Bertrand Bonello is a director who is rather hard to put into any category, such is the eclectic nature of his work. His latest follows on that trend, with his first deviation into the science-fiction genre, based on Henry James’s novella The Beast in the Jungle. We had the pleasure in speaking to the talented auteur in Paris earlier this year, as part of a small roundtable.
Bonello spoke in great detail about the themes of the movie, and his fears – and hopes – for AI. He also talks about replacing Gaspard Ulliel in the leading role, and why he feels George MacKay was such a special talent to work with. He also discusses the wonderful Léa Seydoux and her approach to the project, while he speaks about his career and the industry as a whole, and why he has never quite been able to fit in.
To note, while...
Bonello spoke in great detail about the themes of the movie, and his fears – and hopes – for AI. He also talks about replacing Gaspard Ulliel in the leading role, and why he feels George MacKay was such a special talent to work with. He also discusses the wonderful Léa Seydoux and her approach to the project, while he speaks about his career and the industry as a whole, and why he has never quite been able to fit in.
To note, while...
- 6/5/2024
- by Stefan Pape
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
“The present came to a halt,” Bertrand Bonello writes in an ode to his teen daughter in his experimental feature Coma, “leaving us with the past and the future.” Much of this subtitled text refers to the specific circumstances of the film’s creation during the pandemic. Yet the French filmmaker’s follow-up, The Beast, which was developed before Coma but shot afterward, feels like a natural extension of his fascination with the scrambled perception of time in a digital era. In Bonello’s time-warping adaptation of Henry James’s 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, the present day is the Paris of 2044, where landscape and character have been warped by advances in artificial intelligence.
What’s evergreen, as a repeated aural motif so often reminds, is the twisted relationship of fear and love between Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay). Bonello gives us a glance at two of...
What’s evergreen, as a repeated aural motif so often reminds, is the twisted relationship of fear and love between Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay). Bonello gives us a glance at two of...
- 4/6/2024
- by Marshall Shaffer
- Slant Magazine
It’s too bright, the sunshine is monotonous, it’s very isolating. Those were the reasons why Chloë Sevigny, in a recent viral interview, said she will never live in Los Angeles. Anyone who’s lived there can relate to the loneliness that blankets the fragmented city, a collection of neighborhoods strung together by cars in traffic, where nobody walks or talks to each other. And why does everyone flake on plans? What are we afraid of?
That’s much like the central dilemma in Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast,” a time-hopping sci-fi epic about the existential terrors of unrequited love, green-screen-acting, incel killers, artificial intelligence, and, oh, yes, Los Angeles. Léa Seydoux and George MacKay play reincarnated almost-lovers across time who can never make it work: first, in fin-de-siècle Paris (she’s married); then, in 2014 Los Angeles (he’s a sociopathic virgin inspired by 2014 Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger...
That’s much like the central dilemma in Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast,” a time-hopping sci-fi epic about the existential terrors of unrequited love, green-screen-acting, incel killers, artificial intelligence, and, oh, yes, Los Angeles. Léa Seydoux and George MacKay play reincarnated almost-lovers across time who can never make it work: first, in fin-de-siècle Paris (she’s married); then, in 2014 Los Angeles (he’s a sociopathic virgin inspired by 2014 Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger...
- 4/3/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
A self-described “former incel” named Michael Pengchung Lee was allegedly planning a mass shooting at the University of Arizona before he was arrested, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday. He is charged with “transmit[ing] in interstate commerce a communication of a threat to injure the person of another.”
On Sunday, Lee, who is 27, posted several threatening statements to a Snapchat group using the name “asianluluu,” according to the complaint. “Theres going to be a mass tragedy and atrocity at the UofA Soon,” he allegedly wrote to his friends, adding...
On Sunday, Lee, who is 27, posted several threatening statements to a Snapchat group using the name “asianluluu,” according to the complaint. “Theres going to be a mass tragedy and atrocity at the UofA Soon,” he allegedly wrote to his friends, adding...
