THE STORY – Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.
THE CAST – Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias & Alicia Silverstone
THE TEAM – Yorgos Lanthimos (Director) & Will Tracy (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 117 Minutes
Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. David Lynch and Laura Dern. The Coen Brothers and Frances McDormand. Some actress-director pairings just make sense, with the collaboration between the on-screen and behind-the-camera talent leading to both parties producing some of their best work in harmony. Such is the case with director Yorgos Lanthimos and actress Emma Stone, who are together again for their fourth film (in a row!) with “Bugonia.” And once again, Stone delivers a towering, shocking performance, conveyed with extreme focus and brilliant physical choices. Lanthimos has made yet another film that evokes both laughter and painful winces, which should come as no surprise to fans (and critics) of the provocative director. However, despite being an entertaining film on its surface, the way it dabbles with hot-button topics and imagery while ultimately refusing to offer any enlightening insights about the very types of destructive people it’s clearly inspired by makes the film feel unusually naive at best and frustratingly non-committal at worst.
Stone’s co-lead is the always-exceptional Jesse Plemons (a recent addition to Camp Lanthimos after his excellent work in last year’s “Kinds of Kindness”). He plays Teddy, a young man who’s been warped by paranoia and personal tragedy to become a resident of his own alternative, conspiratorial reality. He’s brought his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) onto his wavelength, and together, they live in an echo chamber where the world as we know it is essentially a false construction, lorded over by alien beings – Andromedans – who live amongst us in disguise. Teddy believes – and by that measure, so does the impressionable Don – that these aliens secretly rule the world, essentially treating humans as an experiment and puppeting the fate of our species via secret biological corruption.
Convinced that she’s one of these aliens, the pair kidnap the CEO of the company of which Teddy is a low-level employee. Her name is Michelle Fuller (Stone), and immediately upon abducting her, Teddy and Don shave her head (her hair holds her communication abilities through which she can contact her fellow Andromedans, of course), slather her in antihistamine cream, and chain her up in their basement. From there, they begin a series of tense discussions in which they try to get Fuller to admit to being an alien, in hopes that she will bring them aboard her compatriots’ spaceship so that Teddy and Don may save humanity.
Pretty far-fetched, no? But anyone who’s seen a Yorgos Lanthimos movie won’t be surprised to hear that he’s tackling an outrageous story. And as he always manages to do, he finds comedy in even the most distressing of situations. Indeed, there are moments where the screenplay doesn’t seem to lend itself to a humorous tone—and another director might shy away from that—but Lanthimos plays up the ridiculousness of the situation, leading to a surprisingly enjoyable film, given the subject matter. It helps that he has directed his actors in a way that allows the comedy to shine through in their line readings without betraying the absurd, yet upsetting, reality of their characters’ situations.
As one can surmise, the film addresses some pressing issues that are close to home in our modern world. In particular, the Georgia-set story will ring grimly true for Americans who have to face the reality that millions of their fellow citizens are seemingly suffering from mass psychosis fueled by the Internet and irresponsible politicians. Teddy and Don can easily be seen as examples of the logical endpoint of a wide range of conspiracy theories that can be found on basically any Facebook or Twitter feed, from the more common ones like vaccine skepticism to the truly delusional, like flat earthers or those who are more keen to believe in weather-controlling technology than face the reality of climate change. And while such beliefs may be dismissed as laughable, they’re such commonly-held ways of thinking amongst a large enough percentage of Americans that they must be taken as a serious threat to society (Who doesn’t have an aunt or uncle that they dread talking to at Thanksgiving because of this?) “Bugonia” satirizes such individuals in a way that doesn’t underestimate them. For all his unhinged patterns of thought, Teddy is very much a dangerous individual who’s found a way to affect real change. And smartly, at the same time, Will Tracy’s screenplay (adapted from the 2003 South Korean film “Save the Green Planet!”) doesn’t let Fuller off the hook. Although she’s clearly the victim in this situation, she appears cold and unsympathetic. She’s emblematic of the many millionaire and billionaire CEOs and economic leaders who’ve attained their positions of authority through shrewd, borderline sociopathic business practices. She’s put her humanity aside in favor of the pursuit of power and wealth. Both Teddy and Fuller represent the worst of modern American society, just at very different ends of the ladder of success.
The film all seems to be building to something powerful in its messaging, but in the end, it pulls the rug out from under itself in favor of shocking (and admittedly hilarious) plot mechanics. As such, the film feels hollow, dashing away from any real-world conclusions an audience could possibly derive.
Still, Stone and Plemons are both so excellent, so locked-in, and so compelling that it’s hard not to be drawn into the film’s unsteady orbit. Stone plays the anti-Bella Baxter (the main character of Lanthimos’ “Poor Things,” portrayed by Stone in a performance that earned her a second Academy Award). Whereas Bella is curious, easily delighted, and achingly empathetic, Fuller is tough, no-nonsense, and condescending. With Stone’s trademark huge eyes, shaved head, and skin caked in cream, Lanthimos has created yet another iconic screen image with his favo(u)rite leading lady. Stone uses her eyes to laser in on Teddy and Don, and when combined with the way she delivers business jargon-filled dialogue with her famously husky voice, she gives the impression that Fuller is in control, even when she’s chained to a bed with a gun pointed at her. Plemons, on the other hand, is manic, unpredictable, and thanks to his brilliant characterization, strangely sympathetic at times. He very clearly believes every word that he’s saying, and there’s never a moment where the audience doubts his convictions, even when said convictions strain the very definition of “unhinged.” He speaks to his autistic cousin (Delbis delivers an appropriately pitiable but still threatening performance) like a caring parent, telling Don all about the Andromedan conspiracy as if he were teaching him about something as banal as the water cycle.
As always with Lanthimos, the crafts on display are all top-of-the-line. Frequent collaborator Jerskin Fendrix (“Kinds of Kindness,” “Poor Things”) delivers a trademark anxiety-inducing musical score, this time evoking Stravinsky with his expansive, thunderous orchestral sound. His choice to give Teddy a theme that sounds borderline heroic helps the audience understand how the character views himself. And Robbie Ryan’s cinematography is – as should be expected with yet another Lanthimos collab – invasive (Stone’s character seems to live primarily in unsettling close-up), while not editorializing the film’s shocking moments by accentuating them with obvious camera moves. Even the decidedly contemporary production design by James Price (another member of the “Poor Things” Oscar-winning coalition) very specifically tells the audience what kind of downtrodden lives Teddy and Don live.
Throughout the film, honeybees are shown and discussed as an ideal of collaborative, societal living. At the same time, Teddy expresses his worry about the dangers bees face thanks to the risk of Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. “Bugonia” itself suffers from CCD – Cinematic Collapse Disorder – in which the film gives the impression that it’s leading to something significant before ultimately falling apart. Viewers may find something to grasp onto with the parts of which the film is made up – most obviously, the two exceptional lead performances – but “Bugonia” makes the disappointing choice to favor ridiculousness over meaning.
