engaging, if ultimately incoherent

Rating: 6/10 (3 April 2006)

mild spoiler possibilities below . . .
Like a lot of others who have commented, I initially stayed away from 'The Beach' because of the bad reviews and the nonsensical casting of Leonardo DiCaprio, who seemed then (and now) to be a relatively poor choice to play the lead of Richard (apparently, Danny Boyle originally promised the role to Ewan MacGregor but was persuaded by the money-people to renege the offer and cast Leo, hot off the massive success of 'Titanic'--a slight which damaged their long-standing working relationship and led MacGregor to refuse the lead in Boyle's '28 Days Later,' which ended up going to Cillian Murphy). But I caught 'The Beach' on cable TV, and, while it is ultimately sort of a mess, I was riveted by the direction and the appealing scenario of a small group of neo-hippie travelers trying to form a Utopian community on a hidden Thai beach.
What makes the film so engrossing is Boyle's trademark style, combining stunning visuals, a cast of typically striking and attractive actors, and the innovative use of sound-tracking with irresistibly quirky and hip pop music.
The scenario: Richard is backpacking alone across Asia, partying in the various idyllic hot-spots with like-minded young people, when he encounters the aptly-named Daffy (Robert Carlyle), who describes to Richard a rumored a perfect, 'hidden beach' off the coast of Thailand where a group of 'beautiful people' live in a perpetual state of bliss, playing on the beach and living off fruit, fish, and copious amounts of potent free-range cannabis. The unstable Daffy checks out of the party hotel by carving up his own wrists, but leaves behind a map to the hidden beach, which Richard discovers. Richard decides to go out in search of the beach, and takes along a young French couple he befriends along the way.
Eventually the trio discovers the fabled beach, hidden in a cove on a government-controlled island and known to exist only by the people who live there and a corrupt group of Thai dope-farmers, who tolerate the presence of the Utopian community so long as they keep it secret and do not invite any new residents. The community is governed by its founders, principally Sal (Tilda Swinton), a regal, quasi-aristocratic hippie goddess. Indeed, it seems like the most important requirement in qualifying for membership in the community is being lean, hip, beautiful, and European (Richard is the only American). The group accepts the new arrivals, on the condition that they will not leave and that no one knows where they are or how to find them. Life seems perfect: they live off the land, sleep in a Swiss Family Robinson-ish compound, and re-stock themselves occasionally with worldly amenities (tampons, batteries for CD-players and hand-held video games, soap and shampoo, etc.) with clandestine trips to the mainland where Sal sells big bags of dope to a hotelier who keeps the island secret in exchange for a cheap source of grass to sell to the tackier late-adolescent tourists.
All goes well for a while, until, predictably, 'trouble in paradise' emerges due to the typical jealousies and conflicts that are bound to happen in a scenario with a limited number of options for love and sexual companionship. Furthermore, Richard's position is imperiled by the fact that, before coming to the beach, he foolishly left a copy of the map with a pair of happy-go-lucky American stoners who had befriended him.
Then a tragic event forces Richard and his naive friends to face the fact that, Utopian free-love idealism aside, Sal and her co-horts will act ruthlessly and callously to protect the sanctity of their island paradise. It's a typical 'Lord of the Flies' sort of scenario, not particularly believable or persuasive.
The film was rightly judged as a failure, and the onus rests on two major factors: the casting of DiCaprio, and the collapse of the screenplay into incoherence at the mid-point.
Leo has finally started to mature into a leading-man quality actor, but he was too thin and boyish when 'The Beach' was made to be believable as the maverick Richard. Many have bemoaned the decision to make Richard (an Englishman in the source novel) American, and it's safe to conclude that this decision was a cynical effort to appeal to US audiences by giving them a lead they can identify with more directly, played by a popular US actor. DiCaprio is a great actor, but it's hard to buy scrawny Leo as the principle object of female desire when he's surrounded by a cadre of buffed up Euro-studs.
MacGregor would have made a much better Richard, undoubtedly, but even that wouldn't have saved the film, which careens off a self-indulgent neurotic cliff when the Richard character 'cracks up' in the film's final third. The narrative momentum grinds to a halt and never really recovers, and the conflict resolves itself with a disappointingly anti-climactic confrontation.
Not a great film by any means, but it's gorgeous to look at, the actors are appealing (even Leo, despite being miscast, is engaging and relatively fun to watch), and, most of all, it's fun to fantasize about what it might be like to stumble into a world where the days consist of nothing more than frolicking on the beach, feasting on the bounty of the sea and the fat of the land, balling with the beautiful people, and staying high.