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This interview with the director of The Menu was initially printed at the side of the movie’s theatrical launch. It has been republished to coincide with the movie’s launch on HBO Max and digital platforms.
On the floor, Mark Mylod’s thriller The Menu seems to be like a cold, high-end horror film. The trailer shapes it because the story of a profitable chef who baits a entice for his wealthy, spoiled patrons, drawing them into an unpredictable life-or-death recreation the place he and his devoted followers outline all the foundations. Bloody mayhem follows. However Mylod sees the movie in another way — and his interpretation ties immediately into what drew him not simply to this movie, however to his different most high-profile work, as a daily director on the hit TV collection Succession and Recreation of Thrones.
For Mylod, the connection between these three tales is the way in which they cope with household — actually on Recreation of Thrones and Succession, and extra symbolically in The Menu, the place the antagonist, mysterious, aristocratic Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), has constructed his kitchen employees right into a slavishly devoted workforce that his fanatical apprentice Elsa (Watchmen star Hong Chau) particularly describes as a household.
“If I’ve any throughline in my work — going again to my British work, once I first began directing again within the late 1500s — it’s household,” Mylod joked to Polygon in an interview after The Menu’s premiere on the 2022 Improbable Fest in Austin, Texas. “I spotted that energy and household are symbiotic, particularly within the early life. I’m actually fascinated by that. You’re trapped within the house the place you dwell, and you may’t escape, actually, till you’ll be able to depart residence. And so there’s infinite potential for dramatic battle.”
![Margo (Anya Taylor-Joy), a woman with a shoulder-baring dress and thick red hair, stares into the camera in close-up in The Menu](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GX2S78Gxr4jCwD8Aj7YIT8-7UN4=/0x0:1903x801/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1903x801):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24210629/032_TM_SG_09105_R.jpg)
Picture: Searchlight Photos
In Recreation of Thrones, bloodlines are successfully future — everybody concerned within the titular quest for energy and dominance is each boosted and restricted by the household they have been born into. In Succession, the complete story revolves across the connections and competitors inside a wealthy household. In The Menu, although, there’s extra of a way that Chef Slowik’s patrons — together with characters performed by Anya Taylor-Pleasure, Nicholas Hoult, John Leguizamo, and Aimee Carrero — have been trapped by a household that resembles a cult.
“A part of the attraction of The Menu was that concept that you just put all of the characters on this one field with that quasi-family, and also you entice them on this house, and there’s infinite potential for dramatic confrontation and dramatic conflicts,” Mylod says. “And out of that, you get that beautiful relationship between pressure and comedy, which the writers take a lot benefit of.”
Literal household does come up in The Menu, with Chef Slowik’s mom as one of many patrons at his life-or-death dinner, although their relationship and intentions towards one another are one of many movie’s greatest mysteries.
“We hoped you’d fill in a few of the blanks,” Mylod says. “[The question is] all the time How far does one go together with exposition? How far does one go into Chef’s backstory? We walked a tightrope with that. The selection we made was to kick into the intelligence of the viewers. They’ll fill in these issues for themselves. Audiences are so refined as of late, we didn’t really feel we would have liked to delve into that an excessive amount of. They may really feel the emotional connection.”
An additional connection between Recreation of Thrones, Succession, and The Menu is that every one three tales deal closely with rich individuals weaponizing their energy and getting punished for his or her hubris, however all three tales humanize these characters as properly.
“That chess recreation was all the time on the coronary heart of it,” Mylod says. “With Bong [Joon-ho] in Parasite, he by no means supposed for the poor individuals to be the goodies, and the wealthy individuals to be the baddies. That’s trite, and it begins to undermine the authenticity of the emotional story he’s attempting to inform. We discovered ourselves in the identical place — we wished to have an emotional connection to those characters. We might see how they do silly issues, however I definitely didn’t need them to only be cardboard cutouts, two-dimensional stereotypes. We wished them to have emotional lives, and we wished the viewers to really feel their jeopardy.”
![A frantic man swings a chair at one of the glass walls in a fancy restaurant in an attempt to shatter it and escape, while the rest of the frightened patrons watch in a scene from The Menu](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xAc3_LEkNKzlgzvhT3OER1X-2z4=/0x0:1903x801/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1903x801):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24210678/Chair.jpg)
Picture: Searchlight Photos
For Mylod, the connections between Succession and The Menu are stronger, each thematically and by way of how he labored behind the scenes to encourage improvisation and full-immersion solid participation.
“One thing I did deliver to The Menu very particularly from Succession was my ongoing lifelong admiration of Robert Altman, and the way in which he works,” Mylod says. “I used to be fortunate sufficient very early in my directing profession to work with two actors, Charles Dance and Michael Gambon, who’d labored on [Altman’s masterpiece] Gosford Park, and I used to be all the time pummeling them with questions on how he labored. He actually was just about the primary director within the West to get two sound mixers and get everyone [on a set] miked up.”
