Beauty

Without imposing too much of a Marxist interpretation on this film it would be good to ponder on how much our actions are partly formed by the society in which we live. I was shocked to read one reviewer say Francois, the lead character is old, fat and ugly. Is this the sort of judgement we impose upon others created by the endless images of ' beautiful people ' around us ? Francois lives in a world that is repressed, ugly in its moral hypocrisy and full of racism and homophobia. He is trapped in this world, like most of us if we are honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we are trapped in the society we are born in. Some fight to get out, others stay. Many societies are ugly towards homosexuality and he lives in one of them, miserable in a loveless marriage and secretly yearning for the beauty of a fulfilled life he can no longer achieve. The last scene in the film was achingly accurate about this. After many years I have at last caught up with this film. Like other reviewers I saw how terrible the rape is, but I tried to understand the long fierce years of frustration and society's impositions that made it happen. Fritz Lang in ' Scarlet Street ' showed a similar unpunished crime. and Francois will have many long years ahead to live with this guilt. The monster in this film is the societies that breed the climate for such an action - the homosexual persecution and torture in Russia is just one example, and even within America and the UK everything is not ' beautiful ' and discrimination still exists. How many clothes shops for example where two beautiful people advertise the clothes are two men, or two women, clearly in love and together ? I have seen none. Beauty is for the so-called normal. To conclude I thought the film was expertly made and the time it took to relate the story was I believe for us to look closely at the world that surrounded this inwardly desperate man who has a lot of love within, but explodes and commits an atrocious act because he does not have any possibility in his society to express it. The horrifying sexual orgy of homosexual hating men at the beginning of the film was as equally painful to watch, caught like flies in the web of the world that society has made for them. One of the most thought provoking films I have seen recently, equal to the best of the great director Fritz Lang.

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.

Oliver Hermanus wonderfully crafted "Beauty" was South Africa's submission to the Academy Awards as well as 2011 Un Certain Regard Cannes Film Festival Nominee and a Cannes award winner. This is a tale of repressed turmoil that slowly creep ups to the viewer. A very capable Deon Lotz plays François in an excellent performance filled with subtle anger, rage, jealousy and obsession. These feeling progressively take their toll on the unsuspecting Christian, brilliantly portrayed by Charlie Keegan with a devastating innocence and magnetic charm that will keep audiences disturbed long after experiencing this film.

Family man Francois van Heerden is a haven of many secrets. Secrets that deteriorate as well as rot the insides. In his endurance of life's test and family matters, François is able to keep an expected straight face in his daily dealings as he slowly asphyxiates for attention from his daughter's mate Christian. Christian, on the other hand, not only regards Francois as an elderly figure worthy of respect due to friendship ties with his father but refers to him as "uncle", an adoptive role soon to be tested by an ever raging need to relate in highly improbable ways unbeknown to an oblivious Christian . However, we get the sense that Christian honestly looked up to Francois as an additional father figure source.

The platonic dealings slowly eats away at Francois as he repeatedly insists Christian refer to him by his name in order to detract from the connecting familiar upbringing which seems to awkwardly remind Francois to hold back on his planned intentions. Effective scheming leads to the an extremely troubling conclusion based on a number of deliberate choices and sequential actions meant to pander to the vile objectives to be executed.

Upon the enforcement of his plans, François realizes the results are now irreversible. The damage is done and permanent. The post mutilating events leads to reparations that will ultimately render Francois unrepentant and numb to an uneven arrangement. The brilliance of this story falls within the mix bag of emotions this film emits. The film is beautifully haunting as it unfolds, yet extremely ugly. "Beauty" is a cinematic gem worthy of attention because it will illicit a variety of strong and deep long lasting reactions. It will encourage dialogue with other viewers immediately after watching regarding its many unanswered questions of what could have been.

There seems to be a misapprehension about this movie and is key to understanding it. Francois is not in fact a blood uncle. In the opening wedding scene Christian says something ( I can't remember his actual words) which establish that. The opening scene shows Francois transfixed by a vision of a young man known to him last as a boy before the two families lost touch. If he were a REAL uncle, how likely is it that he doesn't already know what he looks like? This changes the whole dynamic of the movie and makes his actions at the later beach scene easier to understand. This movie is very good, but not an easy watch, but I feel that viewers need to know the above, (a point which even a few commercial reviewers got wrong) in order to appreciate its merits.

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.