Directed by: Mark Mylod
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Hong Chau
Rated R, 107 minutes
“The astounding thing about almost all the quackeries, fads, and movements of the past hundred years in America,” the critic and historian Gilbert Seldes wrote in his 1928 book “The Stammering Century,” “is that they were first accepted by superior people, by men and women of education, intelligence, breeding, wealth, and experience.” It is a delusional upper class, Seldes argued, that has historically buoyed charlatans to power—not, as some might be tempted to believe, the ignorance of the masses. Seldes may have been writing about the 19th century, but his biting diagnosis remains provocative a century later.
In “The Menu,” the kind of pseudo-intellectual posturing that Seldes criticized is exposed for all its horrifying absurdity, excoriating the cult of personality that forms around the wealthiest and most powerful members of society. Here we meet the self-serious Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”), whose restaurant is a 12-seat, $1,200-a-head culinary experience on a private island. “Do not eat,” he advises before the first course, “taste.” The guests regard him with shameless, fame-drunk reverence.
The dinner that follows, and all of the grim turns it takes as the chef exacts his twisted revenge upon the assembled diners, is an extended act of rebellion against a callous upper class that has forfeited its right to mercy. One diner, an influential food critic responsible for the closing of many restaurants, complains of a broken emulsion; the cooks proceed to serve her bowl after bowl of it, to her increasing discomfort. Another guest, the studious but untalented foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult, “Mad Max: Fury Road”), is invited into the kitchen to cook a dish of his own, for which he receives a helping of Chef Slowik’s brutal criticism. Things only continue downhill. One man, after attempting to leave the restaurant mid-meal, has his finger chopped off as punishment.
Tyler’s date, the impassive Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy, “Emma”), is the only person seemingly immune to the chef’s high-minded temper tantrum. The adversarial tension that grows between Margot and Chef Slowik, and subsequently between her and the head waitress, Elsa (Hong Chau, “Downsizing”), proves the movie’s most compelling arc. Although we only get sparse details of Margot’s backstory, what little we learn reveals a weary worldview, an acknowledgment of how the upper class takes and takes but shows so little appreciation for what it has taken. Unfolding in scenes of peculiar dialogue and in simmering performances from the excellent cast, these cultural criticisms give “The Menu” what weight it has.
Yet despite the presence of these fine actors, despite the confident effort from director Mark Mylod (“Succession”), “The Menu” is unsatisfying both as a story and as satire. Like the overly precious meal it depicts—one course is a bread plate without any bread—there is no nourishment to be found here, only shocks, only theater for the sake of theater. “You will eat less than you desire and more than you deserve,” Elsa whispers into one diner’s ear with seething contempt. If “The Menu” is intended as a polemic against bourgeois self-satisfaction, then it exhibits that same self-satisfaction. If the film is a warning against narcissists that pretend at wisdom while demonstrating their foolishness, then it harbors the same pretenses. Consider the many sous chefs and line cooks in the background, silent and nameless souls sacrificed for Chef Slowik’s fit of megalomania; yet amid the gruesome chaos, he describes his methods as “egoless.”
Of course, this irony is the whole point. It’s hard to fault “The Menu,” anyway, for embodying the same frustrating qualities it satirizes. What better proof is there that such qualities are deserving of our contempt? But where the film fails is in its total indifference to its own theme; it never convinces us that we should care. Instead, it lays out its conclusions from the start as inevitabilities, proceeding toward its harrowing conclusion with suspense but no surprise. And to our never-quite-suspended disbelief, the doomed dinner guests accept their fates with such lackadaisical protest that even Chef Slowik remarks that they could have shown more resistance. His vitriol for these credulous clout-chasers might make sense on paper, but his menu lacks substance in execution. “Taste,” he commands the diners, but the movie savors little, throwing out a litany of philosophical enigmas to distract us from its straw man arguments and stereotypes. We shouldn’t take the bait.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 12/2/22.