Bones and All (2022)
Review of Bones & All, directed by Luca Guadagnino
This is my return to somewhat consistent blogging! Thanks to everyone who stuck around while I took a break to make sure I didn’t flunk out of graduate school for the dumbest reasons (aka: focusing on things that don’t end up helping me in the long run).
Anyways, during this time, I saw a lot of new movies and books, so there definitely will be quite a bit to discuss.
At the end of October 2022, I decided to pick up an AMC A List subscription again. For $25, seeing as many movies as I want within the realm of three maximum a week is such a steal. In the United States, one movie can cost up to $25 alone (looking at the Avatar screenings while I type that).
Because of that, I see a bunch of movies I would refuse to pay money for otherwise. Bones & All was something I missed while at the New York Film Festival because I went to see a Broadway show instead, but ended up seeing because I had A List.
I had very low expectations going into this film beforehand, just knowing that it was a cannibal romance the director denied was mainly about cannibalism. I ended up being pleasantly surprised by this movie.
Let’s progress into the review and analysis, shall we?
Two young cannibals meet in the Midwest, falling in love and finding struggles along the way.
The protagonist of Bones & All is Maren Yearly, who, at the beginning of the movie, lives with her father. At first, she seems like a typical shy kid who has just moved to a new school, but things get pretty dark after a new friend invites her to a sleepover with some other girls.
There is major bisexual energy during that scene, as Maren lays on the floor with another girl and almost kisses her for a second, but then ends up sticking her entire finger in her mouth and eats the girl’s finger.
Naturally, that causes a lot of screaming and freaking out from the guests, so Maren flees out the front door and back to her father while covered in blood. They leave town, using fake names, and return to the Eastern Shore in Maryland.
Now, I saw this in a movie theater in Baltimore County near Towson, and we all burst out laughing when the next scene’s television was talking about Towson University. This movie seems to be set before the nineties (the description claims it’s the eighties), as it isn’t called Towson University yet.
Maren’s father has abandoned her in the house, saying he has done everything he could for her, and leaves her money. She gets on a bus and heads to the Midwest in search of her mother, but after a brief stop Ohio, she meets another cannibal named Sully.
He gives off creepy vibes initially, and, as we progress later into the movie, he reveals himself to be an absolute creep.
Anyways, he helps her eat, then she runs away in the morning to the bus while Sully watches her.
When in a store in the middle of Indiana, Maren meets Lee (Chalamet), another cannibal her age that drifts. Sometimes he heads home to see his sister, but he ends up helping out Maren in her search for her mother.
The two strike up a romance, which is a little hilarious to me because Chalamet looks so much older than Taylor Russell to me in this movie. They do eventually find Maren’s mother after a couple of detours, as she lives in a mental aslyum, and discover she has cannibalized herself while being locked up.
Maren, no longer wanting anything to do with her mother, naturally takes this poorly and flees, leaving Lee behind in the process. The last arc of the movie basically reveals that Sully was stalking her this entire time, as he pulls up in a classic white van and says just that.
When she rejects his romantic proposal, he publicly throws a fit and swears a vague revenge—one he does achieve. Bones & All does not have a happy ending, that’s for sure.
The entire movie seems to borderline the themes of what it means to truly become a monster. Maren and Lee, through their relationship, find a little bit of humanity through their mutual coexistence.
Unless other people come into the fold or their hunger gets to be too much, then they seem like typical young adults who’ve run away from home. In the ending portion of the movie, when the surprising climax arrives swiftly, they’ve even carved a life in Michigan near a university.
They’re allowed to just exist, even if this moment is cut short by the arrival of Sully. This theme is furthered earlier in the movie when they meet the man who isn’t like them, yet chooses to eat people.
Maren is uncomfortable by that and retreats back into the car, showing how she wouldn’t choose this life if she could. And that’s even more tragic: if she were not a cannibal, she would have never met Lee.
Her mother’s fate is another ominous sign: everyone they meet that is a cannibal, whether it’s Sully, her mother, or Stuhlbarg’s character, seem pretty unhinged.
A direct implication that comes from this movie is there is no happy ending for people like them unless they truly accept the more animalistic side of things.
We see this with Lee throughout: he reveals towards the end of the movie that he ate his father bones and all, meaning he ate everything. This isn’t an act of devotion, but when Lee is ultimately stabbed by Sully and Maren is sobbing over his dying body, he requests she eat him bones and all.
Here, it is seen as an act of love, not desperation or revenge. And the ending scene before they cut back to the mountain is just that: she does end up eating him. Maren’s fate after this is left ambiguous, but, judging from the conversation they had with the other two guys earlier, eating someone bones & all means that their fate has been diverted forever.
Overall Thoughts
I liked this movie a lot more than I expected to. It was gory in some sections, particularly when they are eating people, and it definitely falls under the genre of a road film.
I think that it’s kind of slow paced at times and the gorgeous visuals and cinematography makes up for it, but I can see why people don’t like this movie. It asks some hard questions and you’re going to have to think about it in a way that most audiences don’t really want to do anymore.
The dialogue also was kind of bad at some points, as I wanted to laugh at how corny it was. Was it Call Me By Your Name level of good?
Nah. But it was an alright time, especially considering I didn’t pay much for it.
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