Author Topic: Beast Beast  (Read 494 times)

Bondo

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Beast Beast
« on: December 22, 2021, 09:31:27 PM »
Beast Beast

Using the linked review from ET as a jumping off point, I am going to go full spoiler on this (even if this might end up as a sad spoiler thread with two posts. I think there is a lot to recommend about this film as a narrative. That is something I would say about Parasite too. I'm not convinced Parasite actually is the anti-capitalist screed that many of its fans claim it is, but if Bong Joon-Ho intended it as such, I would suggest it is crafted inside such a left-leaning bubble that it doesn't realize it isn't playing the same way outside the bubble. Beast Beast is kind of the same. Inside the bubble, Adam is bad and Krista and Nito are good and we get an arc that confirms that and gives us justice in the end, to make up for the injustice. But you don't have to step too far out of the bubble to see things very differently.

Now, before I go more into it, I'll note that this hits a tone in the aftermath of Kyle Rittenhouse. He is a teen raised amid toxic gun culture who convinced himself it would be a heroic thing to do to take it upon himself to travel to a different state, get a gun, and defend property. A chaotic situation, combined with ill-advised laws, led to him rightfully going unpunished for killing two and wounding a third, and disturbingly being embraced by some as the hero he aspired to be, though I'm sure not how he pictured it in his head. Beast Beast is strongest in examining the effect of social media on Adam, and the perverse way his tragic, legal choice, brings him what he aspired to, but again, not in the manner he would have chosen.

But take a step back. Nito and his friends were repeat criminals. There's a sort of CINECAST! around and find out nature to their arc. The film naively mentions "Stand Your Ground" but the shooting happens inside a home...that's Castle Doctrine, not stand your ground. He has every right to shoot people who have trespassed in his home. And they took that risk on by breaking in to steal stuff. It isn't that the death penalty is a suitable punishment for breaking and entering, but the Castle Doctrine is reasonable law (unlike Stand Your Ground). Don't break into people's houses. And when Adam properly doesn't face punishment, it is Krista who improperly takes it upon herself to pursue vigilante justice. I don't know if the film indicates an outcome to that situation (a medical examination would probably reveal she wasn't actually strangled, as she used stage techniques, which combined with her presence in a men's restroom with someone she has motive to dislike would distinctly undercut the case against him), but especially if his life ends up ruined by the faked strangulation, it just feeds a narrative about false accusations/cancel culture, and general sense of victimization of the right. So while the film ends with a smug sense of justice, I had a much more jaundiced sentiment. Thankfully I think there is a strong partisan bent to indie film viewership so this probably doesn't actually have a cultural impact. It was more just a sense of how this film was confidently preaching to a choir. There is a fittingness to how it plays out, but the actual take-home message is less snug.

One final note, the party scene earlier in the film, with seemingly an attempted rape of Krista that Nito breaks up before being arrested, seems to have almost no weight in the film otherwise, other than an off-handed comment about the assailant not facing responsibility and likely getting up to it again. It was kind of confusing. I was wondering whether that was the trauma the film's description referenced until the overt trauma showed up.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Beast Beast
« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2021, 12:19:27 AM »
Well for one, you shouldn't shoot and kill people. Not even when they are trespassing in your house. Nito is trying to run out, get away, and Adam still blasted him. There is the law, and there is right and wrong. This should be a good example for you of why people don't have confidence in law and order and our governmental institutions, as they often perpetrate or give cover to injustice. This is a glaring, sometimes heavy-handed example. The only way I get beyond the heavy-handedness is in the authenticity to Nito and Krista's relationship, and the lovely way it is handled by Madden.

Krista's ultimate revenge is only interesting to me in what it represents. By using what she learned from theater, it's the figurative triumph of art over lizardbrained violence made literal. I don't necessarily give it high marks for believability.

Your rationalization of Adam's behaviors is gross. People such as the one Adam portrays are why civilians having the kinds of guns he possesses is ludicrous. When people are young, they do stupid shit, but they shouldn't be shot for it. Only in America or maybe a politically unstable third-world country does such a heinous act make sense. We're civilized, but not that much.
A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

 

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