The Menu movie review. While watching The Menu by Mark Mylod, I drew a similarity with the Triangle of Sadness by Ruben Östlund that we watched in the past weeks, especially the hamburger, which has become the symbol of mediocrity, as if it had been subjected to a laboratory process.
I felt that a war was being waged against foods dedicated to tasting rather than eating. We also see that it is presented to us on a plate. The anatomy of eating is so wide that we have witnessed all kinds of it on the big screen, and we have also experienced that eating the most is the tense pleasure equivalent to death.
Capitalism once again appears before us as a hot meal offering, blending in with films that have evolved into a genre of class-conscious horror and satire through Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy). In this sense, it would be good to take a look at Get Out. Someone at home was treating Chris, who accidentally fell into the environment, with a white sensibility that did not want him to be trampled under the wheels of wild capitalism.
This is what Chef Slovik (Ralph Fiennes) does here, despite all his snobbery and acting like a gourmet cult leader, he does his best to get Margot away from the environment! And it offers an alternative for him to watch the end in cold blood with his burger in his hands. Because Margot is the ordinary human representation behind all the inflated egos.
The film, which appears in the style of a black comedy, slices us into a food culture that we, as the audience, are unfamiliar with, juliennes it and throws it into a hot pan. We seem to be in a vicious circle in the restaurant, which has created its own habitat inside an island, where the meat is brought from the field to the table, even the meat is left to rest for a certain period of time, and it is designed like a theater play for high-class people to taste, and the participation of tasters is expected from time to time.
Our focus person here is, of course, Chief Slowik. A sergeant who commands an army of cooks, a snobby artist on the one hand, and a man who, with the pleasure of working in an open kitchen, claps his hands violently at the presentation of each dish, wrapping the threads of tension in the environment and making the footsteps of his revenge!
In fact, this is an eating and tasting area, but it is not a place that makes you feel the importance of eating. Tyler, a loyal tastemaker who is enraptured by the instructions of a chef who shouts not to eat, Lillian, an indispensable food critic, three rich but empty siblings ruined by money, and a disgraced movie star and her lover…
While Lillian is proud of the restaurants that were closed for writing bad reviews, Unlike Margot, she is after tasting because she is too caught up in the magic of each presentation. While a chain of questions about the distinction between eating and tasting continues in the hall, the chef and his team’s perception of the people in the hall as guinea pigs continues.
It’s time to destroy the perfect work of art, accompanied by punishment on the one hand and confession sessions on the other. But for the audience, who experienced the first blow when the sous chef shot himself, every step turns into a taste experience leading to death, there is only the expectation of how it will be! Of course, I would still like to point out that the movie lacks the background that would push Chief Slovik to do these things.
Afterwards, a woman who worked in the restaurant and was harassed by Slovik claimed that this idea was hers. Emphasizing that the restaurant was open even during the pandemic period, it was still an interesting and tense experience to watch the wholesale destruction of a small community that had lost their perception of reality or their sense of eating.
If we have to focus on the final gist of the movie, it actually ends with a funny ending compared to the whole, serious and tense atmosphere. The Menu makes fun of high-end cuisines and the sense of taste that people lose themselves in, and concludes with the proposition that the more you spoil or interfere with the food, the more you will starve!
The Menu (2022)
Directed by: Mark Mylod
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Ralph Fiennes, Hong Chau, John Leguizamo, Janet McTeer, Judith Light, Reed Birney, Rob Yang, Aimee Carrero, Paul Adelstein, Rebecca Koon
Screenplay by: Seth Reiss, Will Tracy
Production Design by: Ethan Tobman
Cinematography by: Peter Deming
Film Editing by: Christopher Tellefsen
Costume Design by: Amy Westcott
Set Decoration by: Gretchen Gattuso
Art Direction by: Lindsey Moran
MPAA Rating: R for strong/disturbing violent content, language throughout and some sexual references.
Distributed by: Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: November 18, 2022
Views: 338
