“I know very little about the pieces that make him up as a whole, but I feel like I know what kind of person all those pieces have made him” – Taylor Russel (Bones and All)
“Art, tender, fully haunting” is how Bones and All was described —a Cannibal, road-movie, romance, and coming-of-age film— that was Directed by Luca Guadagnino, as it is a metaphorical, exotically romantic, and traumatizing movie at the same time in equal measure. The movie was adapted from Camille DeAngelis’ YA bestseller adult novel, it was a Screenplay by David Kajganich and it starred Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russel.
Bones and All is a story of desperate, passionate, and confounded type of love between Lee (Timothee Chalamet), a spirited and disenfranchised drifter, and Maren (Taylor Russel), a young lady trying to exist on the periphery of society. They’ve met as if they are Cannibals that can smell each other, and that’s what makes them together, when in fact they really are Cannibals. Lee’s truck had led them to different paths, back alleys, secret passages, and traps of reality. The road scenes take place as Maren takes off on a mission to find her mom, and Lee helps her as He knows how hard it is for them (as a Cannibal) to live in this straight world.
However, on their way to finding the truth, they have discovered deeper secrets of the Cannibals, it is that they live by the rule in they should never eat one of their fellows, and the cannibal experience at its most extreme is eating a person completely: Bones & All. Despite those struggles, they manage to make a life together through thick and thin, but there’s this middle-aged creepy drifter named Sully that was soon obsessed with Maren. By that, it had made their complicated life even messier, and that’s where the question “How are the eaters gonna get through in this greedy society?” blooms.
The motion of this movie, especially the road scenes, did really make us feel empty, cold, and gloomily calm, yet at the same time it played with our emotions as the other scenes made their way, the romantic scenes, gore, and intense one, and especially the puzzled scenes. It can make you feel scared but euphoric, alone yet accompanied, and deeply in love whereas terrified at the same time. This film also has great cinematography that lingers and that makes the great story-telling be more effective. Also, the sounds were great, it knows how to control the mood and emotions of the audience, together with the colors of every scene. Those things really made the audience feel the movie even more, felt sad, nervous, scared, overwhelmed, and shocked.
Indeed, Bones and All is a ‘must-watch’ film, especially for young adults who are having some mid-life crisis. This movie tackles various societal and self-conflicts that were shown in a metaphorical form, and it serves as an eye-opener for us that life is not just about eating some good deeds, but also those raw and bloody ones.
