Shaun de Waal
MOVIE OFTHEWEEK
Inevitably, once Leonardo DiCaprio got involved, the making of The Beach became a major gossip-fest. Allegations flew about the film-makers’ ecological destruction of the beach where it was being filmed in Thailand; and Leo had allegedly hired an entire island nearby to house his current girlfriend.
The rumours that impinge more plausibly on the film itself have to do with – let’s be blunt – Leo and his torso. Director Danny Boyle and scriptwriter John Hodge had apparently thought of Ewan Macgregor, who made his name in their superb Shallow Grave and brilliant Trainspotting, to play the lead in The Beach. But when DiCaprio indicated an interest in the film, the Hollywood money-men made Boyle an offer he couldn’t refuse – to substantially enlarge the film’s budget.
So DiCaprio was signed. And, so the gossip goes, Leo was obliged – since he’d be spending much of the movie half- dressed – to get his body toned up. It wouldn’t do to let his adoring Titanic public see the flabby results of his playboy lifestyle. Oh, the responsibilities of a sex symbol!
True or not, these stories colour one’s perception of The Beach, possibly with good reason. It’s almost as though Boyle decided to reassure the audience early on that DiCaprio had managed to slim down and buff up sufficiently, as we get a stripped-to- the-waist shot of him within the movie’s first few minutes. Whew. Okay, we’ll watch it.
After that, viewing this tale of how a group of backpackers find an idyllically isolated tropical paradise, and how it all goes wrong, one has a strange sense of slippage as to what The Beach is actually about. Is it about how uncontained desire and the need for social policing will always compromise any human attempt at recreating Eden? Or is it about Leo’s (admittedly pretty) torso?
As it happens, the film is a fine adaptation of Alex Garland’s bestselling novel, though it simplifies the plot and adds more sex – in the book, there’s a pervasive feeling of unfulfilled longing. We also have less of a sense than in the novel of how his character’s flirtation with the romance of the Vietnam War creeps into psychosis.
It works, in general, though how it all turns out will surprise neither the many who read the novel nor those who know William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies, which is so often mentioned in connection with The Beach. This is expert storytelling and slickly inventive film- making, yet one comes away from the movie with a feeling of something missing.
PERHAPS IT’S THE LACK OF AN ACTOR WITH REAL DEPTH TO CARRY THE LEAD ROLE; ONE CAN’T HELP WONDERING HOW MUCH BETTER THE BEACH MIGHT HAVE BEEN WITH MACGREGOR AS THE PROTAGONIST. DICAPRIO IS OKAY, DESPITE THE FACT THAT HE CAN’T ENTIRELY OVERCOME THE LIABILITY OF HIS INHERENTLY SMUG LITTLE FACE. BUT HE SHOULD BE MORE THAN JUST OKAY. MAYBE THE TIME HE COULD HAVE SPENT EXPLORING THE NUANCES OF HIS CHARACTER WERE INSTEAD SPENT REFINING THE NUANCES OF HIS TORSO.