The Beach
“The only downer is everyones got the same idea, we all travel thousands of miles just to watch TV and check in to somewhere with all the comforts of home, and you gotta ask yourself, what is the point of that?”
I watched “The Beach” twice this week. Why? Because it feels like a movie I’d love to live in. Just like the main characters Richard, Françoise and Étienne it awakens my desire to travel abroad, find a place and person I wanna spend the rest of my life with, and leave the world with all its problems and requirements behind. No need to study, no need to earn money, no need for consumerism … a place you look at the sunset of the sea instead of your TV, mobile or rent. The beach showed me that progress isn’t always progressing especially in our society.
There is not much to say about the acting because there’s no need to. Leonardo DiCaprio as Richard delivers obviously the best performance but that doesn’t mean the other actors aren’t delivering. Virginie Ledoyen as Françoise, Guillaume Canet as Étienne, Tilda Swinton as Sal and all the other side characters are doing just as well as Leonardo depending on how much their characters are integrated into the picture.
Although I would’ve wanted the movie to stop halfway through because I didn’t want that state of paradise to turn bad, the beach showed me why a paradise is never flawless but maybe a place worth fighting for. Later perhaps I’ll end up at someplace like that … in a parallel universe.