- 10/25/2023
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
“The great rooms caused so much poetry and history to press upon him that he needed some straying apart to feel in a proper relation with them,” wrote Henry James early in his 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, the loose inspiration for writer-director Bertrand Bonello’s disquieting and spectacular The Beast. James is describing the house in which his protagonist, John Marcher, crosses paths with the woman, May Bertram, who will prove not to be the love of his life, mainly because of Marcher’s unwillingness to take a risk on intimacy. This is due to his fear of a “beast” that he feels could pounce at any moment.
That beast isn’t anything concrete or corporeal, but rather a metaphorical unease—a dread of all the terrible things that life could mete out. And as Marcher discovers at the end of James’s novella, the beast has struck without him ever realizing it.
That beast isn’t anything concrete or corporeal, but rather a metaphorical unease—a dread of all the terrible things that life could mete out. And as Marcher discovers at the end of James’s novella, the beast has struck without him ever realizing it.
- 9/12/2023
- by Keith Uhlich
- Slant Magazine
Editor’s Note: This interview originally ran during the 2023 Venice Film Festival. “The Beast” opens in U.S. theaters on April 5, 2024.
Fans of David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: The Return” and its mystical loop through hell and horror that ends with a scream, charged by Tulpas and body-swapping and timelines that swallow each other up, might find their itch for the heartsick uncanny scratched by Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast.”
It’s the most formally daring, willing-to-alienate of any films to premiere out of the Venice Film Festival competition so far, shape-shifting from Belle Époque Paris in 1910 to a recognizable 2014 Los Angeles, and, finally, a sterile post-pandemic future somewhere in 2044. Léa Seydoux plays a woman named Gabrielle in all three periods — first, a miserably married fin-de-siècle pianist, then an aspiring actress in Los Angeles in the present day, and then a woman electing to have the leftover emotions from her...
Fans of David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: The Return” and its mystical loop through hell and horror that ends with a scream, charged by Tulpas and body-swapping and timelines that swallow each other up, might find their itch for the heartsick uncanny scratched by Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast.”
It’s the most formally daring, willing-to-alienate of any films to premiere out of the Venice Film Festival competition so far, shape-shifting from Belle Époque Paris in 1910 to a recognizable 2014 Los Angeles, and, finally, a sterile post-pandemic future somewhere in 2044. Léa Seydoux plays a woman named Gabrielle in all three periods — first, a miserably married fin-de-siècle pianist, then an aspiring actress in Los Angeles in the present day, and then a woman electing to have the leftover emotions from her...
- 9/5/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi drama “The Beast,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, follows a star-crossed duo, trying — and failing — to make love work across three timelines. Moving between 1910, 2014 and 2044, the film mixes period drama, speculative sci-fi and bouts of genuinely chilling horror — particularly in a middle section set in contemporary Los Angeles.
There, aspiring actress Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) catches the attention of Louis (George MacKay), a self-described incel with a violent hatred for women. Bonello based the character on Elliot Rodger, a 2014 mass killer who uploaded a misogynist manifesto to YouTube before claiming seven lives. The filmmaker also re-created scenes from Rodger’s infamous video verbatim in the film.
Why did you choose to cite Elliot Rodger?
When I learned of the story back in 2014, I was shocked by the atrocious attack, of course, but I was also shocked by his words, so much so that...
There, aspiring actress Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) catches the attention of Louis (George MacKay), a self-described incel with a violent hatred for women. Bonello based the character on Elliot Rodger, a 2014 mass killer who uploaded a misogynist manifesto to YouTube before claiming seven lives. The filmmaker also re-created scenes from Rodger’s infamous video verbatim in the film.
Why did you choose to cite Elliot Rodger?
When I learned of the story back in 2014, I was shocked by the atrocious attack, of course, but I was also shocked by his words, so much so that...
- 9/3/2023
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Sideshow and Janus Films will release “The Beast” in U.S. theaters on April 5, 2024.
Compelling evidence that every major arthouse director should be required to make their own “Cloud Atlas” before they die, Bertrand Bonello’s sweeping, romantic, and ravishingly strange “The Beast” finds the French director broadening — and in some cases challenging — the core obsessions of his previous films into a sci-fi epic about the fear of falling in love.
Split into three lightly intercut parts that trace the connection between two star-crossed souls (embodied by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) from 1910 to 2044, Bonello’s latest and most accessible movie begins by literalizing the same basic premise that has undergirded previous work like “House of Tolerance” and “Zombi Child”: The past is always present (a dialectic explored here with the help of a machine that encourages...
