paul2001sw-1
Oliver Hermanus's 'Beauty' is a harsh film, the story of a repressed gay man in a loveless (straight) marriage prone to intermittent bouts of sexual violence. The way it is filmed is designed to echo the sense of loneliness in his life: lots of long, still shots that emphasise just how little is really going on, except for his brooding obsessions. In fact, I can't remember the last time I watched a film in which background noise is so prominent: I can see why it was shot in this way, but the on-going hum does get annoying after a while. There's only so long one wants to watch, and listen to, nothing much happening in a sawmill or cafeteria. In the end, the reductionist animal-ism of the protagonist makes it impossible to sympathise with him; indeed, his relentless calculation makes him seem chilling rather than tragic, and in consequence the film feels unpleasant rather than sad.
BlindMan-11
1. Artsy fartsy is one thing but to waste film stock for endless minutes of people staring or having nonsense dialogue is useless.2. There was so many scenes that made no sense. It is as if the director started filming a train of thought, they broke for lunch, forgot that they were in the middle of this train of thought, and left it and moved on to filming a new train of thought.3. The rape scene was disturbing and I will give credit, was one of the best and realistic rape scenes that I have seen in a movie. That being said, I found it: (a) Unbelievable that the strong young boy, even punched etc. when he is now going to be anally violated, does not put up a further fight.(b) Where is the punishment for the rapist's actions? I understand the artsy fartsy point of telling the ending that perhaps its Christian whom is calling and demanding money as blackmail to keep quiet, but do we - after enduring so many (see above) started train of thoughts on this film to have them dropped with no explanation? 4. What was with the whole bar/drinking/throwing up scenes there for? More wasted film stock.5. What was with the cloths in the pool? With so much open ended topics, one would have thought that maybe Christian was dead in the pool, either drowned by the old fool, or he had committed suicide.Frankly, I do like a good movie and one that lets you think and not have it served up like Pablum, but this movie was actually painful to watch for all the wrong reasons.Finally, yes the old men got together to have a sex romp, so its not like the lead was repressing his gayness, he was just wanted some young handsome boy to be his bottom. Based on the men that were at the farmhouse, can you blame him for wanting something more than the old fat balding men that he had to contend with to stay on the DownLow?Mercyfully, I got to see this on NetFlix so there really was no cost but I still may ask for a refund on the prorate costs for the monthly shows I did watch and pay me a refund for this one.A TRUE TRIP DOWN RUBBISH LANE.
jm10701
Beauty is a generally well-made movie about the ugly consequences of sexual repression in an intensely, violently homophobic society in South Africa (although it could just as well have been set in the United States or most other countries). The movie's few serious flaws--Deon Lotz is not believable as a gay man, even as a severely closeted and homophobic gay man; and Charlie Keegan is nowhere near the beauty the movie makes him out to be--in a way aren't really flaws at all, because those incongruities reinforce the fundamental impossibility of anything approaching health and sanity in such a perverted society. The true perverts are the homophobes, and this movie exposes them and portrays the hypocrisy, depravity and violence of their lives with great power and clarity.The characters are bilingual; the movie's dialog is about 30% English and 70% Afrikaans, often switching back and forth several times within a single multi-person conversation. That would be okay if either both languages were subtitled (the best solution) or if the English were not spoken with a pronounced South African accent--but instead they chose to subtitle ONLY the words spoken in Afrikaans.Often I found myself wondering why the subtitles suddenly stopped in the middle of a conversation only to realize too late that they were speaking English now so I was supposed to know what they were saying; then they would switch without warning back to Afrikaans and the subtitles resumed.That's a big mistake, it would have been easy to avoid, and it's unacceptably and unnecessarily distracting. When the same voice alternates between Afrikaans and Afrikaans-accented English, a non-bilingual listener can't make the instantaneous adjustments required to understand every word. It would have cost them practically nothing to subtitle the English too, but they didn't. It became slightly less a problem later in the movie just because I got used to it, but it never ceased to be a distraction. That's the main reason I deducted a few stars.
sjh-16
I agree largely with ottoman-umpire's comments. Each scene lingered 10-15 seconds longer than necessary. Sometimes less is more, and certainly in this case I felt that throughout the film. Had it been better edited, it could have built the tension more effectively in a decent 60-minute film.That would also have allowed the addition of a more satisfactory ending. When I saw it, you could almost hear every member of the audience saying to themselves "Is that it?" when the film ended - no resolution, no punishment of Francois for what he had done, no indication of what Francois was thinking/feeling as he watched the gay couple at the end, and whether he learned or grew as a result of what happened (i.e. character development). The movie didn't show him to have any redeeming qualities (in my opinion) so in the end I was hoping he would either be punished for the rape or at least come to grips with his homo- or bi-sexuality and do something positive about it.Also, as Christian was a law student, I thought it likely he wouldn't let things rest and would either go to the police or try to blackmail Francois to get the money he wanted (he may have done, but the purpose of the money in the last scene is not stated).All in all, an interesting but frustrating experience.
AD
