Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilisation.’
For many of us who observe culture, it is clear that the Western variety is at least crumbling around the edges, if not rotting at the core. And as citizens in such a civilisation, who inevitably imbibe its offerings, many are poisoned and defiled. Worst of all, numerous people relish in the tarnish, thinking it good.
The film industry is certainly one sector that has been corrupted. Movies are increasingly made to meet Woke agendas rather than to amuse. They often achieve this through overt and sententious sermons at the cost of plot or tempo, with no subtlety whatsoever, while truth is elided.
Nevertheless, a gem still makes it through the gauntlet of the stone-faced commissars. The 2022 film The Menu is such a nugget – a well-directed dark comedy with superb acting that offers laughs, gasps, food for thought, and perhaps most importantly, entertainment.
The setting of the film is straightforward. Twelve diners go to Hawthorne, an exclusive restaurant on a secluded private island. The restaurant is run by the celebrated chef Julian Slowik, played masterfully by Ralph Fiennes, who imbued in Slowik an intense yet vulnerable menace. The guests soon find themselves chewing on more than they thought they’d bitten off, with the degustatory interlude not at all what it seems…
As a satire, the setting of the story is a microcosm reflecting the broader world. Here, the arena of haute cuisine is a mirror to the overindulgent consumerism that threatens to subsume modern-day people in first-world societies, ensconced in comfort.
The patrons of Hawthorne are carefully selected as archetypes. There is a rich couple that indulge multiple times a year at Hawthorne, a restaurant that an average person would only dream of going once, and yet they remember none of the dishes. Also featured is a food critic who caused the closing of multiple businesses with her vicious pen. Then there three dodgy businessmen, representing the gormless nouveau riche; a washed-up actor who is both vain and insecure; and the main character, Margot, the only seemingly ‘normal’ person, brought there by her supercilious partner, Tyler, who is a young man obsessed with fine food. Finally we have Slowik, who knows all the esoteric terminologies, techniques, and theories behind each dish, but who can’t cook to save his life (literally).
In wealthy societies, where the grind for simple subsistence has more or less disappeared, the mind, freed from toil, can easily be lured towards frivolities. Obviously, haute cuisine is not without its artistry. But at some point, the deconstructive instinct popularised by Derrida and others, which has been applied to all aspects of art and culture, will inevitably reach ridiculousness.
A great example is a dish offered by Slowik, the breadless bread plate… In Slowik’s little speech before the dish, he noted that bread is the staple of ordinary people, but as none of his guests are ordinary, they do not get any bread, only the condiments. The food critic and the sycophantic Tyler immediately try to interpret this dish as high-minded satire or deconstruction, whereas Margot correctly sees it as the insult that it is meant to be.
When material goods are easily attained, many also become entitled. The divorce between daily lives and how the goods we consume are produced means that many living in cities are almost completely shielded from the harsh realities of the world. We might want the latest fashion, not knowing the slave labour behind the threads; we might desire an electric car, having no idea of the children in the Congo digging up metals that are needed for them to work; we yearn for fine, fresh food, but have never felt the caprice of nature, where a year’s worth of crops can be destroyed by a bad week of weather. For many, therefore, meaning is derived from the shallowest and cheapest layer, uprooted from the center of things. The mere ‘consumerism’ that people often spit out with disdain but yet eagerly lap up.
Slowik, who resents the ‘takers’, and who sees himself and his staff as ‘givers’, nevertheless participates in the dialogue of consumerism. His pain comes from the realisation that his raison d’être has stopped giving him joy. And he blames this on those who merely consume his offerings, without a notion of real appreciation, seeing in his exquisite dishes only status.
In Huxley’s Brave New World, the potential resentment towards the distinct and inexorable class system in that dystopian society is mollified by frivolous entertainment, drugs, and sex for the lower classes. A prescient observation, as today people are actively and voluntarily embracing such distractions as a substitute for meaning. However, some things that are being offered as aspirations are simply trash. It should be alarming an American survey found that 86 per cent of youths want to be, not scientists, astronauts, doctors, or firefighters, but social media influencers.
At the heart of the satire is ennui. The existentialist crisis that most people feel in their lives at some point; the painful struggle for meaning in our existence. As the poet Stephen Spender wrote: ‘We are, we have six feet and seventy years, to see the light, and then resign it for the grave.’
Many want meaning but fear the hard work that inevitably comes with the struggle, not seeing that the hard work is where the meaning resides. The allures of comfort, whether physical or psychological, are enough to drag many into a spiritual stupor. At such a time, one might be reminded of Huxley’s words:
‘But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.’
The film is what is missing in Hollywood, a relatively small budget movie with creative and intriguing ideas, well written, directed, and acted, and one that aims to entertain the audience without belabouring some lessons of cosmic justice. Encore!
