Closer to travel diorama than drama, ‘The Beach’ turns out to be oddly pleasant adventure

HE MATURED past adolescent puppyhood in “Titanic,” but there’s a persistent boyishness. His good looks are textured individually, not generically. DiCaprio bonds the camera to his face, and as an actor he surfs fluent instincts that rarely leave him beached … even in “The Beach.”

The movie is closer to travel diorama than drama, but often a pleasant getaway on just that level. DiCaprio plays Richard, a bored hacker who opts for what he hopes will be transforming, Conradian adventure in Thailand (call him Lord Jimmy). Even the gaudy fleshpots of Bangkok soon pall (was it that icky drink of snake’s blood?), and his spirit quivers at mention of a “mythic” island to the south, a paradise found only by the most karmic tourists.

He heads there with two lovely French youths, Etienne (Guillaume Canet) and the even lovelier Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen). They like his mall-boy Americanosity and the way he plunges into the big sea channel that separates them from the island, with its hidden cove of green water and white sands (carried away, Darius Khondji lifts his salivating camera up to a bird’s-eye view that makes the island seem cartoonish, like Peter Pan’s isle in the Disney film).

SHANGRI-LA BEACHNIKS

Tilda Swinton, whose face is like a claw hammer made from sunflowers, is the leader, Sal. Her fuhrer allure is radiant. She has sex with Richard as if exacting a body tax due her dominance, and as he nods drowsily she snaps: “Get some more sleep. I might want to have sex again before breakfast.”

Everyone plays, sings, swims, fishes, hoping sharks won’t show up and the Thais will stay stoned, a bunch of opium Opies sucking their trigger fingers on the other side of the island. And they enjoy goodies brought in furtively from the lavishly stocked hell they left behind. Given the obvious options, there is remarkably little visible sex (darn it, no orgies! … but brief nudity).

Richard is bedazzled by the bodies, the beach, the glowing plankton, the stars above, the glands within. Francoise, being French, is available, though she zaps him with a line that feels directly heisted from Julie Delpy in “Before Sunrise”: “This is just the kind of pretentious b.s. that Americans say to French girls so they can sleep with them.”

BASKING IN YOUTH

The movie is often good in a preening, ’60s-forever way, as long as it reminds us of “The Blue Lagoon” and “Swiss Family Robinson,” basking in its youth tour of green (marine) pastures. It has the sugary nip of Thai tea. But director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge go for grim foreshadowing with an early clip from “Apocalypse Now,” and we know that the Thai thugs are going to ape through Eden, if not napalm it.

That doesn’t quite prepare us for Richard flipping into a funk (prissy Francoise can’t forgive his tryst with Sal). He wanders the island alone, puts on a headband, makes faces, thinks violent thoughts fed by old video game synapses (bad vibes, dude). It’s like a Cliff’s Notes for “Lord of the Flies” that washed up on the beach, far gone to pulp, and Boyle pushes DiCaprio into pained postures, has him shed one glycerine tear, and shows us the shark-bitten carnage of three Swedes who went fishing badly.

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IGN Review
Leo finds paradise, and steps back into real acting.
7/10

Talk about paradise ...

The Beach asks three questions:

1. Can a techno-consumer survive paradise?

2. Can Leo DiCaprio get back to being an actor, and not a Titanic pretty boy?

3. Can Danny Boyle find his way back from A Life Less Ordinary territory to better, grittier filmmaking?

The answers are: see the film, pretty much so and he's getting better.

In The Beach, Leo plays Richard, an American backpacker in Thailand looking for "something more." In a near-hallucinogenic opening scene, Richard explains he's looking for something beautiful, exciting, dangerous -- but he doesn't know what. (Richard's voiceover in the beginning keys into some of that Fight Club alienation that we loved so well.) Richard's also a little bit of a weakling: when he declines an offer to drink snake blood, he's taunted with, "Like every tourist, you just want it safe. Just like America." Cut to Richard knocking back a shot of the red stuff.

This vague search for something new, slathered with various insecurities, leads Richard into conversations with two of his neighbors in a cheap Thai hotel. On the left there's lovely Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen), whose only blemish is her boyfriend, Etienne (Guillaume Canet), who's nice enough that Richard can't hate him. With a prize like her, we're not sure we'd be so nice.