Compelling evidence that every major arthouse director should be required to make their own “Cloud Atlas” before they die, Bertrand Bonello’s sweeping, romantic, and ravishingly strange “The Beast” finds the French director broadening — and in some cases challenging — the core obsessions of his previous films into a sci-fi epic about the fear of falling in love.
Split into three lightly intercut parts that trace the connection between two star-crossed souls (embodied by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) from 1910 to 2044, Bonello’s latest and most accessible movie begins by literalizing the same basic premise that has undergirded previous work like “House of Tolerance” and “Zombi Child”: The past is always present (a dialectic explored here with the help of a machine that encourages...
- 9/3/2023
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Click here to read the full article.
Barbara Walters, the glass-ceiling-shattering newswoman whose intimate television interviews with celebrities and world figures blended show business and journalism and induced many a tear, has died. She was 93.
Walters, the first female co-host of the Today show, the first evening news anchorwoman in broadcast history and a co-creator and co-host of The View, died Friday evening at her home in New York, ABC News announced.
Walters revealed in May 2013 that she would retire from journalism upon the conclusion of The View season in 2014. “I thought it was better to go when people are saying, ‘Why is she leaving?’ than, ‘Thank goodness she’s leaving!’” she said.
Yet Walters soldiered on with exclusive interviews, like one with Peter Rodger, the father of Elliot Rodger, the Uc Santa Barbara student who killed seven people in May 2014.
Walters also was known for co-hosting the ABC news...
Barbara Walters, the glass-ceiling-shattering newswoman whose intimate television interviews with celebrities and world figures blended show business and journalism and induced many a tear, has died. She was 93.
Walters, the first female co-host of the Today show, the first evening news anchorwoman in broadcast history and a co-creator and co-host of The View, died Friday evening at her home in New York, ABC News announced.
Walters revealed in May 2013 that she would retire from journalism upon the conclusion of The View season in 2014. “I thought it was better to go when people are saying, ‘Why is she leaving?’ than, ‘Thank goodness she’s leaving!’” she said.
Yet Walters soldiered on with exclusive interviews, like one with Peter Rodger, the father of Elliot Rodger, the Uc Santa Barbara student who killed seven people in May 2014.
Walters also was known for co-hosting the ABC news...
- 12/31/2022
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Democrat officials are urging YouTube to scrub incel content from its platform.
Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), along with nine other Democrat co-signers, sent an open letter to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai Oct. 25 calling YouTube an “easily-accessible [pathway] into the larger ‘incelosphere.'”
The letter cited a recent report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (Ccdh), which examined 1,183,812 posts made by users on “the world’s leading public incel websites and pages, as well as content on YouTube.” The YouTube content had collectively amassed more than 24 million views, per the report.
For those unfamiliar, incels—aka “involuntary celibates”–are men who believe women are sex dispensers, and that being denied sex is the source of all their problems.
As the letter states, incel ideology has been linked to the maiming or murder of over 100 people, mostly women, over the last decade.
Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), along with nine other Democrat co-signers, sent an open letter to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai Oct. 25 calling YouTube an “easily-accessible [pathway] into the larger ‘incelosphere.'”
The letter cited a recent report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (Ccdh), which examined 1,183,812 posts made by users on “the world’s leading public incel websites and pages, as well as content on YouTube.” The YouTube content had collectively amassed more than 24 million views, per the report.
For those unfamiliar, incels—aka “involuntary celibates”–are men who believe women are sex dispensers, and that being denied sex is the source of all their problems.
As the letter states, incel ideology has been linked to the maiming or murder of over 100 people, mostly women, over the last decade.
- 10/27/2022
- by James Hale
- Tubefilter.com
On Tuesday night, authorities reported that a mass shooter had gone on a rampage in the Atlanta area, targeting three massage parlors and spas in the process. The shooter, Robert Long, killed eight people, including six Asian women.
The news was met with an outpouring of grief on social media Tuesday, with many placing the shootings in the context of the escalating rates of anti-Asian-American violence over the past year in the wake of the pandemic. But in a press conference the day after, law enforcement officials from the Cherokee...
