I have just watched Bones and All and I fell in love with this movie. I am very impressed by the range of Luca Guadagnino as a director. He has a gift for telling horrific stories in a gentle and beautiful way.
While watching the film I thought "This is a coming off age story!". Bones and All is a shocking film. I was disgusted and moved at the same time. But the gruesome subject matter is told with so much gentleness and beauty. It made me reflect on society and my own struggles as a young adult.
I want to emphasize that Mark Rylance is giving one of the most creepy and mesmerizing performances that I can think of. There are only 3 big scenes with him, but each is hypnotic and tense, culminating is the creepiest drop of saliva in movie history. But it would be a shame not to mention Michael Stuhlbarg, who also has an incredibly scary scene at the campfire. A scene that lends the film its title.
Many people seem to believe that the cannibalism is a metaphor for addiction. I was rather seeing some criticisms of modern capitalistic societies. A system that forces people to play by the (exploitative) rules of capitalism, which has to grow and be fed constantly to function. A system that "eats" a large amount of its people, the poor and unfortunate. But that might quite well be a false interpretation. What seems to be clear though is, that the cannibalism stands for growing older and accepting (or not!) the compromises of the real world. I myself kept thinking of my own life, how I had dreams that I could never fulfill. "We have to do it" Lee says. Like I had to come to terms with life, find a job, earn some money and play by the rules - giving up some of my own freedom. "eating" some of my own dreams and desires. Lee and Maren decide to try to live like normal people. Shedding those desires (hunger, greed) and only do, what makes them happy and be free.
And there comes Sully, deformed and twisted by all the hunger and loneliness he had to endure. He knows how to survive - but not how to form a meaningful relationship.
"Friends call me Sully". And he is the only person calling himself Sully, speaking of himself in third person, because nobody else does. He is his own and only friend. His feelings get mixed up with his hunger in the end. Eating somebody (especially an eater) you love seems to be the highest spiritual sensation an eater can have. And I do think that Stuhlbarg and Brad were planning on eating Lee and Maren - Bones and All.
And I do think that her mother had the same uncontrollable urge to eat Maren. Again, the confusion of love and hunger. "A world free of monsters". Her mother saw herself as a monster, not because she was an eater, but because she knew she was gonna eat Maren, if she doesn't disappear.
Before I conclude, I want to also praise the music by Reznor and Ross. The intensity of the scene where Maren finds out the secret of Sully in the old ladies home is also a result of the hypnotic percussion that supports the acting - again, masterfully played by Rylence.
Even days after I have watched this film, i still can't get it out of my head.
"Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes..."
