It is a masterpiece of science fiction and also one of the best films of the year.

It is one of those gems that, because of its rare beauty and particularity, does not go unnoticed. It is a luxurious cinematic work and an extraordinary analysis of the threats posed by artificial intelligence.

At first I struggled to understand what kind of films could be qualified with the term "red flag" or be considered a warning to viewers or to humanity, apart from films that deal with serial killers or psychopaths such as The Lovely Bones (2009), (known as "From My Heaven" in Romantic America) or paedophiles such as Humbert Humbert in Lolita (1997). Sweating for a while and thinking about the misunderstood red flags, I managed to come to the conclusion that other themes are also warnings, such as: apocalyptic or dystopian futures, from which cinema has drawn a lot of inspiration and nourishment, and more contemporary themes such as artificial intelligence (which I usually call artificial imbecility and which I try to use as little as possible), and that if we travel to the near future, AI advances will surely be incredibly efficient and terrifying, as their progress is very accelerated.

Now we are going to enter a labyrinth, as fascinating as it is exhausting* called 'La Bête' (the beast). Directed by French director Bertrand Bonello and inspired by the book 'The Beast in the Jungle' by Henry James, at the beginning the main character fears that something devastating, abominable and foul will happen to her and her loved ones. It is like a foreshadowing of how shattering the film itself is. The story is about what happens to our protagonists played by Léa Seydoux (Crimes of the Future) and George MacKay (Captain Fantastic) in three eras 1910, 2014 and 2044 that we could reclassify as past, present and future, (A warm and glamorous past, a seemingly casual and relaxed present and a lonely, cold and grey future) which create a romantic bond, inhibited or contained by fear but so great that it transcends beyond their lives, all framed in these different environments that affect their destiny in one way or another. While we as spectators try to decode what is happening and that latent intrigue to know who, who or what is stalking them.

AI and dolls

One of the axial themes in the film is identity and how it can be affected in a future where artificial intelligence can intervene your DNA and erase your fears or traumas to make you a more efficient person in the workplace.

Going to an AI to have your traumas and bad memories erased is like going to a priest to confess your sins. Because they are a burden that prevents you from being better for society, because you have to be better for society, rather than for yourself.

Perhaps the most terrifying thing about the issue of artificial intelligences is that as time goes by, there will be fewer and fewer things that differentiate us. It is as if there is an implicit competition between AIs and humans, machines trying more and more to be like humans and humans trying more and more to be as efficient and mechanical as an artificial intelligence, all of this happening automatically, like programming, yes; unconsciously, without us realising it.

We tend to focus on the idea that artificial intelligence can become a threat on its own as an isolated issue, but if we delve a little deeper, we discover that it is a consequence of the very social system in which we live, an imperfect system created by ourselves. The theme is approached in a very particular way as never before, making an analogy between those projections we make in dolls, toys, animals or things that we give voice, personality, ideas and even powers, artificial intelligence and androids being then the evolution of the dolls we played with when we were children. As a kind of physical manifestation of our ideas of our dreams and their evolution through time.

‘Maybe someone reading this, as a youngster, rehearsed how it felt to kiss another person by kissing a doll’.

I know they are very, very different films, but at the same time, they also have many things in common, not only the science fiction genre and machines, but also the way in which they seek to instrumentalise the human being to make him a working machine, I am talking about 'Robocop' (1987), where we can see how the system, represented by the corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) seeks to totally dehumanise the officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), they want to strip him of any feeling, emotion or human sensitivity. And well, if we talk about devastating or destroying, in one case it happens more physically and in the other more on an emotional level.

Another curious symbolism of the dolls going from porcelain to being made of celluloid, in a clear reference to the film industry, the factory is like the cinema, which has been responsible over time for producing hundreds of dolls, it is also a factory of dolls; Robocop himself, Alien, all the Star Wars figures, Terminator, Chucky, strange creatures, superheroes, Transformers, etc. are some examples. The fact that it is flammable also sends us another message which is the ephemerality of the cinematographic record AND of any other record such as books and there we could also remember Fahrenheit 451 (1966), our memories our records can be easily erased by fire or any other element and even more so in the present that physical memories tend to disappear and more and more are digital. But it is as if we were going back to the past, the record may disappear but culture has survived from voice to voice, from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation and ancient stories have also survived in that way, but if artificial intelligence intervenes in our consciousness and in our DNA those memories are in even more danger than in Fahrenheit 451.

The film is also about the struggle of the human against the system regardless of the time or the industrial or technological progress. The enemy changes its face. Laws, social canons; they become 'social networks' and the ironic social disconnection it causes and finally artificial intelligence modifying our memories and making us overcome our fears in an artificial way.

