You Can’t Handle the Truth: Film Review of Bugonia
★★★☆
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
The truth—as much as it’s ever discernible—is becoming more and more difficult to cull from the swarm of half-truths, misrepresentations, conspiracy theories and downright lies that have been flooding our media. Any semblance of objective truth has been maimed, disfigured, tortured, and buried. Traditional urban legends like Area 51, the Loch Ness monster, and Bigfoot have taken a backseat to QAnon and the more outrageous and virulent conspiracist communities working through the virtual ether of the internet.
In his film Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos, in his uniquely odd and darkly funny way, uses an absurdly insane premise to underline the lengths to which people will bastardize and manipulate the truth—and the degree to which believability is, well, believable.
At the beginning of the film, apiarist Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons), a beekeeper heavily steeped in conspiracy theories, is convinced that aliens, “Andromedans”, are plotting to destroy the Earth by killing off the honeybees. He convinces his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) to help him by kidnapping Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) the CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company. Teddy is convinced, through a series of obscure and never fully explained tests and procedures he’s gleaned from the Internet, that Fuller is an Andromedan.
Ms. Fuller is an almost absurdly self-possessed and arrogant high-powered executive who seems to have difficulties understanding the needs of her employees–not an unusual trait for someone in her position. When she first appears striding through corporate headquarters, Michelle is telling everyone that they no longer need to work after five (unless, she keeps adding, it’s really necessary for your job). Whether she is that clueless about the lives of her employees or that clueless about people in general, she is constantly hedging her own compassionate proclamations.
Teddy Gatz, on the other hand, has gone so far down the rabbit hole, he cannot see the forest for the trees. Nothing matters to him but his Andromedan theories and keeping his bees. Teddy looks the part. He has long greasy hair, is unkempt, lives in the decrepit family house, and is alone except for Cousin Don and his delusions. He has even administered chemical castration treatments for himself to prevent any romantic distractions to his work and has—unconscionably—coerced his autistic cousin Don to do the same. Don is socially inept and has no one else besides Teddy, who has roped him into his “work”.
Teddy has been collecting data on the Andromedans for years and after concluding that Michelle is an alien, he and Don—in a hilarious sort of Keystone Cops sequence—inject her with a sedative and abduct her. Michelle wakes in Teddy’s basement, chained to a bed. Her head has been shaved and she is covered with antihistamine cream to prevent her from communicating with the Andromedan mothership, which Teddy believes will enter the solar system undetected during the lunar eclipse.
It is funny and sort of sadly endearing that Teddy and Don first appear before Michelle in suit and ties, dressed up as if to show their respect. Teddy tells Michelle she has four days to negotiate a meeting with the emperor on the mothership. She argues that he is wrong, that she is human, and tries to negotiate a release through intimidation, manipulations, and then bargaining. She is relentless—and fearless—in her attempts to convince Teddy to release her.
After Teddy tortures Michelle with electro-shock treatments in an attempt to get her to talk and discovers her high pain threshold, he figures she must be alien royalty, and—absurdly—takes her upstairs for a “royal” dinner, a very civil and polite affair, at least at the beginning.
The dinner is just one example of a meeting between these two mindsets, the rational, reasoned, and mainstream view of the world, and the delusional fantasies of the conspiracy theorist. Each is convinced their world view is the correct one, and refuses to recognize the other, and so the discussion inevitably deteriorates into insults, personal antagonism, and violence, a reflection of the state of our national discourse.
From this point, in the true Lanthimos tradition, the narrative takes a series of increasingly odd turns, but I will not divulge any more here. Suffice it to say that one needs to expect the unexpected.
The previous works of Lanthimos border and/or dwell in the absurd while lampooning social conventions with the darkest sort of satire. The Lobster, Poor Things, and The Favourite delve into issues of ambition, feminism, and social norms using incisive and scathing satire. While Bugonia follows this model, its focus is not the result of discourse about social conventions, but is about the discourse itself, of how minds meet or refuse to meet.
Teddy’s outlier beliefs, as compared and contrasted with Michelle’s rational but manipulative and sometimes cruel machinations, demonstrate not only an ideological conflict but a deeper more visceral division. The fact that neither side can be trusted—Michelle will do or say anything to get out of her predicament while Teddy seems too nuts to be trusted—emphasizes the chasm stretching between the two sides, a gap that can never be crossed. It seems as if screenwriter Will Tracy (Succession, The Regime, and The Menu) has chosen to showcase these particular types of discourse to emphasize the breadth and depth of that gap.
The beautiful beginning sequences of the film, shot in sumptuous 35mm, shows close-ups of bees visiting flowers, collecting nectar, and returning to the hive. Fittingly (but somewhat obtusely), the title of the film Bugonia refers to the medieval belief that bees arose from the flesh of dead cows (not a conspiracy theory, but a belief debunked by science). There is no such thing as spontaneous generation, but Teddy’s belief that the bees are being deliberately killed off by the Andromedans through colony collapse disorder is along the logical lines as bugonia. However, Teddy’s extension of that belief, that human communities are being destroyed and that people are losing all direction because of the aliens—sort of a human colony collapse—does sort of makes sense.
Teddy, like the worker bees, has lost his hive. He is seeking meaning and ironically, by kidnapping Michelle, he has found his queen. One of the pleasures of Bugonia is peeling away these levels of irony, revealing the suffering and absurdity at the core of the human condition.
Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone deliver superlative performances. Plemons’ earnest—naïve—determination to save the world is underpinned by sense of lingering sadness, highlighted by his friendship with the hapless—and helpless—Don. He is an ideologue but not a revolutionary. Aidan Delbis’s Don is the perfect foil for Jesse. His performance is both touching and, in a sad sort of way, funny.
Emma Stone gives a bravura performance as the determined, ruthless, and unrelenting Michelle. She is somehow able to maintain a sense of empathy, even victimhood, while manipulating every situation presented to her. She is brilliant in this role. Both actors have worked with Lanthimos before, and it is easy to see the creative rapport within the group.
Bugonia is not an easy film to watch. No Yorgos Lanthimos film is, but they are incisive, funny, mysterious, and sometimes inscrutable excursions into the human condition. Considering the divisive nature of our current discourse, rhetoric, and ideologies, it should be required viewing.