The Beach

Saw The Beach, a fluffy but grim film about a teenager who is looking for adventure in Thailand. He runs into some shouty Irish guy who gives him a map to an island paradise. There he discovers a comune of very attractive people who seem to do nothing all day except hang around in hammocks and garden and play gameboys. They talk a lot about how much better they are than the noisy tourists who are crapping up the mainland (congratulating themselves on their isolation is a bad sign) and they are ruled by Tilda Swinton (very bad sign! Abort! Abort!) So of course things go awry fairly quickly.

This film is based on a novel of the same name which is itself based on Rushing to Paradise, a J G Ballard novel. The Ballard-ish influence is felt in the creeping corruption of the apparent paradise. This island is a paradise only in comparison to the real world which is only considered to not be a paradise for fairly flimsy reasons. Other people are loud and obnoxious, life is too comfortable, electronics make things unreal. These are only problems for young idiots who think that grand adventures await them in some magic never-never land. This is mixed in with a heavy hit of Apocalypse Now which yields some nice protagonist-is-going-crazy montages.

The film is kind of fluff. The protagonist is a cocky bro who is able to goof and glower his way out of problems. The island inhabitants are cartoon people who are always smiling and laughing or amiably groaning at chores. The bad stuff is solely the work of the wicked Tilda Swinton and the film ends with an unearned happy ending. Any adult will feel the cult-vibes coming a mile away, will know that this pretty idiot is doomed. The film tries to argue that the community makes this place a utopia, but utopias are imaginary and we know this going in.

The film is pretty to look at, both in terms of the actors and the scenery and there's some nice Deep Forest-style music. It's too slight to be taken very seriously however and not jolly enough to keep kids interested. It's like an Apocalypse Now for teens. And, being for teens, it therefore feels kind of dated and awkward. It's like looking at a yearbook photo of the cool kids from high school. Clearly lots of confidence but very little backing that confidence up.