I've been wanting to check out Bugonia for a while now. While I'm not a big fan of Emma Stone nor Jesse Plemons, they are two actors that have somewhat disappeared a bit in recent years, and I have really been craving some new films which have original concepts to their stories without just featuring the same current handful of Hollywood A-Listers. The synopsis of Bugonia also caught my attention with it being about a CEO of a large company getting caught up in the chaos of the modern world's conspiracy theories, leading to two individuals assuming she's not actually human and instead an alien persistent on contributing to the world's decline and inevitable death. This synopsis generally just sounds a bit fun, something that could be accompanied with plenty of either dry or just dark humour. Portraying a little bit of a mockery of the current state of the world where so much of the political sphere is borderline insane. Without seeming like it steps too much into the world of actual politics; of which I'm sure everyone is just sick of at this point.
The world of Hollywood has been missing films like these for a while now. It appears as if the genre of comedy has just been a hard pass for studios. Where they're almost afraid of throwing any money at all at anything that could be considered actually funny and unique. Now, I wouldn't consider the attempts of franchises to be entries within the comedy world, not the stories featuring The Rock and Jack Black which have only exacerbated things for the comedy genre as audiences instantly reject the two out of fatigue of poor humour and oversaturation of supposed comedy faces. Emma Stone seems like a good fit for such a film, a woman that is known for her dry humour as well as her resting face of no emotion. With Plemons also being a good fit with a similar approach.
Bugonia jumped straight into it by showing two characters that were clearly not the smartest people. One convinced of a sinister plot from an alien, speaking on the malicious intent of the elites to control and ruin the Earth's population. That their problems are a result of this. The other a bit more on the dim side, clearly being pressured into the act of kidnapping. A bit delusional (more so that than the other). To which sometimes he speaks on the ethics of what they're doing, often questioning whether they're actually doing something good or if there's anything they can actually do. This structure shows the cult-ish mentality that can come with conspiracy theories, where those with good speaking skills are often the ones that talk others that are less intelligent or perhaps just easily pressured into joining and believing in certain ideologies. I quite liked this side of the story. It is quite accurate in that sense. What was more engaging is that the characters actually do have a reason for kidnapping this specific CEO: their mother part of a previous pharma trial of the company's, leading to complications which only made her health worsen.
What I found more interesting is the film's story which handles the various ways in which people become less and less human as a result of their actions. For the conspiracy theorists, they've grown attached to this idea that there are aliens causing the Earth's problems. They no longer see people responsible. For the CEO, she's a big pharma suit which has fallen so behind her ability to understand people below her within society that she too has grown dehumanised. Where the corporation and money have promoted this feeling of superiority. In a way portraying both sides as the actual aliens. Incapable of seeing humans around them anymore; the conspiracy theorist sees a foreign problem. The CEO inadvertently causes the Earth's destruction through corporate greed, removing the humanity from the situation. The film handles this by quite literally portraying the CEO as an alien. As if the conspiracy theorists are correct in their decisions.
I quite liked the film for this, it handles the themes really well, convincing us that the real threat really is just humans themselves as they become convoluted, lost and in search of an answer beyond their scope. Only for them to be the problem and solution the whole time. Plemons does a great job with being a convincing conspiracy theorist, a threatening individual that truly believes his ideology. On the other hand, the CEO performed by Emma Stone does the opposite. Trying to weasel her way out of things by pretending to be innocent. Much of this taking place within such a confined space adds to the tensions within the film, again removing that feeling of humanity and adding to the viciousness of brutality.
Puede que haya extraterrestres. Pero el arte va por otro lado, y tu análisis lo capta perfectamente. Lo fascinante de Bugonia parece ser precisamente ese giro: usar la literalidad de "la extraterrestre" como un camino satírico y despiadado de nuestra propia deshumanización.
Gracias por comentar esta cinta.
Thanks for checking it out!
It was a nice surprise of a film, precisely the sort of thing I've been wanting to watch lately. Different to the usual blockbuster title
Yeah, very slow but that's my kind of movie.
I liked it.
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I thought this was such an amazing film and I could never really tell what was real and what wasn't. When the explosion in the closet happened though, I predicted that it was in fact a teleporter but for a lot of people that was probably an unexpected result.
Some out there say that they thought it moved too slow but for me this film was at a perfect pace. One of the best of the year IMO.
Not once did I feel it was slow, just felt like a regular film to me. Even the runtime wasn't too long. I recently saw Train Dreams which was much slower but also incredibly beautiful.