◎ Zhao Chen
It was a pre-publicized murder.
"The Menu" won the second place in the Best Screenplay Award at the 3rd Nippon Film Critics Association Awards, and it was star-studded. The biggest highlight in the trailer is Ralph Fiennes, who plays the protagonist nine times out of ten is a good film booking, whether it is "The English Patient", or "The Reader", whether it is "Schindler's List", or "The Grand Budapest Hotel". In addition, there is Anya Taylor, who won the new Golden Globe Award for "Abandonment of the Rear Wing", and Nicholas Holden, who has participated in "X-Men", "Skin Bag" and "Mad Max", making the film have enough youth hormones. However, the movie blinded such a good battle.
Game of Thrones at the dinner table
"Menu" focuses on chefs and restaurants, and explores human nature through food - 2021's "Boiling Point" is also such a triune structure. Both films portray chefs whom Voltaire called "divine men," and the desert island setting of "The Menu" should be more mysterious than the hot London restaurants in "Boiling Point."
"On this island, can you accept everything?" This is the question that runs through the first half of the film. Twelve guests gathered on a deserted island for a feast. Fiennes' Chef Slovik is the heart of the restaurant, showcasing his culinary and presentation talents in a desert island restaurant with militarized management and a cult of personality. For each dish, the chef tells a story behind the food. Customers can only start eating after speaking, and they are not allowed to serve the next dish after eating, implementing that "the art of the table is an art of domination". And the chef asked the guests to "not eat, but taste".
As a geographical and social space juxtaposed with land, desert islands have a set of self-running power rules: the chef is the one who stands at the peak of power, and the diners are the ones who pay $1250 to go to the desert island to submit to the chef's order. It's actually a game of thrones. If combined with another role played by Ralph Fiennes - Voldemort, then the guests who come to dine on the island can be called "Death Eaters", and the plot is also intended to let the audience taste the taste of death with the guests.
The first dish at the desert island restaurant is called "island", and the plants of the island are served on the rocks of the island. According to the chef, this dish is to illustrate that the people on the island are not important, and the island has its own ecology. The chef's words made Holden's Taylor cry and be deeply moved, but the heroine Margot, played by Anya Taylor, felt strange. Food critics who came to eat also began to describe the dish in front of them with "moment", "need to play", "distorted", "clean philosophy", etc., and concluded that "we are not eating the island, but eating the ocean". The rest of the guests didn't feel as much as critics and could only comfort themselves: they were paying for an experience, at least they had come here to check in.
The blood sacrifice is fierce but mysterious
Here the customer is not God and has no right to make demands. Not only that, but when the tortillas, printed with the scandal of the guests, were served, they realized that they were completely "pinched" by the chef. The motifs on the tortillas include tax evasion bills, photos of cheating and other guest incriminating evidence — in addition to Margot, who is in the chef's invitation program. What followed was followed by the suicide of Jeremy, the deputy chef, swallowing a gun and falling in front of the guests, and this turned out to be a dish - "chaos", and appreciating death is also part of tasting food; Wealthy businessmen who wanted to leave were chopped off their fingers. In the face of real death and bloodshed, Taylor rejoices to eat. Critics defended it as theatrical but only part of the menu. Margot's shock, panic, and fear seemed out of place in front of these numb pretenses.
The desert island is the cemetery, the menu is the death list, and everyone will die here tonight. The cause of death of a food critic was that he polluted the essence of food with conceited remarks, the cause of death of a wealthy businessman was that he came to the restaurant many times but could not remember a single dish, the angel investor died of dissatisfaction with the chef and the menu, and the cause of death of the actor was that the chef watched his bad movies. The chef sees himself as the Grim Reaper, capable of manipulating the lives of everyone on the island, all for personal reasons, and he and his staff will be martyred for their noble gastronomic beliefs.
