• Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    getting out my calipers ah yes… 6-figure parentage with 50% chance of landlord

    seriously wtf the girl is dressed up to go to the fancy restaurant, she obv looks rich, but its not her fucking skull shape

  • dead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Spoilers

    In the scene where she eats the cheeseburger, the chef had just announced that he was about to kill everyone at the restaurant in a ritual murder. The woman character tells the chef to make a cheeseburger to prove that he has really cooking talent and is not just a pretentious hack. The chef complies because he’s a massive narcissist. The woman character is fearing for her life when she takes a bite of the cheeseburger. She takes a small bite and then asks for the burger to be taken “to go” so that she can escape from being murdered.

    Would you eat a massive bite of cheeseburger when the chef just said he was going to kill you? A small bite of burger seems appropriate for the situation of the scene. Twitter discourse is so stupid.

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      She doesn’t ask him to make her a burger in order to prove that he’s a real chef and he doesn’t comply because he’s a narcissist, I’m kind of surprised how you could read the scene like that?

      The chef is deeply unhappy with his life, where he has ended up and what he is doing. He is completely alienated from his labour, which has become feeding slop to uncaring rich assholes. The last time he felt joy and connection with his labour, was as a young man selling simple food to good folk. It was when he sold cheap cheeseburgers.

      She asks him for a cheeseburger because of this, she wants to show that she “gets him” and to remind him that not all is lost. She is nervous because she is out of options and this is a huge gamble. When she asks him for the bag “to go” she is negotiating a way out within the confines of the system the chef feels trapped in.
      It has nothing to do with having to prove himself, it has to do with being reminded of why he chose to serve food for a living in the first place. She is rewarded because she reconnects him with that base instinct.

      Edit: fixed punctuation

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Yeah I get into that further down in the thread. I feel like it’s pretty obvious that the movie did that, but I guess not.

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Yes I have seen the scene in question, thank you for your condescension. Have you seen the rest of the movie? The whole reason she asks for a burger is because the only picture of him smiling is a hidden away photo in his home of him as a young man in a burger stand.
          After the place burns down we also get a scene of her eating the burger in large mouthfuls.

          • dead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            In this scene she says that his food is made “without love” and that she would like a cheeseburger made “with love”. He then says “I will make you a very good, very traditional cheeseburger”. She says “I don’t think you can”.

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              Yes, she is challenging him, pushing him. This is part of the negotiation within the confines of the system. She cannot outright say “hey, don’t you think it would be nice to make me a cheeseburger?” Because the rules of the world demand a different behaviour. Saying that would “break the spell” so to speak, for the same reason that she can ask to get a burger to go, but she would not be able to ask “hey man aren’t you happy I reconnected you with your love of cooking? Please let me go now.”
              This also couples with the fact that she is an escort. She is just as much performing her labour in that moment as he is performing his. She is playing the role of a customer in order to give him satisfaction. Wether he rekindles her love for her work as she does for him, I cannot say.

              As soon as she mentions a cheeseburger he is happy, but they must dance this dance in order to get it. It’s not about proving he’s good at cooking food - It’s about enjoying cooking food, hence the “with love” instead of “tasty” or “fancy” or “perfect” or “beautiful” or any other adjective that could signify quality. He accepts the task because he wants to reconnect with cooking. Look at how he behaves thru the ordering process. It takes him back, it reminds him.

              Edit: thank you for your response explaining how you got that read of the situation however. I can now understand how you could have interpreted the scene as you did. Responding with a link to the scene didn’t do that, so I’m glad you followed up.

              • dead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                I don’t know what the difference is between “she is challenging him” as you say and making him prove himself as a chef as I said. Frankly, I don’t even know what point you are trying to make.

                It misses the point of my post. The point of my post is that she ate the cheeseburger weird in the first burger scene because she was afraid for her life.

                • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  I explain what the difference is in the following sentence, but it’s okay, we don’t have to agree. I asked how you could get the read that you did and you explained it. That’s what I asked for.

          • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            I’m fascinated by how much I’ve gone to bat for The Menu and Anya Taylor Joy in this thread, because I truly have no opinions about either. I liked her in Queen’s Gambit, but that’s all I know her from. I liked The Menu the one time I’ve seen it.
            I guess I just really dislike media takes based on misunderstandings

    • Smeagolicious [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      The funniest part of the scene is where she says “I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach”, with ATJ’s big eyes looking at him. It had to be a joke right?

    • Great_Leader_Is_Dead@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Would you eat a massive bite of cheeseburger when the chef just said he was going to kill you?

      Considering part of what saves her is that she’s showing that he can make good food that’s not some pretentious deconstruction of food, and also that she’s not some bougie fuck like the rest of the restaurant guests, I’d say taking a big sloppy ass greasy bite out of that fucker like she’s hungover at Five Guys would have been the more appropriate move.

        • Great_Leader_Is_Dead@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Yeah but wouldn’t it make more sense to do that in front of the chef? Show him that he did indeed make a good ass burger and that she is enjoying it like a regular ass person? She was smart and ballsy enough to call him out on his BS I think she’d have the guts to chow down on the thing.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      No, it’s cause an actor is too rich to know how to act. She can play a puritan former wife just fine, but she’s too born rich to convincingly eat a hamburglar

      • dead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        feast-1 feast-2

        I’m somehow not believing that knowing “how to eat cheeseburger” is a class signifier. She also finishes eating the burger pretty normally before the end credits when she is escaping on the boat. I am a huge fan of cheeseburgers myself and it looks to me that she was eating the burger pretty normally at the ending. But what do I know? I’m not a twitter burger phrenologist.

  • rootsbreadandmakka [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    tbf has there ever been a convincing looking poor person in a big hollywood film? At least in the past like 20 or so years.

    that being said Anna Taylor Joy is not beating the Buenos Aires allegations

  • ComradeChairmanKGB@lemmygrad.ml
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    9 months ago

    So what I’ve gathered from this thread is that the film apparently wasn’t about cooking people and turning them into burgers? Weird ass marketing then, glad I didn’t see it.

    • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      It was about pretentious rich assholes being murdered by the fancy chefs who serve them because the chefs come to realize that the prestige/high pay/etc isn’t worth having to deal with the bourgeois. Spoilers for the entire movie.

      spoiler

      In particular, the head chef who has a very prestigious position cooking food for the rich became so alienated that he mass murders the latest group of the ultra-wealthy who patronize his restaurant. He lets the main character live because she isn’t ultra-rich, just an escort who was hired to be some rich foodie guy’s date. The pivotal scene of the movie is when she asks for just a normal cheeseburger because the main course of “seven types of foam served on a log” wasn’t actually food.

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        Its not “just” the latest group - he specifically picks this group of people, because they each represent part of what he has come to hate in his customers.

      • marx_mentat [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        I think you’re right too. I was expecting the movie to suck and was surprised by it. I’m not sure what it could have done differently, but I do see what you mean. It feels like it’s missing one last punch or something.

        • hungrybread [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Honestly I may have just had too high of hopes for it. Usually I’d temper expectations for a movie like this but maybe didn’t do that for The Menu.

          Speaking of having low expectations, that really seems like the best strategy for enjoying media made for broad audiences. I remember seeing M Night’s Avatar movie and being pleasantly surprised by it after setting expectations somewhere below the ground