Have you ever gotten to the end of a film and then – bam! The film hits you with a new direction or insight that completely changes the way you viewed the movie? Bugonia does this at the end of the film (spoiler!) when we realize that our CEO (Emma Stone) is actually an Andromedan alien and Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) was right all along. In spite of the critical claim, and the numerous Oscar nominations, I must say that I despised the film. And it was mostly because of that ending.
Now, there is something very appealing about subversion. The director builds up our expectations in a certain direction. Then the final reveal comes and we wonder how we missed it. We, the audience, are pushed to reflect on ourselves and ask: how did I miss the clues along the way? What’s amazing about this technique is that it pushes us to reexamine all those “bread crumbs” that we missed along the way. All those details that, had you paid more attention, would have led you down another path.
Bugonia however does not do that at all. Throughout the film, the viewer is given data to show that Teddy Gatz is in fact traumatized and out of touch with reality. We see scenes of Teddy with his childhood abuser, with his paranoid mom and of her declining health and we think, “this is a wounded soul.”
Michelle Fuller plays the alpha type CEO who is aggressive, uncaring, and rich. In one scene, Michelle says to Teddy as she is choking him with a tie, “You can’t beat me because you are a loser and I’m a winner and that’s —— life.” Such a line is bound to arouse the ill will of the audience. We think we are watching a movie about a troubled poverty stricken individual getting revenge on his privileged boss.
However, nothing comes of any of these details. All these story arcs and points of character development lead to nothing. Teddy was right all along and Michelle Fuller is actually an alien. Bugonia, I would argue, subverts our expectations in a way that moves against good story telling. It tells a story and it builds characters, and then at the end of the film takes it all away.
There is however a positive version of subversion. The Sixth Sense is a good example. We journey with a psychologist and a child. When the great reveal happens we can look back and say, “wow, it was there all along, but I missed it.” The film then “changes its colour” right before our eyes as we see everything in a new light. In this positive version of subversion, the clues were always there; we just missed them. This is good story telling.
I am told very often that film reflects life. Life itself seems to be one giant puzzle. We get pieces of it here and there, but it’s all pretty much a mystery. There will be many surprises when at the end of our lives the veil is pulled back and we see what it was all about. In that moment I imagine that we will look back and see all those clues along the way that we were missing. This experience of subversion, I’m sure, will be very surprising, but our faith tells us that it will be richly satisfying as well. “Were not our hearts burning within us?” say the two disciples after their encounter with the Lord. Jesus comes to us in our history and then subverts our expectations by pointing to something new.
Returning to Bugonia, one could watch the film and have the “deep thought” that perhaps my next door neighbour who is a conspiracy theorist has been right all along. Perhaps the world is actually being run by reptilian shape shifters. But, although anything is possible, not everything is probable. We still have a history, we still have insights along the way, and we still have a story that is moving to ever greater moments of truth and goodness. Bees don’t randomly come into existence from a dead carcass (meaning behind the myth Bugonia). There is a path, a history, a sense of development especially when we look back.
Bugonia may have won many awards, but in the end, it lacked substance. Its characters were card-board cut outs, meant to fool the audience to think in a certain way. Such a technique may subvert expectations, but it does so at the cost of telling a satisfying story.
-//- Image: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.