Richard's other neighbor is the lunatic Daffy (Boyle stalwart Robert Carlyle), who shares a major spliff with Richard. Daffy also shares a major secret: the location of the Beach, a fabled tropical paradise. Everyone thinks the Beach is an urban legend, because it sounds so amazing: perfect lagoon, protected from civilization, all you do is catch food, hang out and smoke the abundant weed that grows on the island. Kinda like IGN, but with sand.

The next morning Richard finds a map to the beach tacked to his door. He also finds Daffy has painted his room red with arterial squirts from his slashed wrists. Richard, being the sympathetic soul he is, beelines for Francoise. Lusty wheels spinning, he asks her (and Etienne, of course) if they want to find the Beach. They say yes, and the movie has a plot.

After a series of mini adventures, the trio reaches the Beach. Unfortunately, here the plot proceeds to screech to a halt. It's hard to make paradise exciting, even for Danny Boyle. Sometimes it feels like we're watching a Club Med commercial (at least it could have been a Hedonism II ad). What happens here has that logical-but-boring sense to it. You get the feeling that this part is just the half-time show before we get back to the real game. At least they could have given us the Budweiser lizards.

When we do get back to the story, and the nasty stuff begins, Richard's life gets interesting again. The film's question is how can Richard, a guy who's grown up in modern "civilized" society, can survive in paradise? Can he? Richard's been raised/ inundated/programmed with technology and consumerism from videogames to movies. What happens when you take all that away, and replace it with nature? Hint: one of the items the Beach-goers send for on a regular basis is batteries for their Game Boys.

Thankfully, Leo is moving back into real acting with his Richard. It's not Gilbert Grape, but few things are. Leo does a good job of playing the searcher. He's not motivated by anything more than base human emotions: get the girl, show people how cool you are, don't back down from a challenge. Not the things you want in a hero, but in Danny Boyle films you don't get heroes, you get real people.

Richard is not stupid, though, so as things progress he realizes how his actions have caused problems for the Beach community, and he takes some pretty vicious steps to rectify the situation. This is where Leo, Danny and the script go all over the board, from near-sociopathic behavior to self-knowledge to a parody of videogames. It's hit and miss moment by moment. Sometimes Leo is pulling off some amazing acting, and sometimes you think they've stuck in a Leo pod person who just escaped bad Iowa community theater.

The best thing about this third act is that it brings Leo back into the acting fold. His heart throb audience is going to hate him for what his character does. Unfortunately, in America an actor is his character, no more, no less. And Leo's character gets his hands dirty (as you'd expect in a Danny Boyle flick). In fact he gets those hands bloody red. And he doesn't even bother to cry, "Out damned spot!"

Boyle's direction is always good, and sometimes amazing. Danny gives every actor a moment to shine, even the minor players. And with cinematographer Darius Khondji (Seven, Alien: Resurrection), the picture looks beautiful and menacing, as appropriate. Khondji's skill is that his shots serve the film. So the opening Thailand street scene gives you the psychedelic rush of a foreign city. There's a human videogame sequence (allegedly Leo's idea) that you'll love or hate, but won't forget -- it's the bastard love child from a mind meld between Danny Boyle and Terry Gilliam. The funky night sky photography scene is a clever courting scene between Richard and Francoise, with the pay-off in a lagoon of phosphorescent plankton. And yes, there's some nudity required.

The actors are all fine. Carlyle gives us a whacked, sometimes unintelligible Daffy, with just a hint of Begbie. At one point in the rambling conversation Richard asks him, "No offense and all, but you're @#$%ed in the head, right?" Lovely Virginie provides the sultry sexuality, with a bit of brains. Canet plays the third-wheel boyfriend well. Tilda Swinton does her patented cool detached thing as Sal, leader of the Beach. The scenes between Sal and Richard are dull for most of the film, but right near the end they crank it up for an intense moment when sparks fly -- and not in a good way, thank God.

More often than not, The Beach is very good. When it falters, you feel a bit betrayed. But then you realize that Danny Boyle and company are going for more meaning in one picture than Hollywood thinks about in an entire year, and you realize that a flawed film that tries is better than a successful film that doesn't.

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