OnScreen Review: "Bones And All"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
One of the things I love most about seeing a movie in the theater is that the best movies, the ones that you fall in love with or that have a profound impact on you, follow you out of the theater and stay with you, sometimes for hours and sometimes for days. It is often a wonderful experience. I discovered, though, that it's not always just the wonderful experiences. Rarely have a felt uneasy about a film following me home out of the theater. Luca Guadagnino’s latest, Bones and All, stayed with me, and, to the film’s credit, I wish it had not.
Taylor Russell’s Maren is abandoned by her father (Andre Holland) when he can no longer keep covering for her cannibalistic ways, something she has exhibited since she was a toddler. Having grown up without her mother and having to frequently move to cover her tracks, Maren decides to set out across the country from the Virginia/Maryland area to Minnesota in search of her mother. Along the way she crosses paths with other cannibals, including an old man named Sully (Mark Rylance), and Lee (Timothee Chalamet), with whom she starts up a romantic relationship.
Maren and the other eaters, as they call themselves, come across as something like mutant humans living amongst the greater, unsuspecting herd. When she first meets Sully, he says he could smell her from a distance, a sense that Maren eventually picks up to some degree as well. Their cannibalism is an animalistic urge that they all have, despite their best efforts to suppress it at times.
I’ve seen some of the best of the worst that cinema has to offer, more than my fair share of disturbing content and horrific imagery. Bones and All is far from the bloodiest or goriest of films that I have seen, though it is not without its moments of both as it is about cannibals living on the margins of society in 80s America. No, rather, what lingers about Bones and All is the atmosphere and mood that it created. A cameo by frequent Guadagnino collaborator Michael Stuhlbarg lays bare the sinister undertones of the film and how it is not a film that feels safe.
In terms of setting a specific horror tone but not being completely about the bloody nature of its central characters, it reminded me of Interview with a Vampire. It also evoked a similar feel to movies like Near Dark and Let the Right One In for me, but also The Badlands with its genre-bending road trip aspect as Maren and Lee journey through the Midwest. The camera captures some beautiful swaths of what is so often dismissed as fly-over country as the film zigzags through Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and Minnesota.
Cut through the tough subject matter, at its heart, Bones and All offers a glimpse, however extreme it may be, about two paths forward for Maren, represented by her relationships with Lee and Sully. On the one hand, Sully has lived a life of mostly isolation, living on the margins and eschewing companionship of any kind. For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, he opens himself up to someone and is ultimately rebuffed, not in a hurtful manner, but because of his disposition, it is impossible for him to not be hurt by it. Lee is maybe on a similar trajectory, and reluctant to open himself up to anyone, but his relationship with Maren helps him break down walls and think about the possibility of a different future for himself, one that is not completely closed off. Both men, along with how the pursuit of her mother plays out, present Maren with what her future options in life might ultimately be and which path she will choose for herself.
This was my first exposure to Taylor Russell, who has previously received critical acclaim for the 2019 film Waves. She does a fantastic job of portraying an 18-year-old who is unsure of who she is and who she is becoming and is suddenly thrust into having to make her own way in an uncertain world. The unanswered questions she has from not having a mother in her life resonate. Chalamet, while a talented and capable actor, perhaps would not have been my first choice for this role, but Guadagnino has said that this film likely does not get made without Chalamet’s involvement. Rylance gives the broadest performance as Sully, a character that is definitely out there.
Bones and All is a haunting film. It avoids the absolute goriest possibilities of what it could be, but definitely approaches that line of maybe being too much for some people to stomach. While the story meanders in parts, it nails the vibe it is going for, which is deeply unsettling and left me a little queasy. Bones and All digs deep to get under your skin and does not let go easily.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars