A profound sadness steeps through the seams of Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest Emma Stone starring Oscar Nominee, “Bugonia”, a film that allows for the possibility that the economic disparities which churn the chum sucking engines of modern life could very well not be of our own making, but of some other, more extraterrestrial origin. It’s not hard to see the logic. Look out the window at any time of any day to see obscene levels of rampant despondency; there are rulers, and there are the rest of us, billionaires or con men who yank and corrupt the seams of reality at whim, beyond the laws of God or man. While we sell ourselves snake oil stories about how hard work and gumption could elevate a menial life into one of opulence, of power, of influence, those for whom everyday life is a luxury free from struggle, risk, or destitution sneer down from their paltry towers while having the audacity to claim working, honest people simply wanting to live in peace to be crazy, demented, even paid in their outrage. They know the score and sell us the scraps; it is a universal experience that feels anachronistic to basic decency, to all the rules of kindness and fairness we were taught and never had the good sense to ignore. It is inhuman, and that incongruity is enough to drive a normal, wounded person to desperate measures in an effort to find sense in the senselessness of existence; to believe, in fact, that the corporate jargon regurgitating, MMA, and eternal life obsessed 1% are in fact aliens in disguise, ruling via pacification with an iron, Andromedan fist. The inherent melancholy at the core of “Bugonia” is not in whether this belief is correct, as that is the central mystery of the story, but instead in the crippling revelation that, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if the forces impinging upon our lives are human or alien. If you can’t buy groceries or afford healthcare for your child, what’s the difference?
“Bugonia”, written by Will Tracy based upon Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean film ‘Save the Green Planet!’, follows a pair of cousins on a crusade. Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is the leader. A beekeeper and planner, he is the guiding star of a mission to save the world alongside Don (Aidan Delbis), who happens to be debilitated by a developmental mental disorder that renders him kind yet pliable. Their target is Michelle (Emma Stone), a high-powered corporate executive for the pharmaceutical conglomerate Auxolith, a girl boss straight from the Elizabeth Holmes playbook who greets the security gate guard with a dead-eyed smile and has “magnanimously” instilled an optional policy for employees to clock out at 5:30 pm. She is the vision of a modern major manager, waking up at 4:30 am daily, putting in her two hours of yoga, krav maga, and a bespoke wellness regimen before striding into work and sitting down for an internal video espousing the value of DEI as if she has a gun trained on her head from just off camera. She says the right things and pretends to consider the needs of her employees. She is a considerate corporate shill and has enjoyed the splendor of that station. All the more reason why Teddy believes that she is not in fact a human, but an Andromedan sent to Earth to infect our minds with cancer and death, to lull us into subservience without us even knowing it. Teddy has “done his own research” into his enemy; for example, he knows they communicate through their hair and use sexual persuasion as a Navy Seal would an edged weapon, which is why, as a precaution, Teddy chemically castrates both himself and Don. In short order, they kidnap Michelle, shave her head, lock her in the basement with antihistamine cream spread across her face and body a la Immortal Joe’s War Boys, and mean to hold her hostage until her Emperor grants Teddy and Don an audience to negotiate the release of humankind from their fascistic grip. What follows is a pseudo-Turing test, though one that seeks to suss out the intricacies of alien intelligence instead of the artificial kind. How sure is Teddy that Michelle is, in fact, not human? What are his ulterior motives for stealing her, specifically as a standard bearer for his own lifetime of suffering? And if Michelle is not, in fact, an alien, how can she possibly survive?
While I was quietly concerned for the majority of the running time that “Bugonia” would not commit to an answer one way or another as to the terrestrial nature of Michelle or the reality of Teddy’s assertions, rest assured that an answer is given, and it does not disappoint. The film’s locked room power, as Plemmons and Stone battle cool logic and internet madness to crack the other’s exterior, stretches and contorts reality, causing the audience’s allegiances to shift more than once. That Teddy’s anger is righteous is without argument, but as we delve deeper into his backstory, of a mother lost to a pharmaceutical trial, of his own victimization and intellectual wandering in search of some truth in a bankrupt world, it is easy to paint him as simply a psychotically damaged man run amok. We’ve certainly seen our fair share of men driven beyond the bounds of sanity; the kind who burst into pizza restaurants with assault rifles or storm Capitol Buildings to stop a conspiracy that they believe in their soul to be true because it gives their lives meaning to live in opposition of something they cannot see. They are not who we are but who we could be if the world shifted on its axis in just the right manner, or if perhaps a bumblebee died at the wrong place at the wrong time. There but for the grace of God and all that, though the same could be said for Michelle. While her negotiating tactics boil down to little more than corporatized double speak, of boilerplate nothing burger phrases like “let’s unpack this” and “we can find an amicable solution”, everything that Teddy pinpoints as making her obviously Andromedan are simply common human traits: narrow feet, thin cuticles, a slight overbite. It’s obvious that Michelle is actively trying to manipulate him and the well-meaning Don, but that’s understandable, isn’t it? Who among us would do differently if faced with such an outlandish accusation? Unless the accusations are true, that is. The ending of “Bugonia” is a knockout, one of the most satisfying and terrifying I have seen this year. Its revelations lend more than fair credence as to why Emma Stone was nominated for Best Actress, though, as a film overall, I still prefer “No Other Choice” and wish it had been nominated for Best Picture. Alas, Yorgos plays the notes the Academy likes to dance too and I can’t blame them.
“Bugonia” leaves in its chem trail the stench of inevitability, that even if aliens were to come and colonize us, it would not save our sorry species from the ills of its own creation. We are the sowers of our own discontent, and we are the reapers of our own comeuppance; a sentiment equally empowering and damning. As Teddy coerces Don further and further into the depths of his schemes, his argument that whatever they must do is justified because it will “get back to how things were,” that old chestnut of how life as it was is how it should always be, that things could somehow be great again. The truth is, they never were, and seeking a return to our mythical Eden is foolish and self-deprecating. Our planet is a fragile one that will one day pop like a balloon at a children’s birthday party. So, with that in mind, when left with few options, perhaps taking care of one another is the best we can do. If there is true joy to be found in this life, assuredly it is there, in the most human of pursuits.
“Bugonia” is streaming on Peacock.