Madame Butterfly

Despite being a seemingly calculated, coldly and meticulously designed, deterministic and almost algorithmic film, it is also deeply romantic in its essence. In Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, Cio-Cio San commits suicide because she cannot bear the truth and the abandonment of her husband, Pinkerton. This work is not in vain referenced in the film because it speaks of the tragedy of pain and the fear of being involved in a similar situation where we cannot realise our deepest desires.

This duality of the film is represented by its protagonists, Gabrielle Monie (Lêa Seadoux) and Louis Lewasnky (George Mackay), the male and the female, the algorithmic and the random, the mystical and the scientific, the AI and the human. One hopeful thing for us as viewers is that as we watch the film we discover that in the future the mystical and the scientific are intertwined, they are not at odds, they are reconciling with each other, science accepting what it previously denied, such as reincarnation.

Surveillance, freedom and contained desires

The format of the image in relation to the width of the screen narrows as epoca progresses, it seems to indicate how the freedom for the characters is closing down as time goes on.

When you are in a public place and you are careful of formalities, at a party and you feel that you are being watched, that you cannot be free to act in any way, there really is no free will, because you are thinking of the consequences of what people will say, of those inquisitive looks. Or you are at home and your neighbours are watching who comes in and who goes out of your house or if your lights are on, of course, with the good intention of taking care of you.

Gabriel says marriage gave him freedom, perhaps a benefit for going with the flow. A more flexible prison; going from a cell and sporadic releases to probation.
If you don't fall in line you reduce your chances, i.e. conform to social norms or canons to do well.
Walk the same path that others walk, that path that is already open, not your own. It is also not advisable to draw too much attention to yourself, because your behaviour may be reprehensible to others. In the end you have to hide your tastes, as you really are.
The system takes away our right to think and our individuality.

Some symbolism

The film is full of details and symbolism, here are some of them.

Reincarnation: Science has not proved anything. It is only discovering what Buddhism has always preached.

The discotheques; in the informal 2014 and in that cold and near 2044 are a trip to the past as if representing the nostalgia for other times where we were more natural and spontaneous.

The earthquake and the fire are manifestations of what is to come, representations of the emotional state of the protagonists, one her and the other him, I think it defines the film very well because the film is an earthquake for your mind, for your convictions, for your way of understanding not only the outside world but also your own inner self.

She is fire and he is water.

In the past to dive into the water to try to escape from the fire, in the present to fall into a pool, perhaps trying to escape from a firearm. It is as if the water is our symbol of protection without knowing if really facing the fire will hurt us or not, we run to the water without knowing that maybe it is more dangerous than the fire itself or maybe there is no way out and both are inevitably incompatible and this is the tragedy. We can also interpret this symbolism with the elements telling us about containing our emotions, the emotions would be the fire and the water would be the one to extinguish them.

The Beast is one of those films that many critics already put a big warning sign on its cover, that warning that says: "this film is not for everyone!", "this film is not for all audiences!"... many will not understand it, others will not be able to digest it, some even leave the film in the middle because they can't understand it or endure all the ruminations that it produces in you.

-The film lasts more than two hours and for me the sensation was that it was too short, so much so that I was left wanting to see more, I think I even created a second part, with other lives, in my head).

You have to go a little crazy to understand and enjoy it. So if you didn't like it, don't worry, you are not diagnosed for the loony bin or a lobotomy.

It's not that it's a difficult film, it's that the film needs you, you have to complete it, there must be that interest on your part to immerse yourself with it or better still burn.

The recommendation would be to watch it with your humanity surrendering; like when you lie down and give yourself to deep sleep, with your desires and your unconscious fears so you can assimilate it and discover all its layers, realistic, dreamlike and mystical, because if you watch it as you are used to watch other things or other types of films only as an AI, as an inert spectator inventorying data, forget it! you won't like it.

But don't worry, congratulations! You belong to 93% of the population. Your DNA has been purged. [Robotic voice]

Conclusion

I'm sure that when you watch it you will find hundreds of conclusions and interpretations by looking into your own experiences and motivations. Here is one of mine:

-The parallelism that is created between the clairvoyant witch and artificial intelligence, the witch trying to change the future or influence your future decisions and artificial intelligence trying to modify your DNA to change what has already happened in the past. We can almost conclude that not knowing what is going to happen in the future, nor being able to erase what has already happened in the past, this lack of calculated control is what allows us to feel pain for what has happened or hope to resolve something that could not be concluded and the fear of not knowing what is going to happen are some of the aspects that allow us to feel that we are alive and this is what makes us human.

A funny moment is when Gabriel meets the witch and she tells him: -I hope you don't come to ask me when Maduro is going to fall because I'm sick of answering that question. [Witch joke reinterpreted]

It is a fascinating story full of layers and symbolism with characters that are gripping with scenes full of hypnotic beauty.