute for is now ex-girlfriend. As she is unplanned, the chef's intentions around her are unclear. It turns out she is actually a prostitute and so he finds them both to be kindred spirits who 'service' (or in film terms, "entertain") consumers. The climax of the film has Margo (having learned the Chef's happiest days were making fast food burgers that people wanted) challenges the chef to make a cheeseburger and he does so happily, allowing her to leave and live with her burger. To me, the film is expressing the frustration of an artist/filmmaker who has been forced to evolve their work for audiences and critics who don't care and business types who only exploit his work. But when meeting someone who simply craves him to make a simple, cheap, junk food level piece-finds joy in that. So that sounds like I figured it out and that should be the end of it right? Well, no. That's where the frustration comes into effect. While the best conclusion I've come to is The Menu as an expression of filmmakers annoyed with having to make serious, pretentious and important films for people who don't care, when they'd rather make simple fun works, they and the audience for that actually want...it doesn't fit well for me. It's not satisfying as there's many aspects any elements that conflict with that or simply don't fit. Some additional elements that I feel confirm this are things like "The Mess" where a cook who wishes to be the head chef takes his own life knowing he'll never be that-symbolic of how many filmmakers and artists give up their ambitions. There's a very #MeToo inspired scene where the chef allows a female staff member to stab him as recompence for his sexual advances and abuse of power towards her, before having all the male patrons run and hide-only to be captured. But there's things that don't quite add up like a later scene involving a Coast Guard Officer Margo believes she called to help them but is actually one of the chef's staff performing. Maybe that's a metaphor for actors siding with directors? Another is Thai actress Hong Chau's role as the maître d'hôtel who loyally serves the chef but is angry at the attention he gives Margo. I could STRETCH my belief into metaphorically placing her as the director's wife in fear of being replaced by a young actress he chooses as his muse. I mean...young actresses dating/marrying directors is not uncommon. But I can't quite say I'm happy with these. But, the part that makes me hesitant to be happy with this is if this is supposed to be a champion of "junk food level movies" and a middle finger to pretentious film works-why is The Menu looking and behaving like a pretentious film? If this film is satire, it's not exactly working. Being a satire of a film that embodies the genre/narrative is hard work, look at Starship Troopers of Fight Club. If the Menu was genuinely trying to praise junky, exploitative genre works or satirize pretentious works-why didn't it commit to that? Why wasn't it crafted with the utmost needlessly perfect craftsmanship as opposed to the effective filmmaking used? Why is it not indulging on ALL the horror a setting like a kitchen offers? You could've had people cooked, mutilated excessively, cannibalism, gross regurgitation even-but all the few deaths and instances of violence we see are quite plain and restrained. Junk food movies, exploitation cinema, genre films, schlock, whatever you want to call them have merit. From the 60s to the 80s, Italian slashers called Giallo films were highly praised amongst American critics for their artistic values...even though many of those filmmakers were just making the flashiest looking trash they could. Slashers like Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street had more under their skin than just teens kills. Macho action flicks like Predator and Die Hard actually commented on American action heroes. Monster movies like the original Godzilla, John Carpenter's The Thing and Alex Garland's adaptation of Annihilation have things to say on nuclear warfare, disease and the nature of storytelling respectively. You can make a trashy and seemingly disposable film have something to say. But The Menu doesn't really fit that. 2022 gave us truer versions of this idea in Mad God or Ti West's 70's era slasher X. Trying to break things down, The Menu feels like a safer and less interesting version of other genre films with a message. The killer inviting people to the island to die obviously has the air of Richard Connell's 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game and all the similar works. Mostly The Menu reminded me of The Hunt from 2020. If you don't remember it or didn't see it, The Hunt was thriller originally set to be released in 2019-but was pushed back due to upsetting then US President Donald Trump and other right-wing pundits when the film's narrative and twist was leaked. The premise was a group of poor people had been kidnapped to be hunted by rich elites, with the twist being the victims are all terrible right-wing degenerates and the elites were left leaning business types looking for personal vendettas. While the film did try to work this out intelligently, people who never saw the film called it racist (Donald Trump proclaiming "Hollywood is very racist") even though the premise was mostly rich white people hunting poor white people. The Menu is certainly a better film and has less of a cop-out ending than The Hunt, but the latter film has more bite to it. Part of me wants to compare The Menu to Battle Royale, but that would be an inherent insult to Battle Royale. The other film it reminds me of is The Platform, a 2019 Spanish horror film available on Netflix. The premise is about a sci-fi prison where prisoners are forced to abide by the levels they live on and a platform carrying food that travels