Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Written by David Kajganich
Starring Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance
Rated R
Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes
In theaters November 23

by Tori Potenza, Staff Writer

The world of lovers doesn’t want monsters.

So many things can cause us to feel monstrous. Whether it be mental illness, scars, trauma, self image, or something else. Feeling like a monster often means you feel alone and unloveable. But what if you found another monster, one that could relate to your struggle and actually make you feel like you could carve out a piece of happiness even if only for a fleeting moment. Would that small blip of happiness be worth the pain and heartache that may come along with it? Couldn’t some monsters get just this little piece of what heroes experience in “happily ever after?” This is just one of the ideas that Luca Guadagnino explores in Bones and All.

Bones and All asks the questions along these lines. When we feel our life is doomed, how do we choose to live our lives? Do we snuff out our own flame? Do we shut ourselves away in a prison so we don’t cause more harm? Do we hurt others so that they know our suffering? Or do we decide to take the time we have and find beauty, happiness, and love wherever we can until it's over? Throughout the movie we meet characters who choose various ways to live this life. When Maren gets the chance to go on her own she meets these people and has to make this choice for herself. Maren is an easy character to empathize with, and Taylor Russell does a tremendous job adding complicated layers to Maren as she tries to find herself and create a life she wants. When she meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet), she sees someone who is like her but who also has the capacity for kindness and love despite it all. Chalamet has proven how varied his acting can be and brings a tender masculinity to his performance.

Pain is such an essential part of the human experience, especially so when it comes to love. No one knows that better than Maren and Lee. Because they have the natural urge to consume human flesh, they have experienced more pain than most people could understand. They have hurt people they love, they have been abandoned, they have been forced to do terrible things in order to survive, and they have had to give up the idea of a conventional life. While other people they meet share some of the lived experience they do like Sully (Mark Rylance) who helps explain how to live as an “eater” or Jake (Michael Stuhlbarg) who explains the pivotal moment of “bones and all,” they do not connect the way Maren and Lee do. Finding a friend, confidant, lover, and partner all in one person is a tremendous moment. Unfortunately their darkness is ever present in the backdrop of any life they make together.

People do not often plan out a short life together. Partnership is usually filled with grand plans and promises of a future. We are not always adept at planning ahead. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance there is a story about those who helped build architectural marvels like The Notre Dame. It says that they knew they would not see it completed within their lifetime, but the promise that future generations of their family could congregate in that space kept them going. With the threat of environmental destruction, late stage capitalism, and societal collapse, it is clear that this forethought has not been present in those who lead. Even now, not knowing how much longer our planet will be sustainable we still plan for futures that might never be. So what would it look like to plan for the now, plan for the time we have together and focus on these precious few years we have with the ones we love, doing the things we love. Guadagnino’s tender look at a love that is based around “however long we have” is a poignant reminder of how important the day to day of love really is.

The themes of the story are so powerful that they are even felt through the score. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have provided memorable scores and songs to some great films, but their work for Bones and All feels so beautifully and organically tied to the film that listening to it after the fact brings back the well of emotions that you experience watching the movie. The lyrics in their song “(You Made it Feel LIke) Home” distills the relationship and emotions we watch Lee and Maren experience when they find each other. While the young lovers are often traveling in desolate and isolated areas of middle America their chemistry fills the scenes often making the settings feel very full. Much like Ana Lily Amirpour does in her films, there is an emphasis on showcasing the beauty of these small, overlooked areas that showcases how beauty and love blossom in unremarkable spaces. For such a profoundly tender and affecting film to come together it is clear the acting, writing, scoring, and cinematography all had to come together around the same themes and emotions.

Between Bones and All and Decision to Leave, 2022 has given us two poignant and unconventional love stories. They are reminders about how unobtainable and also uninteresting the concept of “happily ever after” truly is. Love comes with so many other complex and sometimes indescribable emotions that make eternal happiness feel like a disservice to the human experience. Sometimes we must simply live in and be curious about the well of emotions that come from love, because they cannot truly be understood or even expressed with our limited vocabulary and brain capacity. Yes, this is a story about cannibals, so there are horrors to be had throughout the story, but the real horrors are the existential kind, about survival and love. It almost feels like Guadagnino’s hat trick, making you forget that this is a horror movie many times throughout, just to force you out of your seat when the horror comes back into play. With its melodic tones, slow pacing, and heartfelt performances it is so easy to forget about the creeping terrors of life.

Sometimes we are monsters, sometimes we just feel like them. Regardless, we can choose the way in which we live out our meager human existence and who we want to share it with. Bones and All will leave viewers with much to ponder but with even more to feel, making tapping into those feelings and getting curious about what they mean in our own stories an essential follow up to viewing.