AI is cinema’s favourite baddie at the moment, with movies big and small wondering where this new technological innovation will take humanity. The Beast, a very loose adaptation of a 1903 Henry James novella, doesn’t hold out much hope for us mere mortals.
It’s 2044, and Artificial Intelligence has taken over the world, relegating humans to menial jobs unless they agree to cleanse their DNA of all emotion. Hoping for advancement, Gabrielle (Lea Seydoux) undergoes the procedure, exploring the trauma of her past lives, only to find one man (George MacKay) playing a major part in all of them. Filmmaker Bertrand Bonello gives us three films in one – the sci-fi dystopia of the 2044 segments, a David Lynch-like picture of 2014 LA, and a sweeping romance set in 1910 France.
The latter is the most accessible, where the connection between the stars is felt most, but that’s perhaps a pitstop in a film that spends a lot of its time feeling detached. The big questions of destiny and what makes us human are examined with intelligence and precision, but never with the emotion that these subjects deserve.
Seydoux is intriguingly walled off as Gabrielle, a character confronting her emotions in order to kill them off. She is absorbing, connecting with MacKay who has a bit more to play with as a character whose motives become sinister over time. Unfortunately, the bleakness of the film overrides everything else.
The Beast sails bravely through different philosophies and timelines, but nothing comes together quite as cohesively as you would hope. There isn’t quite enough here to distinguish this from the raft of AI nightmare scenarios on our screens.