As I left the cinema, following the two hour emotional turmoil endured watching Yorgos Lantimos’ latest work, I overheard a fellow Bugonia-watcher remark, “Well, that was even more traumatising than A Streetcar Named Desire”. By the time I had managed to untwist my stomach muscles, I found myself mentally agreeing. I don’t think I have felt so tense during a cinema-visit since a past re-screening of No Country For Old Men. Or, indeed, since psycho-analysing Tennesse Williams’ ‘Stanley’ in my A-level English Literature Class. If-you-know-you-know.
An adaptation of Jang Joon-hwang’s Save the Green Planet! (2003), Bugonia is an uncomfortably close retelling of our own reality; Lantimos’ absurdist style interlaced between human detail. Class-struggle and our fears of misinformation imposed through sci-fi themes. The tale depicts the kidnap of a pharmaceutical company’s CEO, at the hands of two conspiracy theorist cousins, who believe that she is an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy.
Emma Stone’s character, Michelle Fuller, embodies a silicon-valley-esque, ultra-Capitalist archetype. She is shown wearing a red light therapy face-mask, running on a treadmill whilst attached by wires to a respiratory machine, and swallowing a handful of assorted pills. This super-cut immediately evokes Bryan Johnson (The Man Who Wants to Live Forever) parallels, an instant symbol of one of the film’s underscoring themes: the discordance between humanity and fears of extra-terrestrial or immortal unknown.
Teddy, played by Jesse Plemons, represents another social extreme. Plagued by institutional mistrust, that we later learn to be the product of childhood abuse and the failings of Michelle’s company, Teddy enlists his cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), to help him with the kidnapping. He also encourages Don to chemically castrate himself, claiming that it will help him to think more clearly. This technique was favoured by notorious cult Heaven’s Gate, who had similar beliefs that the process would help to untie them from their physical bodies and compulsions, in attempts to hyper-focus on their goals and higher purpose.
Whilst positioned as the antithesis to Stone’s manicured, CEO character, Teddy plays into the same 21st Century efficiency rhetoric that she does. Both attempt to ‘cheat’ human experience. Whether that’s extreme reverse-ageing practices or a denouncing of sexuality. This is not to say that sensuality is inherent to all human experience, but rather that, in this context, it serves as a representation for reproduction and ultimately, love. As Don meekly admits, he “had hoped to meet someone someday”, the subsequent events compromise any chance of this. Sacrifice seems to be at the heart of this film, and we are left questioning which sacrifices jeopardise humanity. Is Michelle human because she flees when chased? Because she cries during torture? Is she inhuman through her inability to accept her role in destruction? Is Teddy more of a human than her? Is Don more human than both of them?
Though the film raises pertinent questions and jabs at social critique, the ending left me feeling slightly hard-done-by, scoffs were heard throughout the audience. Had it been in my hands, I think I would have scrapped the CGI scenes entirely. However, I cannot forget the element of both visual and conceptual contrast that is inherent to Bugonia.
Lantimos’ latest exists as a patchwork of extremity and juxtaposition, an exploration of the human condition. We are confronted with the paradox that if you go far enough one way, you inevitably come back around. Michelle and Teddy are opposite ends of a hierarchy that breathe beneath the same ecosystem (or so we think). Both encapsulate the perils of extremity.
Ultimately, the end is destruction.
3.5/5
Image Credits – TheMovieDB
