After Titanic's release a little over two years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio has almost totally dropped out of sight. Sure, he and his entourage still graced the pages of Seventeen on a monthly basis, but as for acting, Leo was taking a break. Clearly he wanted to distance himself a little from the teenybopper idol persona that was quickly leeching onto him, and his hiatus from the big screen definitely achieved that goal.
Through starring in a film by screenwriter John Hodge and director Danny Boyle, the creative team behind the film ode to Scottish drug culture, Trainspotting, Leo solidified his new serious guise. Leo's choice to return to acting by taking on the leading role in The Beach, a film that is part Lord of the Flies and part Apocalypse Now, worked to his advantage, putting his teen dream image to rest permanently.
With this veteran team of filmmakers at the helm of the film, Leo was in very qualified hands. In The Beach he was given ample opportunity to test his acting chops and let his ability, honed previously in serious films like The Basketball Diaries and This Boy's Life, shine through. His soul-searching character in this film will truly surprise those that are used to seeing him in roles designed to highlight his boyish good looks and charisma, as Titanic and Romeo and Juliet did.
At first The Beach seems to be standard Leo fare. When we are introduced to his character Richard, we cannot help but recognize the character. Leo has played this sort of rogue before, a young man in search of what life has to offer him, but we are still interested as we see him roam the streets of Bangkok, looking for a distraction from boredom. And as Richard finds a map that supposedly leads to a hidden island paradise believed to be a myth, we travel over what we think is the well-worn territory of the island romance film, led--much like Leo's romantic interest in the film, Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen), who he takes with him to the island--by little more than Leo's cute smile and sly wit.
But once Richard finds the island and becomes part of the utopian society he discovers there, the pace quickly shifts from your garden-variety tropical love story to an exploration of the human soul. Richard slowly sinks into melancholy, alienating himself from his girl and the rest of the group, once alone then changing into a primal creature ruled by bestial urges. Leo allows himself to really move beyond the introductory characterization of Richard in these scenes, past the superficial, shallow role he had been playing and delving deep into Richard's psyche.
Richard eventually realizes that his changing moods are directly related to a simple fact he has been hiding from himself: that the society on the island is no less a form of escapism than that of the drunken orgies on the mainland; it is merely less crowded. Like all examples in literature of heaven on earth, this paradise too is destined to fail, but once Richard sees this fact and decides to act on this knowledge by saving his former love, it is too late. The equilibrium has shifted, and he can only serve to expedite the end by interfering.
The Beach does admittedly retread several familiar stories ranging from Conrad's Heart of Darkness to the biblical account of the fall of Adam and Eve, but it does so with such energy that we scarcely notice. The lively and fast-paced visuals keep us moving so fast that we barely have time to catch a breath, let alone get a glimpse of what might be familiar to us.
Writer John Hodge's adept handling of the heady subject matter of our nature to progress toward chaos, funneled through Leonardo DiCaprio's ability to explore every facet of his character, allows director Danny Boyle to lead us at break-neck speeds on a wild ride through the human mind. A truly engrossing film, The Beach leaves behind the legacy of being the film that let us take Leonardo DiCaprio seriously for the first time since his Oscar nomination for What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
