Quest-en-scène: Bugonia
By Griffin Bellias
I once knew someone that had strong conspiratorial tendencies—someone who chose not to believe that what is presented as fact is truly fact, who “disagreed with the radio,” and ignored the proverbial man. He always came to the conclusion that the man was lying and that there was something else beneath the surface trying to escape, that the new nebulous truth was about to break through the blood/brain barrier and pierce into the public consciousness, that he would soon come face to face with real, etched etch-a-sketched reality. He believed in chemtrails, global shadow government(s), vaccine hoaxes, flat/hollow/ice/conical/cubiform Earth theories, denials, acceptances, retellings of various historical events, Yakub, and the like. He never believed in aliens, though.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ newest film, Bugonia, is a remake of the 2003 South Korean cult film Save the Green Planet!. The film stars Jesse Plemons as the archetypal conspiracy nut-man, Teddy, who is convinced that local tech billionaire Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is an Andromedan alien responsible for the devastation of the world’s honeybee population.Teddy kidnaps Michelle and interrogates her with his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), hoping to snoop out the truth behind her apparent pesticide operations on Earth. After a series of tinfoil processions, more information is revealed about Teddy’s past that puts his line of reasoning under heavy fire. In a parallel to Teddy’s implementation of truth extraction and distress gesticulation prevention methods, Michelle tries to pit him against Don’s humanity. More characters are thrown into Teddy’s Alex-Jonesian world, like the bumbling local police officer, Casey, played by former Cumtown co-host Stavros Halkias.
As the plot progresses, and as Teddy’s internal wiring is left exposed and frayed, Jesse Plemons’ performance comes alive. Plemons glides Teddy’s nutjob antics along the waves of anxiety and paranoia generated by Michelle as his once cunning and composed character becomes bumbling, angry, scared, and psychoanalyzed. Emma Stone also does a stellar job of conveying her subdued Elon Musk/Elizabeth Holmes-esque insanity to the audience as she weaves through moments of despair and hopelessness. As the insanity boils over around him, Don remains the only one with a sense of humility or earnestness, though even he succumbs in the end.
The overwhelming anxiety that finally bubbles to the surface of Bugonia three-fourths of the way in never calms itself, not after a series of truly gruesome happenings, or even as the credits roll. This blanketing anxiety transformed our principal group of characters into sad rabid bees born from ox carcasses and extended its grasp through the screen and into the souls of my screening’s audience. For example, the couple that was loudly talking shut up as soon as Teddy failed to touch his meatballs while the yet-to-be-stockholmed group eats spaghetti in a chilling climax.
Aside from the infectious tension the cast brings and the plucking soundtrack that bolsters it, neither the cinematography nor the script are particularly interesting, and the mise en scène has nothing on the extensive set design of Poor Things. The ending, although not bad, is very predictable and maybe a bit played out.