REVIEW | This Place Rules & The Menu
Howdy gang!
Wanted to warm up back into writing, and nothing helps me more than writing about things I like. So I watched a couple movies, and now, I’m telling you about them.
This Place Rules is a documentary by Andrew Callaghan and the Channel 5 team that covers the under currents of subculture and rhetoric that lead up to the January 6th Capitol Riot.
Callaghan has become a prominent name in American discourse because of his ability to interview a huge range of personalities in eclectic places such as political rallies, music festivals and various subculture spaces. What separates Callaghan’s style of interviewing from professional news outlets and internet interviewers is his emphasis on radical listening and his access to what I would call highly niche spaces or super tense public events such as protests and rallies.
This Place Rules doesn’t focus on reducing the January 6th Capitol Riot into an easily understandable event, but instead complicates the various dominant narratives that try to polarize people, by talking to folk on the ground as they speak about their journeys into conspiracy rabbit holes, media echo chambers and selling t-shirts. Indeed, if there’s a target of the show then the target is the narratives used to charge Americans with fear and the individuals who stand to profit from such divisions.
It’s a must watch for anyone looking to reflect on 2020 and to think critically of media messaging and how we engage with the internet. Speaking for myself, as someone who has subconsciously blocked out large parts of the past couple years, it’s been a fun if not sobering ride back down memory lane.
Highly Recommend: 8/10
Huge Bummer About Andrew Callaghan’s behavior. Gotta respect women, man.
The Menu is a film that follows Margot (Anya Taylor Joy) as a service industry worker who accompanies Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and a group of high class clients to an exclusive island restaurant that serves only a dozen people a night. The restaurant is run by world renown Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) who has perfected his craft to such a degree that only a certain class of people can afford to appreciate his work. He immediately identifies Margot as an outsider and tells her she must choose to side with Slowik and his synchronous team of sous-chefs or the guests, “the eaters, the takers.”
The dishes served are all intellectual dialogues coyly delivered and conceptually insulting to the guests. It’s during the preparation of the dishes and the cynical monologues about art that I realize, oh this is sort of like Hannibal, an absolute power house of a show that ties dinner theatre with cannibalism. And I ask myself, oh, are people gonna gone get eaten? The answer to which is, close enough.
Like in Hannibal, I have a strong respect when the artistry of one craft becomes a metaphor for another, in this case, cooking as storytelling. Slowik describes chefs as artists who work directly with death and the raw materials of nature to create an experience that we consume. It’s at this point that we realize something sinister is simmering and that this whole night is a carefully constructed act of revenge against the people that Slowik sees as ruining his art.
I would call this film a love letter or trauma bond to the service industry. It is a wry satire that is tasty to consume. I’m always skeptical of what a big budget movie can say about oppression and class being part of such an expensive type of production. I loved eating it, but only a second viewing will convince me that it’s worth savoring.
Highly Recommend: 7/10
