Delayed Review: The Menu
A film about fine dining and power dynamics that made me crave a cheeseburger
Mark Mylod’s fourth film (and first in eleven years), The Menu is a film about ego, arrogance and avarice, art and criticism, and class warfare. The movie focuses on a sex worker (Anya Taylor-Joy as Margot) caught up in the maniacal vengeance plot of a disillusioned master chef (Ralph Fiennes as Julian Slowik). A former fry cook whose life in exotic concept-based fine dining has alienated him from his labor decides to invite some of his most unlikeable wealthy guests to learn how they’ve wronged him and reflect on their own wrongdoings to one another before a gruesome death. It’s a black comedy/horror-satire set in a slightly elevated reality where characters evoking social and cinematic archetypes stand in to exemplify what’s wrong with contemporary American relationships with food consumption, food service, and labor broadly.
Part of the theme of arrogance and entitlement theme is illustrated through the white collar criminal finance bros (Arturo Castro, Rob Yang, and Mark St. Cyr) who work for the chef’s investing partner, who reaps financial benefit without sweat from his brow, and the rich couple (Reed Birney and Judith Light) whose dead daughter and dead marriage connect them to our protagonist. Ego is illustrated by the food reviewer (Janet McTeer) and her editor (Paul Adelstein) on the one hand – so quick to call things gauche and so ready to dismiss what’s occurring around them – and the obsessive self-important foodie (Nicholas Hoult as Tyler) on the other. The egoists are the most interesting because Tyler the foodie, who we’re introduced to first, could serve as a stand-in for the self-assured members of fandom across media who burst with disdain for people who enjoy the things they enjoy in ways they do not enjoy it. Of course, he’s also the worshipful sycophant type ever present on the internet without being the kind to lash out explosively at strangers about the direction of the artist’s work. The critic, on the other hand, might remind audiences of similar critics in Ratatouille or Jon Favreau’s Chef. Just as Slowik owes some of his career elevation to her anointment, he disdains that her condemnations have put so many kitchen laborers out of work.
Part of what’s interesting here is the critique of the subjective, even allegedly fickle nature of criticism and the arbitrary power of critics. There’s little reason for the film to consider what it’s like for a critic to establish themselves as an expert or respected voice in their field – that’s hardly the work the movie is attempting to do. Yet, while the film isn’t necessarily a condemnation of the field, it reminds me of Ratatouille because it so clearly has a bone to pick with criticism as an art or craft in contrast and juxtaposition with the arts and crafts of whole-cloth creation. I increasingly wonder what review a writer read of their own work or of a work that they enjoyed that convinced them that critique is superfluous or harmful.
Structurally, the film can feel a bit disjointed at times, but a lot of that can get papered over because it’s the execution of the plans of a raving mad man. Moreover, the cult of personality the chef has cultivated among his employees (led by Hong Chau as the maître d’, Elsa) to ensure the success of his plan is its own critique of the cult of celebrity and the arbitrary nature of authority. One of the weaker executions in the film is how Slowik punishes himself for his own folly, the moral lapse and abuse of power of sexually pursuing one of his subordinates (Christina Brucato as sous-chef Katherine Keller). She stabs him in the leg (I thought she’d stab between them) and then his security team chases the male guests through the woods, but they get escorted back rather than beaten.
The resolution – our protagonist’s crafted escape from the villain’s game – may stretch believability a bit but it’s also in line with the film’s commentary on the arbitrary power of despots. I’m less forgiving of the fact that the antagonist invites the dinner guests to contemplate why they didn’t work harder to escape together. While it plays into that same theme by demonstrating the quasi-hypnotic effect of his command of a room, it also (1) ignores that the kitchen staff have all the knives and a broad-shouldered security staff and (2) sounds like the writers (Seth Reiss and Will Tracy) doing due diligence to preemptively undercut a criticism of the plot.
Overall, it’s a successfully entertaining film that comes an inch too close to a lecture and has a slight head-scratcher of an ending. I consider its societal commentary a success because it made me think about my time in food service and whether I show sufficient empathy to those who serve, as well as to what extent my culinary skills have deteriorated as more of my time has gone toward writing. It also caused me to consider whether it’s past experience or general fascination with the field that draws filmmakers to make movies about disenchanted chefs, as well as the discord between the recurring motif of a burnout artist and Anthony Bourdain’s declaration in Kitchen Confidential that he wanted craftsmen in his kitchen, rather than ‘artistes.’ Certainly, the fear of our passions being used against us to extract value from us while sucking the love out of our hobbies and professions is a common concern. And there are less fun ways to think about that than watching The Menu.