Awards season has finally ended, and most people treat this as an opportunity to finally move on to next year’s slate of films. However, before we look ahead, I want to look back and celebrate one film from last year that didn’t get the love it deserved and sadly walked away with zero Oscar wins: “Bugonia.”
“Bugonia” is the third film in three years from renowned director Yorgos Lanthimos, and his rapid pace might be the reason for its somewhat muted response; people got their Lanthimos kick with “Poor Things,” had their dessert with “Acts of Kindness” and were then simply too stuffed for “Bugonia.” However, I think this is a shame, as “Bugonia” is a refined evolution of Lanthimos’ singular style. In “Bugonia,” his direction is mature yet still displays his trademark quirkiness and discombobulation. Off-kilter shots and weird lenses abound, but they never feel gratuitous. The eerie direction and gorgeous VistaVision cinematography are all in service of a brilliant script from Will Tracy that is urgent, empathetic and profound.
“Bugonia” is about two conspiracy theorists, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his intellectually disabled cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), who kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the CEO of the pharmaceutical conglomerate Auxolith, because they believe she is an alien destroying Earth. It’s a simple premise, but the film explores it as a symptom of the larger social crisis we face, arriving at the most precise diagnosis I’ve seen in any recent movie or show. The film accurately posits that these two men have been pushed to the brink by a society full of alienation and exploitation. The never-ending march of the technocratic paradigm, its narrow focus on output and gain, has eviscerated the world; technological and economic progress is not ordered towards humanity but towards itself, leading to the collapse of all other spheres of life. The film’s clever motif of bees and colony collapse disorder illustrates this crisis. Teddy says the elites want everyone to become like bees: “A dead colony. Broken. Atomized in a trillion directions with no way home again.”
Teddy is full of rage and desperate for some explanation behind the death spiral. Yes, he’s mad about the environmental destruction threatening his beekeeping hobby, but his rage is much more personal than that. Teddy’s mom, a victim of the opioid crisis, was promised a cure by Auxolith — the very kind of pharmaceutical company that created the crisis to begin with. Yet their cure only made her condition worse, and the only recompense he got was a meager payout and empty promises from Michelle that Auxolith would do better.
In his effort to make sense of such a cruel and broken world, Teddy cycled through the full gamut of ideologies before arriving at the conspiracy theory that Michelle and her alien race from the Andromeda Galaxy are destroying the planet. While this could have easily landed as a farce, it doesn’t because Plemons gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in a film — really. He plays Teddy with remarkable vulnerability, teetering between violent rage and heartbreaking despair, and it’s this vulnerability that keeps the character from becoming a caricature of a backward populist. Because of Plemons’ deeply felt performance, Teddy’s indignation toward the world is one that many Americans can relate to at this moment.
The current status quo has led to moral chaos, widening wealth inequality, environmental destruction, “enshittification” and increasing loneliness, all the while our leaders largely ignore these things and gloat about continued GDP growth. There is an undeniable disconnect between the interests of our leaders and the common good, and you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to acknowledge that. The standoff between Michelle and Teddy throughout the film is a microcosm for this tension. You have the paternalistic technocrats like Michelle on one end, insisting that the angry masses are delusional and have been worked up in a frenzy by online disinformation. As such, Stone’s performance as Michelle is bone-chilling. She perfectly captures the glib corporate talk and seething contempt that elites like Michelle have towards the Americans they’ve steamrolled. And then you have the raging populists like Teddy on the other end, convinced of their enlightenment and willing to engage in extreme violence. I don’t think the film is a full-throated endorsement of populism, but it shows that people’s disillusionment with the current order is valid, even if their reaction takes on unproductive and dangerous forms. This makes the film the most thoughtful entry in the recent (and slightly oversaturated) slew of class conflict films from Hollywood, offering a radically empathetic and unflinching treatment of populist rage while steering clear of a neat solution.
Despite the film’s impeccable direction, cinematography, performances, script and score, it left the Oscars empty-handed. In fact, Plemons wasn’t even nominated for best actor. In my opinion, his snub is one of the biggest Oscar injustices in recent history. He gave a better performance than everyone who was actually nominated and deserved recognition for bringing to life a character that powerfully captured the cycle of political despair and anger many Americans are caught in right now. And while Coogler’s script for “Sinners” is fantastic and a worthy enough winner of best original screenplay, I do wish the category went to standalone screenwriters like Tracy more often. Hollywood doesn’t appreciate them enough, and always giving the award to directors who write their own screenplays feels a little cheap. And does Ludwig Göransson really need a third Oscar? Ultimately, I think “Bugonia” was too challenging and uncomfortable a film for the academy to swallow. While people certainly had an appetite for political films this year – “One Battle After Another” did win best picture, after all – I think “Bugonia” was just too bleak with its assessment of America for some.
While this was a very strong year for film, with many formidable peers, I really do wish “Bugonia” had gotten more love and attention. You often hear complaints that Hollywood is “out of touch” and detached from “real” America: it’s Hollyweird, full of coastal navel-gazing! Yet “Bugonia” unflinchingly examines the brokenness at the heart of the country and extends genuine empathy to Americans who have succumbed to despair and extremism. So before you move on to this year’s slate, you should check out this brave, deeply incisive film that refuses to look away.