down. Prisoners may only eat what those above did not, cannot save any food and are randomly placed in levels over time. It's a much more blatant capitalism and food metaphor with a unique sci-fi element and various degrees of grossness for that audience. And The Platform isn't a film I enjoyed, but the upfront nature of its themes made me respect it. And committing to the gross elements the premise allows for is incredibly admirable. The Menu is still better, just not as provactive. In the end, what makes me disengage with The Menu on top of its themes not being clear enough for me to be content with its artistic value is the lack of a defining moment. There's no real scene, moment or set piece that lingers with me after I watched it. There's no Batmobile chase from The Batman, no rock conversation from Everything Everywhere All at Once, no tour of Talokan from Wakanda Forever or any single moment I return to with this film. It's occupied my mind not out of a particular interest or love of the film, but for my mental state to be happy. I don't like feeling like I have to figure a film out due to obligation. Even upon inspecting the film's creators, I'm not sure I have an answer. Will Tracey conjured the original story, with his writing experience being for The Onion, The Late-Night Show with John Oliver and Succession. Meanwhile Seth Riess has primarily written for The Onion and other comedy areas. While both writers are clearly versed in comedy and satire-I don't find the film particularly funny nor biting in its satire (hence my frustration). However, I almost came to a satisfying conclusion with its director. While originally, Alexander Payne was meant to direct (and considering his films Sideways and Downsizing-I can see his interest) the film went to Mark Mylod. He's mostly been a tv and comedy show director since the mid 90s, directing the original and reboot series' of Shameless, many episodes of Entourage and the 2005 dark comedy film The Big White. But the works of his that could match up with my thesis would be his work on Succession and Game of Thrones. Succession is a widely praised show that not many people see, and Game of Thrones was an epic genre series that captured the world for almost a decade. But Games of Thrones saw a sharp decline in terms of audience praise come season 8 in 2019. And while Mark only directed episodes for seasons 5-7, I wonder if he was expressing some frustration with the response the series received in the end. He was a director who'd been working for years, getting up to direct big dramas like Game of Thrones and Succession that people praised-but the former was ripped apart online in its conclusion and the latter is only seemingly enjoyed by very few people. But even then, I feel the showrunners for Game of Thrones would have more vitriol to give on the matter and Mark was neither the original creator of this story nor does he appear to be an auteur who would try to make such a bold statement. Filmmakers criticizing audiences/the industry is not new, French New Wave bad boy Jean Luc Goddard practically made that his career from day one. It would be something producer Adam McKay would have something to say on that matter. In 2015, McKay made a jump from silyl comedies (as he'd directed Anchorman and The Other Guys) to a more serious work in The Big Short - a comedic reflection of the American Housing crisis. His two follow up films were 2018's Vice, a satirical biopic about US Vice President Dick Cheney and 2020's satirical disaster film Don't Look Up. I was not a fan of both films as Vice didn't seem to have a point, but an ending scene seemed to blame American audience's love of blockbuster films (literally name dropping the Fast and Furious franchise) for the election of Doland Trump. Meanwhile Don't Look Up criticized people, politicians, social media and humanity in general for ignoring an impending apocalypse. Both films clearly believe they're important satirical works with something to say, but they come off as insufferable and mean-spirited. So, while I can see Mckay's interest in the script-I don't think it would be something he mandated the themes for. In general, films can say political or thematic statements and either no execute it well, or say something with such little impact it might as well not be there. For example, M. Night Shyamalan's 2006 fantasy film Lady in the Water is pretty much a meta-film about how amazing Shyamalan's work is, how he's this genius storyteller and all those who doubted him are mean and deserve to be eaten by a monster. That's the creative intent and only takeaway from that mess of a film. Meanwhile, 2019's Disney remake of Aladdin turn Jasmine and Jafar into a commentary on Hilary Clinton losing to Donald Trump in 2016's US election. Do I agree with the sentiment? Yes. Do I feel it's saying anything meaningful the deepens the film? No, in fact it cheapens it. Intent is important, but if you fail the execution-it just becomes a strike against the work. So, do I think I fix on The Menu? No. I've probably mis-read the whole thing as I'm so deep into this train of thought that I can't see if any other way. I'm willing accept I may never 'get' this film. Can I call it a bad film? No. Its production values, cinematography and performances are far too good for me to outright despise it or even call it mediocre. I would genuinely recommend this film as I feel it's fairly engaging and easy to enjoy, plus I'm deathly curious of people's thoughts on it.
That said, I'm still not happy with the reading I've found for myself or the readings other critics (negative and positive) have made. A lot of skill and craft went into this film, but as to what the secret ingredient of this dish is...I have no clue.
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