The chef confides to Margo that he is not only a monster, but also a prostitute. The film does not explain it clearly, but it can be roughly guessed that "monster" refers to his own life, and "prostitute" refers to his original intention of food and cooking for money. Human civilization originated from fire, so the chef had to use the fire of the restaurant to purify and complete the martyrdom. The martyrdom is a civilized view through food and catering, but due to the lack of portrayal of the chef's history, the rather tragic ending is strange. If the evil of the chef is an evil without cause, then he will not let Margo off the island; If the chef is human, then the people of the island will not die.
Food is one of the entrances to civilization, and the ancient Greek historian Herodotus used to distinguish barbarians according to the way sacrifices were cooked. The emergence of five-star restaurants is a market division dominated by the tide of consumption, which is not civilized and barbaric, but wealth and poverty - more closely related to "class".
Director Mark Miró's previous work single-handedly led Ralph Lauren and "Old Money Wind"'s "War of Succession". In line with this, "class" remains the key theme of The Menu. The desert island restaurant costs $1,250, shielding ordinary consumption and filtering out people who don't have money — and not necessarily eating if they have money, and there's a reservation system. Those who come to the desert island restaurant are not gluttons, but rich and powerful vassals, who flaunt their social status with restaurants and five-star dishes. In addition to the chef and the guests, there is a hierarchical order between the guests, where food critics and wealthy businessmen use their voice or financial power to consider themselves the upper class of guests, selfish and arrogant, and ignore each other, so that they lose the possibility of cooperation and escape. Like "Parasite", the "upper" in "The Menu" is equivalent to "rich fool".
A victory in Hamburg
Margo is a rebel in the restaurant, she does not recognize it from beginning to end, and she does not integrate into the restaurant order. Like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes", only she perceives absurdity and dares to point out absurdity. Conversely, this poor girl from Nebraska has no possibility of fitting into the upper class from beginning to end, and she will not be recognized by restaurant guests.
The film ends with Margo ordering a cheeseburger at a five-star restaurant and leaving the restaurant smoothly with a package. Behind the food lies still the position. In 2009, when former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in power for two years, a reporter from Maria magazine asked him: "Is it finally time to 'say goodbye to the Fouquet restaurant gang'?" "Fouquet's, founded in 1899, is located on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Food is a critical term that implies a social orientation, and the same is true of The Menu: the victory of the burger means the victory of ordinary people. The film's final shot shows Margo taking a bite of a cheeseburger in the firelight, a reaffirmation of victory. Ang Lee wants to eat cheeseburgers after winning the Oscar, Iron Man wants to eat cheeseburgers after returning to Earth after escaping from aliens, and Margo wants to eat cheeseburgers after experiencing island horror.
Anya Taylor has a smart face that looks like she can get full marks in the Olympiad competition, with a high sense of eyebrows, a high degree of facial folding, a sharp flash, and her big eyes can expand the emotions of the characters and build a terrifying atmosphere in the screen world. The classic horror film "Psycho" opens with a close-up of the eyes, and it is not difficult to understand the horror director's preference for Taylor - whether it is "Soho Horror Night" or "Menu", there are plenty of close-ups of Anya's facial expressions. However, the beauty in "The Menu" is neither the propagator of the flame of civilization, nor the destroyer and rebuilder of order, but just a beautiful vase that polishes the slaughter. Taylor's Margo frequently launched verbal attacks, and the authoritarian chef even allowed her to question her career, and she became a miracle exception to "no life left". Wouldn't a girl who loves to talk back be too lucky?
The "master of terror" Hitchcock once said: "I want to give the audience a useful fright, civilization is too protective, we even lose the instinct to get goosebumps." To break this numbness and awaken our moral balance, we must use artificial methods to frighten people. But what "Menu" gives the audience is not shock, but confusion, confusion that is said and seemingly unspoken. The picture is beautiful and the music is good, but the exquisite bloody spectacle, suspended characterization, and seemingly non-existent ridicule are not enough to evoke reflection. Class, gender, diet, every dish has good ingredients, but unfortunately every dish is not cooked.
Source: Beijing Youth Daily