The Beast

The defining trait of humanity is its messiness. We're nowhere near as logical and sensible as we'd like to think, full of hypocrisies and imperfections and uncertainty besides. We behave in our own self-interest, our attempts to relate to others are muddied or destroyed by our flawed intuition for what's in their head based on what's happening in ours, and we're riddled with the effects of past traumas we barely recall which nevertheless impact our behavior in ways we can't imagine. The journey to self-improvement is long and difficult, and more importantly, never ending. Such is the reason it's such a common topic in science-fiction: if there was some process by which you could remove the source of your hardship, why wouldn't you?

Of course, every popular exploration of the topic sees this in a negative light, no matter the approach taken to get there. Tyrannical (1984), chemical (Brave New World), scientific (Gattaca): eliminating the problems with human nature is to eliminate human nature itself. Rather than clearing the obstacles to becoming our best selves, it leads to a loss of self, at least in any meaningful sense. These stories all argue that such contradictions stem from various flavors of passion, and thus to "solve" them is to render us emotionless. Without feeling, what's the point of it all?

In 2044, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) is given the opportunity to undergo "DNA Purification", a process which should grant her the stoicism required to perform a job otherwise reserved for AI. She'll need to revisit her past lives in order to seek out and deal with the source of whatever traumas cause her to experience human reactions. The details of the process are vague, but at least part of it seems to be rerunning those moments over and over until they morph into a different, less charged outcome. Which of course implies her past lives encountered many intense moments, and boy did they.

She begins by rekindling a relationship with Louis (George McKay) in the 1910s. We return to the present, and on the way out of the Purification facility, she meets...Louis. Later on, we witness Gabrielle living as a model in LA in 2014, where she ends up the target of an incel named...Louis. As indicated by their identical image and her reaction to him in each case, their souls and destinies are intertwined across time and space.

...or maybe not. It's here we get into the real meat and potatoes of the film. There's a lot of questioning what is real, how we know, and what that even means. Time is a fluid concept, as are the boundaries between worlds, and even causality to some degree. For example, in one reality she's kissing Louis, but after closing her eyes for a minute he's transformed into her husband Georges (Martin Scali), who hadn't yet shown up in this timeline. Is he bleeding over from the others? Does the replacement mean that he's a fabrication? Could he be a fabrication in every time? Or is it Louis who's the fabrication, and she's just inserting him into her memories because she was taken with this stranger she bumped into? Even more confounding, what about all the repeated conversations? One insisting the other can trust them, direction involving a knife, and more. To say nothing of the repeated imagery, most importantly the presence of a pigeon (that's right, a regular every day pigeon).

The fundamental building block of her experience with Purification is consistency of feeling carried from life to life. Her isolation being key, which drives her to seek out Louis each time due to their connection. Which seems to have no source, it just is, as if a law of time and space.

Maybe that's the key to how Purification truly works. The repetition irons out your past lives, rendering them so bland that you've no further bond to them, causing them to slip away. We never hear the "Dolls" (Gabrielle's term for someone who's completed Purification) refer to their own past lives or processing, just insistence that all will be fine. The only hint that it might not work quite as well as Gabrielle was told is when Kelly (Guslagie Malanda) confesses dreaming of and desiring her. Or maybe it's simply that Purification is no guarantee someone will stay pure.

If I'm engaging in a lot of uncertain guesswork and speculation, that's because truth be told, this movie is kind of a mess. It's got a lot of ideas about the future and AI and what defines humanity and how specifically our flaws are assets and so much more. Director Bertrand Bonello tries to jam in so many, combined with some experimental storytelling and non-traditional filmmaking, and too much of it gets in its own way. For example, even once you clock that scenes are repeating because they're going to play out differently, the impact of that is never totally clear. I only hypothesize that's the core mechanism of "Purification" because it's my best interpretation of the muddy text of the film.

As such, the narrative thrust is never quite clear, despite story happening constantly. By keeping us with Gabrielle, we get the emotional thrust of her arc. But all the backtracking and jumping around and meshing of timelines means that even long sections spent in the same story leave you wondering "...and???" We get why they matter for their section, but not how they connect to the greater whole. That lack of connection moment to moment leaves us unmoored for large chunks of the film.

Similarly, we never quite get enough of the world to feel comfortable. Which may be part of the point, as Gabrielle clearly feels out of place, hence her initial resistance to the procedure. But it means a bunch of things just happen, things which likely have rules behind them even as we never get that sense. For example, all the "phone calls" she engages in. We only ever see one side of the call (hers in all but one case), and it's always someone with no special device just talking into a room. Are humans telepathic now? Is there a brain implant? Is there a device that's hidden somewhere? If so, how does it work when she's walking around outside with her mask on? Some worldbuilding is straightforward and minor enough, like the masks I just mentioned: we assume humanity made good on its threat of rendering the air unbreathable. But that which comes back repeatedly (the calls, or the existence of AGI, or the job system, or "Purification") is harmed by spending so much time with them without any further exploration. Setting the story in a dystopian near-future presents many opportunities to comment on our present, yet it only does so in the most on-the-nose ways before quickly moving on, signalling its disinterest in doing anything more than treating it as a mere setting.

But it's hard to get too mad at a movie that's clearly taking such a huge swing, and does so with such enthusiasm. The project is aided by the incredible charms and talents of both Léa Seydoux and George McKay, charming and attractive as ever, with fantastic chemistry across all time periods (although the 1910s is my personal favorite). And I appreciate the variety of different looking shots, keeping things fresh and exciting despite the limited number of locations. I was never bored, and was often delighted, even in my moments of deepest confusion.

The last thing I have to talk about is the credits, which pull a trick I've never seen before: they're replaced by a QR code. Which I think is appalling. I get why they did it: people complain about runtimes, and this movie is already almost 150 minutes long. But remember, the growth in credits length is partially due to the industry doing a better job at recognizing those whose labor made the finished product possible. So to shunt their names off to a forum which almost no one is going to visit is a thumb in the eye. Also, on a more practical level, it removes the buffer time some people (such as myself) use to digest the story and ease back into the real world. Not to mention that in this case, there's even a small mid-credits scene! I don't know who was responsible for this decision, but whoever it is, they should be ashamed of themselves.

For your benefit. the credits can be found at the following link, presented as a traditional scroll: https://bonus.noirlumiere.com/Ffd2990vVawDNuEahXEgau5P/video.mp4