Beatriz at Dinner

This film is far more complicated than a clash between a Donald Trump surrogate and a Green idealist. The moral spectrum here is far too nuanced to allow a single clear position. It’s a diagnosis without a prescription. 

For one thing, Doug Strutt is no Donald Trump,  He’s far smarter, knowledgeable, more gracious, disciplined, self-aware, more honest — in fact, the character here who is the most at peace with himself. The three wives are uniformly hard, brittle, constantly on guard to sustain their marital and social status. Of the three wealthy couples only Doug is secure in himself and confident in his dealings with the others. The men live on his approval, so the wives must too. Strutt is the amoral super-rich Republican that supports Trump.

Indeed Strutt’s last words to Beatriz are a plausible strategy for dealing with our dying world: enjoy while we can. But enjoyment is not one of Beatriz’s options. As a healer she feels others’ pains too deeply, not just her patients’ but the animals’, the planet’s, the disintegrating universe. 

But the film does not let us comfortably side with Beatriz either. How seriously do we take her goats? They are illegal. Her range of putative sciences feels too close to satire. Her “moral stand” at the dinner rings as futile as the developers’ self-justifications, especially seeing as it’s fuelled by an unaccustomed intake of wine and a joint. Her urgent phone calls reveal a woman in severe personal distress, out of control of her own life. Her dinner-table idealism is as intrusive and self-displaying as the other class’s vulgarity and greed. Oddly, too, Beatriz is played without Salma Hayek’s usual beauty. The shots that emphasize her large rear end bring her down to the wives’ sad, flawed mortality.   

She does make one strong point. Fixing is harder than breaking. The strutting Strutts are wreaking great damage upon the planet, whether the single killed rhino or the multitude of destroyed birds — and the human lives the bulldozing developers envelop and ruin. The latter includes the “partners” here Strutt so generously rewards for their submission and fear. Nature if not the abused underclass will take its revenge. 

But does Beatriz? The film provides two conclusions to this dinner party. The first confirms Beatriz’s fantasy of revenge. She fatally stabs Strutt, in her dramatic but inconsequential sacrifice to reduce what she sees as the rampant evil in the world. In her rage she blames Strutt for her goat’s death. Of course one villain less won’t matter. But she will suffer the serious consequence.

In the second version, after her fantasy, she drops the letter opener, lets Strutt live and — broken by her failed resolve — walks out to her ocean death. The last image recalls her memory of paddling over the waters, here towards a new dawn. She earlier expressed her belief we have multiple lives, in which we can confront again the people with whom we have unresolved differences. That faith may make even her suicide a happier end than her ridding the world of Strutt. 

The alternative ending requires us to choose which we prefer. Do we opt for the murderous revolution? Or the destructive futility of the idealist?  Either position seems emblematized by the flaming lanterns floating up into the night, a beautiful but empty and ineffectual stab at the immutable darkness. Of course, the lanterns are extremely dangerous, indeed illegal, but the lawyer promises to save the host and the boss from any criminal charges. As usual. These rich are above the law. 

Some bit players reflect on the main ones. The photo of the hosts' daughter Tara reveals a fragile, troubled, boyish girl, who finds a connection in Beatriz she can’t make with her parents. She overcame her cancer. Cancer is what Beatriz charges Strutt and bis cronies with being to the world. Struggling to find something positive about the maverick Tara, one woman compliments her eyes. But there's more than beauty: the daughter sees more than the family and their friends realize. 
     Then there are the three servants. The young man presiding over the event falls short on the grace, good looks and suave he’s hired to display. He’s not supposed to interrupt a guest to take the entree choice. He embodies the hosts’ pretence and strain. The cook is a matronly white woman, controlling her realm. In contrast, the hosts’ Mexican servant quietly suffers her work but shows an instinctive sympathy for Beatriz. “So how did it go, the dinner?” she asks. She represents the seething underclass Beatriz predicts won’t stay submissive. Even if she does — or doesn’t.