Travel Narrows the Mind Wonderfully

Rating: 7/10 (17 August 2005)

Ever since (at least) the eighteenth century, with its cult of the "noble savage", tropical islands have frequently been seen in Western culture as the nearest that it is possible to come to Paradise on earth. This view is often reflected in the cinema, in films such as "The Blue Lagoon" or the various versions of "Mutiny on the Bounty", in which the idyll of Tahiti is contrasted with the rigours of life on board a British warship. The two versions of "Lord of the Flies", like the William Golding novel on which they are based, offer an ironic twist on this theme; a tropical island is used as the setting for an anti-Utopian story in which an attempt to found a new society ends in a relapse into barbarism.
"The Beach" has certain similarities to "Lord of the Flies". The main character is Richard, an American backpacker travelling round Thailand, who has heard tales of a co-operative multi-national community of idealistic young people living on a beach on an island off the coast. Richard has dismissed these tales as mere urban legends, but changes his mind when another backpacker, Daffy, gives him a map showing where the mysterious beach can be found. Undeterred by the fact that Daffy commits suicide shortly afterwards, Richard sets out to go there accompanied by Etienne and Francoise, a young French couple whom he has befriended.
After a number of adventures, the three succeed in reaching the island and discover that the fabled community is no urban myth but a reality. At first they are welcomed into the group and spend their days leading a seemingly idyllic lifestyle, consisting of a small amount of time spent in fishing and large amounts of time spent in playing volleyball or beach cricket, lazing about smoking pot, or (for some obscure reason) translating various English phrases into Serbo-Croat. As with all films of this type, however, we quickly realise that this life is less perfect than it seems. Sexual tensions arise when Richard finds himself increasingly attracted to Francoise and she deserts her boyfriend Etienne for him. More seriously, there are flaws in the basic concept of the community.
The main flaw is that travel narrows the mind wonderfully. The community, mostly Westerners, have dropped out of their own societies and travelled halfway around the world to Thailand, but find Thai society no more congenial than those they have left behind. Their solution is to drop out of that too and to set up a "beach resort for people who don't like beach resorts" where they can live their own hedonistic idea of the hippie life. The community is not, however self-sufficient; they produce little for themselves, apart from fish, and have to import many of their supplies from the mainland, which they pay for by growing and selling cannabis. The island, in fact, is owned by a group of Thai farmers, themselves involved in a much larger cannabis-producing operation, who are happy to tolerate the newcomers provided they keep their community a secret and do not try to attract new recruits.
As in many anti-Utopian parables, the community is dominated by a sinister dictator-figure. "Lord of the Flies" had the choirboy Jack, "Animal Farm" had Napoleon and "The Beach" has Sal, an upper-class Englishwoman who is accepted as the leader of the community (although it is never clear how she attained this position). Sal is obsessed with protecting the community's privacy and secrecy, and in order to achieve this end she is prepared to resort to violence, even murderous violence. (She is deeply suspicious of Richard, who she suspects may have distributed further copies of Daffy's map). One of the film's most chilling incidents comes after Christo, one of the group, is seriously injured after being attack by a shark. He can only be saved if he is taken back to the mainland for immediate medical treatment, but because this might result in the community's existence being revealed to outsiders, Sal refuses to permit this and Christo is left to die.
There is some good acting in the film, especially from Tilda Swinton who gives a nicely judged performance as Sal, a woman with steely eyes and a cut-glass accent who for most of the movie can seem threatening without ever issuing any direct threats or even raising her voice. This increases the impact of the scene at the end where Sal finally does lose her cool. The beautiful Virginie Ledoyen makes a charming and unaffected Francoise, and I also liked Guillaume Canet as Etienne. Originally seen as a loser, the man who loses his girlfriend to Richard, Etienne later emerges as the community's voice of conscience, the one man who refuses to abandon the dying Christo.
It was, however, unfortunate that the director Danny Boyle, who wanted Ewan McGregor to play Richard, was overruled by the studio, as Leonardo di Caprio, although he is better here than he was in "Titanic", tends to overact. The film tends to deteriorate in the second half, with the plot becoming difficult to follow as Richard, alienated from his fellow-members of the group, starts to become mentally unstable. The style of direction was excessively hectic for my tastes, and the sequence where Richard imagines he is a character in a video game was particularly eccentric. Despite its potentially interesting themes, "The Beach" falls just short of being a very good film. 7/10