Why I Hate THE MENU (2022)

To help frame this, it’s important to keep in mind that I’m surrounded by international and local artists as friends and collaborators on occasion, each with varying levels of success on the large and small scale. It’s a universe where even talented humans being need to know their limitations and their audience without losing sight of their particular voice. And very often, you might be surprised at how many know the silly, almost real estate nature of the fine arts business, this includes film where you have to skirt the personal with the commercial with as few compromises as possible - in a situation where in reality, all collaborative action is a compromise.

Where The Menu goes wrong for me is in how haywire the difference between intent and execution is. From frame one it’s clear that we’re exploring the rift between the hardcore connoisseur and the casual consumer vs. the artist and the machine that serves them. The initial setup seems simple enough, but the first lines of most successful scripts need to lay that out with a bit more clarity. But right away it feels as though this was once a much longer film (say an additional thirty minutes- this thing looks chopped to ribbons) where we never get a firm idea of who anyone is enough to know where the omniscient eye is going to be. Something that a lot of effective satire requires is that omniscient eye that merely displays. Where it can often go wrong is where the film decides to give screen time. Ultimately, the longer we spend time with certain characters, the more clearly the film’s philosophical bias lies. And surprise of surprises, Slowik gets more. Which is really strange considering where it wants to target its barbs. There’s no proper buildup to his life as an artist leading up to the moments of the film, it never really even takes those pauses to help us understand it. If this movie is to take that specific class struggle aim, it’s important to focus on personal agency. By not doing so, the longer we’re with Chef Slowik, the more it becomes clear that the filmmaker wants the viewer to empathize with a disgruntled artist.

::Brakes:: Remember what I said earlier, if one is any good at navigating this often arbitrary, shallow, self-serving realm, one needs to make it clear that the people involved as workers to create a product, are not victims. Especially those at the top who are often given carte blanc to do and say what they wish to say. There is no torture to this, unless you yourself have sold your entire creative soul to have done this. And as such, it isn’t retribution on any level to take it out on the artifice and snobbery of consumers you don’t even like or respect. In fact, it comes off as juvenile and perhaps even sociopathic to assume it’s everyone else’s fault, not yours.

So to use Slowik’s cuisine as an art not unlike cinema to blame those with not only fiscal, career, or reputational agendas, what this movie is doing is letting Slowik off the hook for taking some pretty poor personal and career moves. He is an artist. He is a unique individual with his own agency. He is not a victim of any of this. So to allow him to go through with the complete menu is to say that he has learned absolutely nothing from his encounter with Margot. - Which is touted from the start to be a counterpoint to the Chef.

So let’s get into what makes Margot not work; Easy. She has zero inner life. She is merely some angry film school freshman’s idea of an “everyperson voice”, which might have worked better if it had one simple missing ingredient; She needed to herself be an artist. She needed to be who she was, enjoy it, and be capable of illustrating what it means to be observant of the world. Now I can see the simplistic notion of casting Taylor-Joy as the observant party - her eyes. But the script needed much more than this. Otherwise, she ostensibly becomes another hoary example of “street person who speaks the truth” without any real depth or compelling nuance.

Worse yet, taking the argument that fans or critics should know their place and would self-destruct if given one day in an artist’s shoes, only works when we care about the artist, and even then it’s again another shallow, self-absorbed argument (“If you dislike my work, go make your own!”) to use in something with this level of talent involved.

And speaking of working beneath your capabilities, the biggest mistake this film makes for me is to cast Fiennes (an actor who has for decades exhuded sly intelligence and class) as someone we’re supposed to believe couldn’t see the trajectory of his life long before any of this happened. I’m sorry, there’s just no way to buy any of that. This is especially offensive when his final dish is what it was. (Something that might work in a five minute dark comedy sketch with a schlubby culinary wunderkind who lucked his way into prestige, and not a multi million dollar production with Ralph Fiennes as mastermind- that’s just low bar in every imaginable respect considering his passion was the most basic of sandwiches. There’s genuine disconnnect there that’s impossible to ignore. It is muddled nonsense.)

So to sum up, pick your poison; make a class struggle satire where we never know the mastermind’s true intentions over his “entourage”, or you skewer artists for buying into any of it. Do what this film does, and the entire thing gets murky - especially when studio notes demand that you clarify exactly who Dr. King is. Good grief, the level of contempt this movie has for the intelligence of its audience might work if it had to artistry to do so. Otherwise it’s just juvenile posturing.

And yeah, I’ll admit that the last time I saw a screed like this it was Inarritu’s BIRDMAN, and I loathe that film as well. But at least that trash was made elegantly. This isn’t even a fifth as successful at conveying a viewpoint. Because if the intent was that in the realm of worker versus consumer everyone is complicit, you’ve got to be better at setup and payoff. Focus and beats will always matter. It’s worth watching if only to remember how hard it is to make something like this. And not everyone is capable of delivering that level of ambition.

What we want to say is rarely ever as important as how we say it.