Altman was well-known for his naturalistic, overlapping dialogue, captured on the set from individuals inspired to remain in character always. Mylod used that approach on Succession and The Menu to present his units what he calls “a Darwinian sense,” the place everyone seems to be performing on a regular basis, fairly than simply in brief setups the place the digicam is pointed at them and so they have particular dialogue within the script.
“All people was on and everybody was improvising, so everyone’s alive and current the entire time,” he says. “I used that on Succession, and I used it on The Menu. It takes a really particular, courageous, clever, intuitive actor to embrace that. We have been very particular in our recruitment to realize that. [With The Menu], the end result was the happiest seven weeks you can presumably have on set, as a result of we have been all locked in collectively in our bubble with COVID at the moment. All of the extras would come on set within the morning, everyone’s miked up, and in the event that they occur to be off digicam, they’re nonetheless supporting, they’re nonetheless improvising, conserving the ambiance of the restaurant alive.
“That sensible kitchen employees have been there each day, after going by way of this bootcamp about precisely what they need to be doing at any second. They’re doing their choreographed dance, with that precision of Slowik’s world. So we ended up with a very unfastened and free method of working, which is an fascinating counterpoint to the precision of the writing and the rhythm of Slowik’s world.”
![Director Mark Mylod sits at a table on the set with several characters from The Menu, gesturing offscreen as he directs, with camera equipment and operators in the background](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VmO0gLLTuv0D3ffBt24PqxBNr_4=/0x0:2000x1333/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2000x1333):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24210684/Director.jpg)
Picture: Searchlight Photos
So far as themes that join Succession and The Menu, Mylod says the “eat the wealthy” concept of highly effective individuals being punished is “a part of the enjoyable,” however that he’s extra serious about how each tales deal with warped creativity and the disintegration of characters’ beliefs.
“The perversion of artwork by way of energy, by way of exclusiveness, by way of cash, is definitely one thing I’m personally serious about. It’s definitely what drew me to Succession,” he says. “I labored with [Succession creator] Jesse [Armstrong] on that. With The Menu, I believe the theme of the pure magnificence of making good meals for one more human being, the pure elemental act of sharing and sustaining and nourishing one other — it’s so lovely. You’ll be able to’t get extra elementary than that, besides maybe in childbirth. And for that to have been perverted by business, by cash — that feels to me like there’s a tragic ingredient [for Chef Slowik]. That perversion of a really perfect, I believe, is basically fascinating.”
Ultimately, that sense of tragedy in a personality is a part of what defines Mylod’s favourite characters in all three of those tales. Whereas he hesitates to reveal his fandom for one character over one other in these three ensemble tasks — “That’s like asking me my favourite youngster,” he says — he admits that he’s drawn to villainous characters who see themselves as heroes.
For Recreation of Thrones, that meant being pulled towards Cersei Lannister. “[Actor] Lena [Headey] was so the alternative of that character,” Mylod says. “She’s so unfastened and wonderful and enjoyable, after which she simply completely morphs into this totally different human on digicam. It’s simply extraordinary to see the transition. It seems so easy.
“And [Cersei is a favorite] as a result of I keep in mind speaking to Lena about her method of trying on the character — she simply made a remark sooner or later about ‘I’m simply attempting to guard my kids right here.’ Like Cersei wasn’t an evil individual, she was only a girl attempting to guard her kids. Checked out simply from that perspective, it was a revelation to me. I used to be form of romanced by how exquisitely dangerous she is, and on the identical time, she’s simply attempting to guard her children. In order that was lovely to me.”
For Succession, Mylod is drawn to Roy household hanger-on Tom Wambsgans (performed by Matthew Macfadyen), additionally due to the space between actor and character. “Similar argument, actually,” Mylod says. “There isn’t a greatest character, however by way of who modifications probably the most from themselves into the character, it’d be Matthew, as a result of he’s such a stunning, quietly spoken, mild character, after which he morphs into Tom, this monster.
“And he simply brings an emotional dimension to the character that breaks my coronary heart typically, as a result of he’s only a Midwest child attempting to make it massive, following his dream. So in case you take a look at him and say perhaps he’s a baddie, he simply thought he was doing an excellent job. No one thinks he’s a baddie.”
The identical holds true for Mylod’s favourite character in The Menu: inevitably, its tormented villain, Chef Slowik, who additionally doesn’t see his seize and torture of his patrons as evil. As an alternative, he sees them as having captured and tortured him, resulting in the whole lot that occurs within the film. “That’s why I like him,” Mylod says. “He’s the important, quiet tragedy behind what’s hopefully a very enjoyable trip of a film. Slowik is in ache. He’s simply attempting to cease the ache.”
The Menu is now streaming on HBO Max and is out there for rental on digital platforms like Amazon and Vudu.
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