Being Film #13 for Hooptober 2023
The first 10 minutes of Bones and All were excruciating, the anticipation based on the trailers and summary folding in with director Luca Guadagnino’s camera to create a sense of dead that had me pause the film at least three time before the inciting “incident” that kicks the film off. From there I was utterly hypnotized, fully invested in this terrifying, heartfelt broken story that uses horror and the canvas of America to paint an intimate portrait of youth, love, and the loss of innocence. Heavy stuff when you’re talking about cannibals, huh?
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Maren and her father have been moving for years, due to Maren’s penchant for indulging in human flesh. After the most recent incident he abandons Maren to seek out her own life, leaving only her birth certificate and the name of a mother she never knew. Soon Maren learns the truth about her condition by coming into contact with other Eaters: the old and trepidatious Sully who can smell another Eater from a mile away and keeps a rope of braided hair of those he’s consumed, and the young, wild Lee, who consumes Maren in a completely different way. Soon Maren and Lee are traveling the country, attempting to connect to family that hates and fears being them, and working out how to live with an all-consumer hunger to eat other people.
More observations than anything else here, as one thing I’m starting to realize is there are film you want to write about, and there are films you just want to hold inside you. I’ve sat with Bones and All for a few days, and honestly I’m hesitant to try and put words down. So maybe just a few disconnected pieces, enough to get a sense of what attracted me to the film. You’d think that would start with the performances of Taylor Russell, who I’d only seen in the Lost in Space reboot where she was great but limited in what she could do – here she is a fierce revelation, and her chemistry with Timothée Chalamet (whose name I will never not cut and paste) is fantastic, raw and tentative in equal measure. Chalamet for his part is just as great, his loose, easy charm slowly buckling as he falls for and eventually breaks down his walls for Maren.
They’re fantastic, and I could also spend hours on Guadagnino’s direction – my only previous experiences with his work being his reboot of Suspiria (which I really liked) and I Am Love (which I, uh, loved). But instead I want to talk about how utterly terrifying Mark Rylance is as Sully. And not just in the film’s climax; right from our introduction to the character Sully exudes a dark malevolence his soft spoken, stuttering and humbling demeanor cannot hide. Referring to himself in the third person, his collection of hair braids…all of it paints a very dangerous pictures that his slow drawl and careful steps only accentuate. His every scene embodies that anticipation and dread I had in the first few minutes of Bones and All, and it was all I could do not to pause and take a break.
Had I watched Bones and All last year (as my buddy Buke suggested, so cheers to you, sir) it would have sat near to the top of my favorite films of 2022. As it is, regardless of when it came out, it’s sitting near the top of any film I’ve seen this year.
Cinema Dual 
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