MrMoviesETC Reviews: "Bones and All" (2022)

MRMOVIESETC REVIEWS:

"Bones and All" (2022)

It’s been over 5 years since the last film I saw by Luca Guadagnino, and for the life of me, I cannot remember much about “Call Me By Your Name”. I remember the beautiful Italian landscape, decent performances by Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer that also didn’t really leave a big impression, and a seductive grapefruit. At least, I think it was a grapefruit. The point is a piece of food got American Pie’d, but I digress. Overall, I’d say I was just on the right side of lukewarm about the whole thing, and my expectations weren’t all that high to begin with seeing as I was unfamiliar with Guadagnino’s work, I barely knew who Chalamet was, and Armie Hammer was already having a mixed career up until that point. Nothing gained. Nothing lost. “Bones and All” felt altogether different. When I first saw the trailer, I gathered it was a romance involving cannibals, stylish yet unpolished cinematography, and a score composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Well, stuff some moist dollar bills in my G-string - I’m in!

Not only was I in, but leading up to watching the film, I sampled some of said score because I have no self-control, and I got the impression fairly quickly that “Oh Christ, this is going to make fucking cry, isn’t it?” Why not? Whenever the question “What movie makes you cry?” comes up, having the answer be a cannibalistic romance wouldn’t be so bad for the resume, in my opinion. Not to mention it would create some diversity in a list mainly consisting of “The Notebook” and “The Notebook.” The story of “Bones and All” follows Maren Yearly (Taylor Russell), an 18-year-old living alone with her father in Virginia during the late 1980s, until he abandons her following an incident at a slumber party with classmates that reveals she has cannibalistic tendencies and needs. Shortly after, we hear an audio recording that he leaves for her and we quickly learn that this has been nothing new in her young life, and he has had to constantly pack her up on the run due her grisly nature. The only other items he left behind for her were an envelope of cash and her birth certificate, where she learns the name of her mother whom she’s never met. Now on her own, Maren strikes out on a road trip to reunite with her long-estranged mother. Along the way, she is first confronted by a lone, older stranger named Sully (Mark Rylance), who is also a cannibal and teaches Maren that “eaters”, as he refers to them, can sense each other through scent. Not only that, but these teachings show Maren that maybe she wasn't as alone in the world as she might have been led to believe. While swearing that he is harmless and would never consume a fellow eater, Maren feels something isn’t quite right with Sully and makes her getaway the next day. Further down the road, she has a run-in with another fellow cannibal, Lee (Timothee Chalamet), who joins in for her journey to Minnesota to meet her mother. She feels safe in his presence, and combined with the fact that he carries knowledge and ability on how to get human meat, a romance begins to bud. Anything beyond this point gets into spoiler territory, so I’ll leave it there. If my memory is serving me correctly, I feel one of the things I wasn’t quite sold on in “Call Me By Your Name” was the chemistry of the two leads. It was an amicable effort, but something never really felt right during the telling of their story. Russell and Chalamet are something entirely different together, and from where I sat, blended together nicely. For some reason, I thought this was the first time I had heard of and seen Russell in a film before, but after watching it and revisiting her past filmography, I saw that she was the lead in “Escape Room” a few years ago, and that being my only point of reference for her specifically, is probably the reason why I forgot. I wasn’t a fan - of the film, that is. Taylor was fine, I think, and in the case of this film, she's definitely more than fine. She's the main vessel for which the empathy of the view must be carried and she did a wonderful job doing just that.

Chalamet, on the other hand, is an actor I’ve seen quite a few times in recent years, and the best way I can think to describe his work is he’s either intriguing in a stiff and stoic way, or blends in with the wallpaper in a stiff and stoic way. There’s not really been any in-between to this point. Chalamet’s performance as Lee in “Bones and All”, I’m happy to say, is by far my favorite performance of his to date. There’s still some of his token Chalamet-ness hanging about, but he felt much looser and charismatic than I had ever seen before. He has an aura of confidence despite some clear fear and insecurity lingering beneath the surface. This blended well with Russell’s performance as an independent yet immaturely flawed teenager in need of direction and courage. I wish I could talk about Rylance’s performance more, because I’ve grown to admire him as an actor over the years, but a lot of his involvement in the story also gets into spoiler territory. What I can say about him and the character of Sully is it’s weird, subtle, yet effective. The best way I can describe him is that he’s forgettable, but he’s forgettable on purpose, and that takes a certain level of skill in any case. Now, moving on to the gooey and gory. What Guadagnino has accomplished here is crafting a remarkably human film - about cannibals. A good movie has the power to create empathy on any level for its characters and their stories. A great movie has the power to create empathy in situations that one wouldn’t consider having empathy for normally. Guadagnino has done a wonderful job weaving together a young love story about two people who commit murder to feed their carnal cravings that they have no control over and feel morally conflicted about giving in to. Outside of these cravings, all they want is a normal, domesticated life instead of being on the run all the time, and while the probability of their killings coming to end appears impossible, I wanted them to succeed. Of course, while the back of mind is telling me that they’re cannibals and what they’re doing and how they’re going about it is wrong, I did not wish any ill-fate on them. I found myself sold on their good intentions. I can think of way bigger assholes out in the world who don’t eat people and whom I would love to see fail. On the technical side of things, especially when it comes to the blood and the guts, and there is plenty of both in this movie, you’ll always win me over with some good ol’ practical effects. “Bones and All” has all of that in spades, and given a film set over 30 years ago, anything CGI would have felt inappropriate. I also want to give a tip of the hat to the sound mixing, because when it came down the scenes of feasting on the flesh, the sounds that came of them were so lush and engrossing that you might as well have been on your hands and knees right next to them partaking in the Nom-Nom-Nom festivities. If there was any one thing that didn’t quite work for me, and it’s a really small thing, it would be the ending. Not so much how it was drawn up and executed, but for me, it felt abrupt. Don’t get me wrong, abrupt and ambiguous endings have their place in the world, but for a film that deliberately and expertly took its time to get where it needed to go, the abruptness felt out of place. I wanted more in that “ride off in the sunset” kind of way. Even then, it wasn’t enough of a lurch to take away what “Bones and All” does well, and it does MANY things well. This was exactly the film I was hoping for when it hooked me with its initial trailers, and yes, Reznor’s subtle score in the background blended all the moods together tastefully. Speaking of taste, this isn’t likely one that is going to fit many individual’s out there, but if you enjoy horror and are looking for something on the deeper side of the blood pool, I’d say this one is well worth a look. “Bones and All”: 9.5/10