Mostly a missed opportunity to use the avatar of white Western backpacker as a metaphor for neocolonialism, the most unbelievable thing about The Beach is that, even in the year 2000, even after going through that ordeal and presumably offline for months, DiCaprio only has seven unread email messages.
There are some obvious parallels between Richard's descent into madness and Joseph Conrad's Colonel Kurtz, a connection made a little thudding by the literal quotation from Apocalpyse Now (1979), as well as later shots that seem to echo Brando in the darkness later in Coppola's film. Given that the film wishes to quote from classic cinema (we are surely treated to an Ursula Andress reference from Dr No [1962] just a few minutes later), are we also to take DiCaprio and Robert Carlyle's meeting between the two hotel rooms as a reference to the ending of Clarence Brown's Code-skirting Come LIve With Me (1941)?
Either way, the reference that really stood out to me was the much shorter sighting of The Simpsons. I was struck by how that show is an epiphenomenon of globalisation and postcolonialism that this film seems to engorge itself on, being both critical of these weighty themes in surface terms, of course, yet still representing genuine yearning for an undiscovered and 'unpopulated' part of the world. (Indeed, an essay could be written about race and class in this film, and how Paterson Joseph's Keaty with his cricket and his Daily Telegraph might only superficially be a non-White voice). Speaking of going a little too far with its thesis, I suspect Boyle, a Brit, is having a little too much fun with the 'American abroad' stereotype.
A Colors by Benetton take on Lord of the Flies.
— Elvis Mitchell (The New York Times)
Synopsis: Twenty-something Richard travels to Thailand and finds himself in possession of a strange map. Rumours state that it leads to a solitary beach paradise, a tropical bliss - excited and intrigued, he sets out to find it.