The people at the heart of Bugonia are real. Maybe in certain echo chambers it might not seem like it; like a guy who is convinced that he’s the hero of They Live, who is correctly cognizant of the inequities of the modern age -ecological destruction, corporate hegemony, political and economic manipulation- but rather than admit to their true institutional and mundane roots chooses to interpret them through the lens of alien conspiracy, and is so casually confident in this. I have met these people, victims of the very systems they rail against by their inadequate access to real mental healthcare.
Yorgos Lanthimos knows of them, perhaps has met such people himself, and he has a certain sympathy for them -if it does go hand-in-hand with ample mockery of the various lengths of elaborate and convoluted lore such conspiracies are built on. And the way it intersects with the auspices of real power is too entertaining to him to pass up. It was likewise the case for Jang Joon-hwan back in 2002 when he made the film Save the Green Planet! in South Korea, which Bugonia is an English remake of. Initially, Jang was going to helm this version himself, before being replaced by Lanthimos -whose brand of cynicism does seem apt for the subject matter. Perhaps too much so.
The film centres on Teddy Gatz, played by Jesse Plemons, a financially insecure amateur beekeeper and low-level employee with a pharmaceutical conglomerate called Auxolith. Through the rabbit-holes of the conspiracy dark web and his own warped intuition, he has come to sincerely believe the CEO of Auxolith Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is part of a hostile alien species called the Andromedans whose goal, similar to colony collapse disorder in bees, is to conquer Earth, enslave and eventually eliminate humanity while destroying the environment. Alongside his intellectually disabled cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) whom he has manipulated into this cult view, Teddy kidnaps Michelle, shaves her head, and holds her hostage in his basement until a lunar eclipse where he thinks he can use her as a bargaining chip for driving Andromedans from Earth.
Stone plays well the unique situation of this kidnapping. She is at first very aggressive and confrontational -she actually fights back the abduction quite competently for a time in a sequence shot tremendously by cinematographer Robbie Ryan in which kicking off one’s high-heels makes for an effective weapon. She tries very bluntly to explain to Teddy and Don the likelihood of her rescue and imprisonment, but when she realizes the extent of how unconventional they are -neither holding her for ransom nor sexual abuse- her dawning realization of how dangerous the situation really is is relayed palpably. There is nothing she can do to shake them out of their delusion and has no idea what that delusion means for her. And neither do we know what will happen when Teddy is unsatisfied. It is a very interesting dance that plays out between the two characters -Teddy is able to match her every objection with his equivalent convictions and refutations of her every attempt to analyze him. Plemons is really good here, earnest in a context very difficult to relate with that suggests an understanding of how and why people left behind by a system would turn to these kind of explanations and actions. Teddy has reason for his resentment beyond the ideological -his mother having been a test patient for an Auxolith experimental drug that went wrong and left her comatose, that Michelle and her company have attempted to eschew responsibility for by paying for her treatment. There is an honest human objection to Michelle and what she represents -Plemons allows that to give his character some emotional authenticity. He likewise plays tremendously well the differing private and public-facing sides of Teddy -each demonstrative of his convictions but to wildly different modes of action, and how they both crater in a critical scene where his gullibility to conspiracy manifests in a terribly harrowing way.
It’s a grim plot beat, and while the movie isn’t so enthusiastically bleak as Kinds of Kindness was it certainly belongs to that palpably cynical class of Lanthimos movie that Poor Things stands more and more as an exception to. Teddy does a good job extolling so many wrongs in the world and with capitalist corporatist society more specifically. Lanthimos assesses rather correctly that the corruption of entities like Auxolith, and even figures like Michelle, has bred such warped forms of institutional distrust as Teddy has developed and that that is bad for the future of society. But he is also a little bit sneering about it all, and wraps it up in a package that is ultimately very nihilistic. While there is some empathy generated for Teddy and Don, they are just as much objects of ridicule by the way they are framed in key sequences, their incompetence and relative impoverishment linked together in an unflattering manner. Further, the way Lanthimos approaches the subjects of Don's intellectual handicap and a chummy police officer whom Teddy is uncomfortable around aren't especially sensitive or well thought-out. Don in particular is done poorly by the ways Teddy ruins his life through gaslighting, coercing him into chemical castration and cutting him off from other relations. And all of it amounts to nothing for Don, treated by both Teddy and Michelle -but also Lanthimos- as a pawn.
Though Lanthimos really sees everybody as pawns in this movie, however astute or understandable they may be -somewhat necessary given the direction of bleak absurdity he takes the film in, though it does diminish some of the conviction in his commentary. His ending is utterly baffling and fairly amusing in again a terribly cynical way -though it is a rather miserable resignation in the face of its own issues addressed, deferring from rationality towards a blisteringly dismal sentiment. And yet there is a bit of an air of Kubrick or Douglas Adams to it that keeps it from being so gloomy.
Lanthimos's filmmaking remains interesting and distinct. Shot on VistaVision, Bugonia really pops on screen and especially in those wide shots that Lanthimos has made a staple of his. The lighting too, notably on Michelle in that dungeon, shaved head and covered in antihistamine, is sharp and radiates that atmosphere of paranoia that Teddy lives within. As do you for two hours. Being on the abrasive end without much thematic sturdiness and some failed swings at off-colour material, it is not one of Lanthimos's best films. But there is enough to appreciate in the curiosity of its premise and its dive into the effects of a conspiracy-addled mindset, if it's not so interested in the foundations. And I'd be lying if I said some of its warped cynical humour didn't work. Maybe it's not the healthiest, but sometimes we must laugh at the insanity.
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