The news was met with an outpouring of grief on social media Tuesday, with many placing the shootings in the context of the escalating rates of anti-Asian-American violence over the past year in the wake of the pandemic. But in a press conference the day after, law enforcement officials from the Cherokee...
- 3/17/2021
- by EJ Dickson
- Rollingstone.com
Pity the poor young white man. They are unemployed. They’re living at home in record numbers. They’re not having sex (or at least, they’re not having particularly good sex). And they are unhappy — sometimes miserably, aggressively so — with a portion of them turning to the darkest abysses of the internet to find solace and to commiserate about their anger and resentment toward women, people of color, and more generally, the fabric of society itself.
These men are most commonly referred to as “incels,” short for “involuntarily celibate,...
These men are most commonly referred to as “incels,” short for “involuntarily celibate,...
- 5/4/2020
- by EJ Dickson
- Rollingstone.com
The Discovery Channel on Sunday evening debuts a six-part series, Why We Hate, that looks at the scientific and evolutionary links to hate by looking at some of the most recent examples of racial and religious violence and discrimination.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav, on a recent visit to Washington, D.C. to screen the first part at Atlantic Live, said that the project was originally conceived with executive producer Steven Spielberg five years ago. But he said that at the time, they did not envision the resurgence of hate, whether it be in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, or in European countries as they grapple with immigration.
“We were going to be looking retrospectively, and try to understand better,” Zaslav said. “But we never imagined that as you look around the world now, the rise of hate — hate for immigrants, for Jews, for Mexicans, for African-Americans, for Hispanics, hate for ‘the other.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav, on a recent visit to Washington, D.C. to screen the first part at Atlantic Live, said that the project was originally conceived with executive producer Steven Spielberg five years ago. But he said that at the time, they did not envision the resurgence of hate, whether it be in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, or in European countries as they grapple with immigration.
“We were going to be looking retrospectively, and try to understand better,” Zaslav said. “But we never imagined that as you look around the world now, the rise of hate — hate for immigrants, for Jews, for Mexicans, for African-Americans, for Hispanics, hate for ‘the other.
- 10/13/2019
- by Ted Johnson
- Deadline Film + TV
Newly released video footage of a police interview with Alek Minassian, the suspect in the 2018 Toronto van attack, sheds light on how he became an incel, a term used to describe an “involuntary celibate” male, as well as how he was subject to a slow radicalization process that ultimately led him to kill 10 people.
In a four-hour interview after his arrest, the transcript of which was unsealed by a judge and released on Friday, Minassian admitted that the attack had been motivated in large part by his resentment toward “Chads” and “Staceys,...
In a four-hour interview after his arrest, the transcript of which was unsealed by a judge and released on Friday, Minassian admitted that the attack had been motivated in large part by his resentment toward “Chads” and “Staceys,...
- 9/27/2019
- by EJ Dickson
- Rollingstone.com
It’s no secret that there are a lot of angry young white men on the internet; it’s also no secret that a substantial percentage of these men are angry because they aren’t getting laid. Known as “incels” (short for involuntarily celibates), these men are fueled by the belief that the world is made up of “Chads” (conventionally handsome and successful men) and “Staceys” (women who are exclusively attracted to Chads), while any man who falls outside this dichotomy is consequently unfairly deprived of an emotionally and sexually satisfying life.
- 5/28/2019
- by EJ Dickson
- Rollingstone.com
Scott Paul Beierle was in eighth grade when he first started to hate women.
“If you haven’t seen the will a group of women can generate when they target an adult male, or really anyone,” Beierle said in a video titled “The Rebirth of my Misogynism,” one of 15 vlogs he uploaded to YouTube during a three-day span in 2014. “The target of their collective treachery was me. … That’s where it began, that was its origin until I figured out how to address it.”
Four years later, on Friday, November 2nd,...
“If you haven’t seen the will a group of women can generate when they target an adult male, or really anyone,” Beierle said in a video titled “The Rebirth of my Misogynism,” one of 15 vlogs he uploaded to YouTube during a three-day span in 2014. “The target of their collective treachery was me. … That’s where it began, that was its origin until I figured out how to address it.”
Four years later, on Friday, November 2nd,...
- 11/5/2018
- by Amelia McDonell-Parry
- Rollingstone.com
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