Take Me to Your Leader

Yorgos Lanthimos is a weird dude that makes weird movies. I caught on to the director with his 2015 film, The Lobster, a movie about people living in a society where they have to find their soul mate or, at a specific age, they’re turned into animals. That movie, billed as a comedy of sorts, was just such a strange weird adventure. Part dystopian allegory, part romance, part comedy, the film certainly drew me in, but it also left me wondering just what the director was smoking. It’s such a strange, weird concept, and the film certainly played up its oddball, heightened world. It marked Lanthimos as someone I wanted to pay attention to whenever his name came up, which led me to Bugonia.

To be clear: Bugonia is also a really weird, strange movie. Just having Lanthimos’s name attached to it should make that clear enough on its own, but lest there be any doubt, yes, Bugonia is, to put it mildly, bugnuts weird. And yet, as with Lanthimos’s other works, it’s also strangely compelling. It’s the kind of film that sets you up with one story and then, at a certain point it rug pulls and goes in a completely different direction, one that you almost can’t expect unless, of course, you remember that it’s a Lanthimos film. Then everything makes sense.

Unfortunately because of all its twists and turns I can’t really discuss all the gory details of the movie. Bugonia is kind of a comedy, kind of a mystery, and very much another strange joint from Lanthimos. Part of the fun of watching the movie is trying to figure out what’s going on, and what even is the reality of the situation that you’re watching. But if you can get into its oddball beats, and find your footing with the tale it’s telling, then Bugonia crafts a fine adventure that sucks you in from minute one.

We’re introduced to Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis). These two have been preparing, getting themselves ready for a mission. Teddy, as we learn, has been studying aliens, the Andromedans, who he thinks have been the major force behind all of Earth’s current ills. Because of that, Teddy feels like he has to fight back, and he sets his sights on Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the CEO of a major pharmaceutical corporation, who Teddy thinks is an Andromedan.

Because of this, Teddy and Don surprise Michelle at her house and kidnap her. Dragging her to Teddy’s house out in the countryside, they chain Michelle up in the basement. There Teddy interrogates Michelle, asking her to tell them all about her evil plans for Earth. He wants to go up to their ship and negotiate with the Andromedan leadership to make the case for Earth and why the aliens should leave it alone. Michelle, though, swears up and down that she’s not an alien and that Teddy and Don have made a huge mistake. As the walls close in and the police start sniffing around Teddy, the kidnappers have to decide if they’re going to believe Michelle, or resort to even harsher means to get the confession they require.

The film derives most of its story momentum from a single, burning question: is Michelle an alien. Obviously from everything we know about her character it’s obvious that she’s not and that Teddy is absolutely insane. But this is a Lanthimos film so even when you think you know all the facts, and have everything down, the film will take a lot of strange twists and turns to get you to its conclusion. Bugonia had three twists within it, more than anything not made by M. Night Shyamalan, ensuring the audience is on their toes the whole time, never knowing what comes next.

Obviously this works to the film’s benefit but it also means that I really can’t get into story details. To explain anything not seen in the trailers for the film would spoil that back and forth across the twists, and it would ruin the experience for first time viewers. What I will say, though, is that even when you think you know what’s going on, Bugonia has a way of twisting details around again to recontextualize the whole story. Hell, one twist was so good that I actually thought the film had shifted gears entirely… only for another twist to come along and change things again.

While the film works well because of Lanthimos’s direction, the real credit belongs to the actors who absolutely sell the material for all its worth. Plemons does a fantastic job with Teddy, making him seem both insane yet, at the same time, just in control enough that you sometimes wonder if he might just be on to something. In most films he would be the bad guy, but because of the way Plemons handles the character, inserting just enough charisma into Teddy, you do start to feel for the guy despite him, clearly, being an insane kidnapper.

Meanwhile Emma Stone absolutely steals the show as Michelle. I would say she had the harder job of the two, having to make Michelle both be a kidnapping victim and yet have her appear just alien enough that you aren’t sure if she’s really the good guy or the bad guy. Casting the character as a CEO of a major corporation helps, as in this current era people distrust the billionaires. But it’s Stone who brings it all together, fully committing to the performance (and going so far as to shave her head for the role), bringing every element of the film together. You can see why people consider her one of the great actors of the modern era.

In fairness, Bugonia did have good bones to work off of. It’s a remake of a Korean film, Save the Green Planet!, and that movie’s writer / director, Jang Joon-hwan, was deeply involved in the plotting of Bugonia. The film feels like a collaboration between creators and actors, with everyone working together to make this strange film absolutely sing. It leads to a movie that, even two months after I watched it, I’m still thinking about it. Bugonia is that good, and that weird.

About the only thing I can say against the film is that it’s not going to be for everyone. It’s not a very straight forward movie, and its few moments of violence and gore might be off-putting for some audience members. But if you can come into the film with the right attitude, and know that you’re going to have a very strange, very odd time, then I think you might just gel with Bugonia. Certainly if you know Lanthimos’s work then you should know what to expect. Bugonia is an unusual movie, but then so is just about everything else Lanthimos has made. The director once again hits it out of the park with this strange little movie.