Over the holidays, I finally had a chance to catch up on some of the movies and shows I was interested in watching. One of those was the recent horror/comedy film The Menu, with stunning leading performances by Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, and Nicholas Hoult. As an avid Anya Taylor-Joy stan, I will watch anything she’s in, so this movie was a no-brainer.
I’ll try not to spoil too much. Still, the basic premise of the film is that a group of wealthy customers—among them a pair of food critics, an actor, and numerous other rich people who can afford to pay $1250 each for courses with fancy ingredients I could never guess if they weren’t projected on the screen for me—are invited to a private island to be served by the famous Chef Slowik. As the evening progresses, each course becomes more and more unsettling until the true design of “The Menu” is fully revealed. Now bear with me because I had a lot of thoughts once this movie was over, and I would love to subject you to a few of them.
I had a lot of fun with how The Menu satirizes many of its characters. The self-proclaimed “foodie” character is so obsessed with his opportunity to experience the great Chef Slowik and impress him with his own knowledge (obtained through watching cooking shows) that he intentionally ignores the red flags popping up. (Seriously. Like, a neon sign, “share your location with a friend and leave a full set of fingerprints on your date’s property” type of red flags). The food critics are self-important, trying to pick out tiny aspects of the meals they can criticize while using words like “thalassic” (you’ll have to google that one) to prove their expertise. And the many rich customers—from the irrelevant actor to the finance bros to the old-money couple—do not listen to the chef’s request that they “be mindful” and savour the food. They are more satisfied that they are rich enough to buy the experience and can say that they’ve been there rather than enjoying the experience itself.
Nevertheless, as much as the film satirizes its rich customers, it also points the finger at the chefs who cook for them. In their quest for revenge against the rich A-holes who don’t care about their art, the chefs forget the very purpose of their art in the first place, turning cooking from something that brings people enjoyment and warmth into a cold, obsessive, joyless experience. Ultimately, both the customers and the chefs have lost sight of the original warmth and purpose of food, turning Chef Slowik’s attempt at revenge against artless customers into a realization that he, too, has lost the art of cooking.
The film seems to ask, where is the line between love and obsession? At what point does one cross over into the other, and who is to blame? Is it the consumers who have lost appreciation for the experience and are obsessed only with the appearance of exclusivity, or is it the creators whose pursuit of revenge has drained all the warmth from their art?
If that angle is starting to sound a little pretentious (it does to me, and I’m the one writing it), I also have another line of thought to consider about this movie—one that, in my opinion, makes Chef Slowik’s final solution seem wildly unhinged. It’s the part where Chef Slowik tries to style himself as a modern-day Martin Luther King Jr.
Chef Slowik quotes MLK Jr. saying, “As Dr. King said, ‘We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.’”
Before I point out the irony of that statement, I should note that Chef Slowik appears to have grown up in a low-income household and struggled with abusive parents while having to work his way up to become a revered chef. His life has not been without struggle. However, since his humble beginnings, he has amassed enough money to host a restaurant on a private island, use rare and exclusive ingredients, and employ a large team of chefs and other staff to work under him. He is, notably, a white man, which intrinsically gives him access to certain privileges that many of his coworkers do not have. He is also in complete control of the restaurant he runs. The other chefs snap to attention like soldiers, waiting anxiously for his approval and going to extremes to align with his vision. He even admits to having sexually harassed one of his female employees a few years ago, a woman whom he punished for refusing his advances by refusing to speak to her in the kitchen for eight months. In every case, the power imbalance is clear: Chef Slowik is in charge.
Financially and logically, he is not currently oppressed in the position he holds—he’s just upset that he has to deal with annoying rich customers who don’t appreciate his art the way he would like. So, while watching his revenge unfold, my question was… why on earth doesn’t he just leave? As common sense will tell you, he is perfectly capable of leaving his job at any time or even pursuing a different market. For example, he could lower his price point to make his food more affordable for lower-income households. Then, a different demographic of customers (that AREN’T rich enough to buy multiple apartments for their mistresses and spend a couple grand on tasting oil) might appreciate his food in a different way.
It’s really ironic, then, that he quotes Martin Luther King Jr. and claims a position among the oppressed. If you watch the movie, it shows how unhinged his final “solution” to the problem of unappreciative, entitled, rich a**hole customers is. (That said, as a customer service worker myself, I’ll admit that it was sometimes satisfying to see those customers being told to sit down and shut up.)
Overall, this film left me with many thoughts about art and obsession, entitlement, oppression, and more. I would definitely recommend it as a worthwhile watch, and it’s streaming now on Disney+!