Bugonia

Emma Stone

Spoiler Alert...I enjoyed Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia, but I have always had an affinity for his work and can certainly understand those who are repelled by his misanthropy. Bugonia takes its premise from a Korean film that I have not seen entitled Save the Green Planet. Two small town Georgia cousins, Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis, kidnap a big tech CEO played by Emma Stone. They, or least Plemons character, is convinced that Stone is an alien from the Andromeda galaxy intent on supplanting the human race. Control and its abdication is one of the repeating themes in Lanthimos' work. Plemons is the dominant partner between the two cousins. We learn that his mother is in a coma and that the attendant stress has compelled him into a paranoid spiral. He wants Stone to bend to his will, but she remains obdurate. 

Delbis is to Plemons here as Lennie is to George in Of Mice and Men. This is the film's most glaring flaw. Every time the two talk of maybe finding a new home in another galaxy, I can't help but think of the dream of the rabbit farm in Steinbeck's book. Delbis' character is a few bricks short of a load and too good for this savage world. The contrast between the two cousins is over much in an already schematic movie. The warm tones of the cousins' rustic house is juxtaposed with with the cold contemporary feel of Stone's home and corporate headquarters. She drives a loaded Mercedes truck while Plemons navigates a ten speed. An elitist versus the common man, etc., etc. The contrast is a comic one though Bugonia is the blackest comedy one can imagine. ECT torture, a murder, a suicide, a beheading, and more, ultimately culminating in the extinction of the human race.

The finale is soundtracked by Marlene Dietrich's version of Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, an ironic capper akin to Kubrick's use of Vera Lynn's We'll Meet Again at the conclusion of Dr. Strangelove. Lanthimos has the same chilly remove and misanthropy as Kubrick. There are no warm close-ups in Bugonia. Most shots are at a remove. There are almost as many Easter eggs and threads to pull in Bugonia as in any Kubrick film and like Kubrick, Lanthimos is under appreciated for his work with actors. Stone and Plemons both do superb work in the film as does Stavros Halkias as a clueless cop. Lanthimos represents a humanism that can conceive of the extinction of humanity as a positive for the planet. As one character puts it, "this isn't Death of a Salesman." Bugonia is another of Lanthimos' portraits of man as a "sick ape".