THE MENU
****
Director: Mark Mylod
Screenplay: Seth Reiss and Will Tracy
Principal cast:
Ralph Fiennes
Anya Taylor-Joy
Nicholas Hoult
Hong Chau
Janet McTeer
John Leguizamo
Country: USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 107 mins.
Australian release date: 24 November 2022.
Movies and television series musing about the moral failures of neo-liberal capitalism are becoming more and more prevalent as the economic theory enters its twilight years. Recent series like White Lotus and The Squid Game and films like The Forgiven, The Square and the forthcoming Triangle of Sadness, have all taken an unflinching look at the decadence and excess that ultimately accompanied the philosophy, as the divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ increased in the decades following Thatcher, Reagan and Howard. During these years, wage inequality grew and the power of financial elites swelled. We can now add Mark Mylod’s The Menu to the list of titles critical of those who were the beneficiaries of neo-liberalism’s redistribution of wealth and the ways in which they indulged themselves. On another level, it’s also a critique of the high-pressure restaurant industry, a business that all too often exacts a terrible toll from those who toil in its stressful kitchens.
At the film’s outset, we join a group of well-heeled guests as they board a launch that will take them to an ultra-exclusive restaurant on a private island. Their destination is Hawthorn, run by Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), an autocrat whose obsession with haute cuisine has made him globally famous, and the diners have each paid US$1,250 for the privilege of tasting the fruits of his labours. These are people who are comfortable in this world of fine dining, except for one, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy). She’s a late addition to the exalted guest list, having been asked by foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) at the last-minute because his original date pulled out. Margot is not impressed by what she sees at the restaurant and hears around her, muttering to herself, “We have reached the base-camp of bullshit” as Tyler rhapsodises about one of the dishes. Each course of the meal, from amuse bouche to dessert, marks a chapter in The Menu and “the game,” as Tyler puts it, “is to guess what the overarching theme of the meal is going to be. You won’t know until the end.” And, indeed, what he doesn’t know, nor any of the other patrons, is that Chef has a real surprise in store for them all, an absolute show-stopper - you might call it his ‘last supper’.
Seth Reiss and Will Tracy have written a highly original screenplay that stemmed from a meal Tracy experienced on a private island in Bergen, Norway. Their script reached producers Adam McKay and Betsy Koch and was in line with other transgressive work they’d recently produced, like McKay’s own end-of-the-world satire Don’t Look Up and Mimi Cave’s black comedy Fresh, and they were immediately onboard. Director Mark Mylod had worked with Tracy on Succession and he, too, was keen to join the project once he’d read the text. The cast came next - Ralph Fiennes plays malevolent really well, when you consider his roles in National Theatre Live’s Straight Line Crazy and The Forgiven (not to mention Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise), so he was an obvious choice for Chef Slowik. Gradually, Mylod built an image of each person on every table in the restaurant, an important exercise because the ensemble cast is in the same room at the same time for most of The Menu’s duration. Mylod says, “I got really lucky with the cast, but there is an old adage that good things come to good scripts and this was certainly a case of that.” In addition to those already mentioned, the large group includes a mix of well-known actors like John Leguizamo, Janet McTeer, Reed Birney and Rob Yang with less familiar faces such as Aimee Carrero, Hong Chau and Arturo Castro, and it’s an ensemble that works well together.
The Menu is an off-beat flight of fancy the likes of which we don’t often see. It may not be to everyone’s taste (sorry, but there had to be at least one food pun) because it’s not a film about food so much as one about greed and consumption, obsession and psychosis, and it is critical of both consumer and creator. Almost no one on either side of the pass at the Hawthorn gets away scot-free.
Screenplay: Seth Reiss and Will Tracy
Principal cast:
Ralph Fiennes
Anya Taylor-Joy
Nicholas Hoult
Hong Chau
Janet McTeer
John Leguizamo
Country: USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 107 mins.
Australian release date: 24 November 2022.
Movies and television series musing about the moral failures of neo-liberal capitalism are becoming more and more prevalent as the economic theory enters its twilight years. Recent series like White Lotus and The Squid Game and films like The Forgiven, The Square and the forthcoming Triangle of Sadness, have all taken an unflinching look at the decadence and excess that ultimately accompanied the philosophy, as the divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ increased in the decades following Thatcher, Reagan and Howard. During these years, wage inequality grew and the power of financial elites swelled. We can now add Mark Mylod’s The Menu to the list of titles critical of those who were the beneficiaries of neo-liberalism’s redistribution of wealth and the ways in which they indulged themselves. On another level, it’s also a critique of the high-pressure restaurant industry, a business that all too often exacts a terrible toll from those who toil in its stressful kitchens.
At the film’s outset, we join a group of well-heeled guests as they board a launch that will take them to an ultra-exclusive restaurant on a private island. Their destination is Hawthorn, run by Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), an autocrat whose obsession with haute cuisine has made him globally famous, and the diners have each paid US$1,250 for the privilege of tasting the fruits of his labours. These are people who are comfortable in this world of fine dining, except for one, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy). She’s a late addition to the exalted guest list, having been asked by foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) at the last-minute because his original date pulled out. Margot is not impressed by what she sees at the restaurant and hears around her, muttering to herself, “We have reached the base-camp of bullshit” as Tyler rhapsodises about one of the dishes. Each course of the meal, from amuse bouche to dessert, marks a chapter in The Menu and “the game,” as Tyler puts it, “is to guess what the overarching theme of the meal is going to be. You won’t know until the end.” And, indeed, what he doesn’t know, nor any of the other patrons, is that Chef has a real surprise in store for them all, an absolute show-stopper - you might call it his ‘last supper’.
Seth Reiss and Will Tracy have written a highly original screenplay that stemmed from a meal Tracy experienced on a private island in Bergen, Norway. Their script reached producers Adam McKay and Betsy Koch and was in line with other transgressive work they’d recently produced, like McKay’s own end-of-the-world satire Don’t Look Up and Mimi Cave’s black comedy Fresh, and they were immediately onboard. Director Mark Mylod had worked with Tracy on Succession and he, too, was keen to join the project once he’d read the text. The cast came next - Ralph Fiennes plays malevolent really well, when you consider his roles in National Theatre Live’s Straight Line Crazy and The Forgiven (not to mention Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise), so he was an obvious choice for Chef Slowik. Gradually, Mylod built an image of each person on every table in the restaurant, an important exercise because the ensemble cast is in the same room at the same time for most of The Menu’s duration. Mylod says, “I got really lucky with the cast, but there is an old adage that good things come to good scripts and this was certainly a case of that.” In addition to those already mentioned, the large group includes a mix of well-known actors like John Leguizamo, Janet McTeer, Reed Birney and Rob Yang with less familiar faces such as Aimee Carrero, Hong Chau and Arturo Castro, and it’s an ensemble that works well together.
The Menu is an off-beat flight of fancy the likes of which we don’t often see. It may not be to everyone’s taste (sorry, but there had to be at least one food pun) because it’s not a film about food so much as one about greed and consumption, obsession and psychosis, and it is critical of both consumer and creator. Almost no one on either side of the pass at the Hawthorn gets away scot-free.