The Menu (Mark Mylod, 2022)

(Note: This is a spoiler free review. It does highlight some of the themes, but it won't spoil anything beyond what the trailer already shows or makes clear.)

Satire is the hardest creative endeavor in narrative fiction. To be good, not even to reach greatness or excellence, the execution has to be more disciplined, more thoughtful, and can't have technical issues audiences would generally accept in other narrative endeavors. Satire isn't just about the experience of the film or story, as we're watching it. It's also about what we're leaving with, what we're thinking about when it's over. It is a creative or narrative goal, which isn't quite the same thing as a genre. Many different genres can be used to create satire. Comedy and horror are particularly good vehicles for satire because audiences choosing them have to be more open to the the absurd. They don't need as much grounding in our reality to still be able to feel some sense of a story and character having a connection to our reality. The Menu is playing both of those genres, and doing it well. 

Mark Mylod's The Menu succeeds in all those areas. The writing is strong. On it's surface, it's a broad satire of class and that aspect works well. It leans much more toward the comedy than terror or horror to convey it, and tonally shares a sensibility with Ready Or Not, which has quickly developed a cult following in horror circles. It's driven by a fairly dark humor, but the grotesqueries it's revealing aren't in the blood or graphic violence and instead are in the inhumanities of class. It's not a bloodless film, but the blood is far less the focus. It is very funny in the way it reveals these inhumanities, the insecurities behind them and the blindness to those same things among the most wealthy and privileged. The power associated with these privileges is the source of the tension and the suspense too, and it creates tension and suspense well, especially in the earlier part of the film. 

There are also underlying questions about artistry, obsession, who and what has or creates value in a world where the wealthy are so privileged, and the ways ideas challenging that privilege are suffocated in their cribs. Mylod knows this film is going to live and die on the script and the performances, and those are at the forefront. Everything else in the film is well done on a technical level, but none of it is flashy. It's never meant to draw audience attention away from the ideas and the performances. It's not trying to wow with cinematography or costumes or set design. In The Menu, all of those are designed to prevent attention from falling on anything other than the ideas the script is putting forward and the performances through which they are being put forward. The degree to which none of the technical aspects of the film call attention to themselves are part of what make them so well done. 

There will inevitably be a vein of criticism which says The Menu is "too on the nose." It's a criticism satire often draws. It may not exactly be playing fair, but it is a criticism which could be seen as part of what the film is getting at. To say it's "too on the nose" speaks to one of the things that makes satire among the hardest creative endeavors in narrative fiction. It has to be working on multiple levels. There's always a question with a film like this, which is on the surface dealing with something as broad as class, "Can it be considered successful if it's not able to communicate with a mass audience?" If it can't communicate with a mass audience, is it just reproducing the same variety of exclusivity the class politics it's skewering produce? It's a thorny question, without a straightforward answer, because the answer is tied to how media literate the person asking and/or answering it believes the larger portion of the movie going audience is. Media literacy is generally associated with education levels, and education is in no way, shape or form free from class politics. If the perception that education levels are associated with media literacy and the more highly educated have essentially created that association, is it free from the same kinds of privilege The Menu is directly addressing? We may be living in a period when opportunity for media literacy is unmoored from education in a way it hasn't been before, but then the question still arises, "How much of the audience has been taking advantage of that opportunity?" Who does a film like this have to speak to in order to be considered "successful" in its narrative aims? 

How much of the movie going audience is going to the movies to get their money's worth for ninety minutes or two hours of essentially escapist entertainment, and how much of the audience is going to the movies to engage with a cinematic text as one entry or example of film as an art form? It's a question filmmakers and critics each answer to their individual satisfaction. Some of them realize they are answering individually and subjectively, and some of them don't. Is it inherently pretentious to consider film an art form? No. Is it inherently pretentious if a film neglects to engage the audience that doesn't have much foundation in film as an art form, but as "pure entertainment"? It doesn't make the film inherently pretentious, but there certainly is a portion of the critical community and movie going audience who are pretentious in the way they respond to a films willingness to engage with a less "art focused" audience. How many of those questions are so inextricably connected to commerce that there is  no hard line? Does an artists desire for their film to be seen by as many people as possible make it less an artistic endeavor and more a commercial endeavor? What price does the person who is in love with the art form pay to get access to commercial viability? 

The Menu is touching on all of this, as well as the straight forward questions it raises about food and consumption in relation to class. 

With that in mind, there are two performances which need to be recognized because they're largely responsible for how successful The Menu is. Hong Chau is a scene stealer. She's doing some great work with the smallest bits of dialog. She's not getting to be big, broad and flashy, but she is making a big, heavyweight impression with clipped bits of dialog that land with the impact of a punch to the kidney. She is conveying the degree of change in the generally expected and accepted dynamics with just a few words, and perfectly treading a razor thin line between being comedic and being menacing. It's a hard thing to pull off, and she's doing it so well, she stands out. We're aware very quickly that this is a character who is in control of the situation, and even as she is small in stature, there is an implicit sense of threat. It's a great performance. 

Ralph Fiennes has repeatedly proven he's a great actor. This isn't the variety of role or film which is probably going to earn him the accolades some of his previous work has, but it is one of the more complicated roles and performances we've seen him in. There's a level of subtlety that would seem out of place with the rest of the film and the degree to which it is playing so broadly with the class satire and critique, if those underlying ideas about art, obsession and the love of the creative instinct weren't also so interestingly seeded throughout film. It's the kind of performance which doesn't jump out at you and make you realize how good it is as you watch, but becomes clear if you continue to consider what The Menu has to say after it's over. 

It's also worth saying Anya Taylor Joy and Nicholas Hoult are very good. Joy has a few short moments with Fiennes which make it clear she can go toe to toe with him, but the way her character is written and her function in the story don't give her much of a chance to shine. Oddly, given how the film plays out, Joy comes across as unremarkable serves the narrative, which is part of what makes it good acting. Hoult is good, but the less said about his character, the better for those wanting to avoid spoilers. One fair criticism of the film would be that both John Lequizamo and Judith Light are somewhat under utilized, considering how talented and recognizable they are. They're background, bit players who get one or two good moments, but overall I would have liked to have seen them get more to do. It does end up feeling like wasted talent, sitting there, waiting to put to good use. 

In last decade or so, an appetite for more bold class narratives has arisen. Parasite, Ready Or Not, Succession, The White Lotus are among the most well known dealing with class directly in their on screen narrative. That they're treating wealth and its privilege as things which need to be explored without a perspective which is implicitly sympathetic is good. It's an appetite seemingly shared by audiences and critics. As we head toward the 2024 election cycle beginning to spin up, and the richest man in the world dismantling one of the more popularly egalitarian communication platforms on the planet, we can only hope that trend continues. The Menu succeeds at bringing timely and necessary ideas and questions to the forefront, while also being a really good time at the movies.