I just watched La Bête (The Beast) with Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, . It was a lot, but I liked it. Will take some time to digest.
In a future where AI controls everything, humans are reduced to appendages of machines and their emotions are a threat. Some humans want to be entrusted with more rewarding jobs but this requires that they undergo reprogramming to suppress all those feelings, purge their DNA – a procedure that takes them through experiences from past lives.
The film thus blends 1910, 1914 and 2044. It’s a horrific love story and it engulfed me, even though I wasn’t set on watching it and chose it purely by chance. It’s impossible to describe what it’s like watching it.
Here is director Betrand Bonello’s words in an interview by Isaac Feldberg:
Interviewer: ”You shot the 1910 section on 35mm, which gives it this lively and sensual glow, and the other sections on digital, which is colder—and further restricted by the square format you adopt in 2044. In the future you envision, there’s this unsettling absence: of warmth, of texture, of sound. What kinds of choices were you making in creating this artificial tomorrow?”
Bonello: ”It was the most difficult thing to imagine. In 1910, you recreate. 2014, you recreate. 2044 was for us to invent, so we decided to take the world as it is today and to begin taking things away. We took away cars, screens, advertisements, relationships with others… We emptied everything out. We emptied the sound and made it fake. There are no more things you can relate to. There are no more textures. There is nothing you know.”
Full interview: https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/until-its-too-late-bertrand-bonello-on-the-beast