Game

How Menu Connects to Succession and Game of Thrones

On the surface, Horror films by Mark Mylod Menu looks like a chilling, high-end horror movie. The trailer is the story of a successful chef who traps his wealthy, spoiled patrons, drawing them into an unpredictable game of life and death where he and his followers take to heart. His pancreas determines all the rules. Bloody anarchy followed. But Mylod sees the film differently — and his interpretation is directly related to what attracted him not only to this film but to his other most famous work, as is a regular director of hit TV series heir and Game of Thrones.

For Mylod, the connection between those three stories is how they treat their family – literally Game of Thrones and heirand more symbolic in Menuwhere the villain — the mysterious, aristocratic chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) — has built his kitchen staff into a frenziedly devoted team that his avid apprentice Elsa (the guard Hong Chau star) described specifically as a family.

“If I have any emphasis on my work — going back to my British work, when I first started directing in the late 1500s — it is family,” says Mylod. joked with Polygon in a later interview. Menuof at Fantastic Fest 2022 in Austin, Texas. “I realized that power and family are symbiotic, especially in the early years. I was really fascinated by that. You are trapped in the space where you are, and you can’t really escape until you can leave the house. And so there are endless possibilities for dramatic conflict.”

Margo (Anya Taylor-Joy), a woman with an off-the-shoulder dress and thick red hair, looks up close to the camera in The Menu

Photo: Searchlight Pictures

In Game of ThronesIn fact, bloodline is destiny — everyone involved in the quest for nominal power and domination is motivated and constrained by the family they were born into. In heir, the whole story revolves around the relationships and rivalry in a wealthy family. In Menuhowever, there is a feeling that Chef Slowik’s patrons — including characters played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, John Leguizamo, and Aimee Carrero — have been ensnared by a family that resembles a denomination.

“Part of the appeal of Menu The idea is that you put all of the characters in this one box with almost that one family, and you trap them in this space, and there’s a multitude of possibilities for dramatic confrontation and dramatic conflict,” Mylod said. speak. “And from that, you get that lovely relationship between tension and humour, which the screenwriters took advantage of a lot.”

The family literally appears in Menuwith Chef Slowik’s mother as one of his mortal dinner patrons, though their relationship and intentions towards each other is one of the film’s biggest mysteries.

“We hope you will fill in some blanks,” says Mylod. “[The question is] always How far does one go with exposition? How far comes the plot of Chef? We went closely with that. The choice that we make is to hit the intelligence of the audience. They can fill those out themselves. Today’s audience is so sophisticated, we don’t feel the need to dig into that too much. They can feel an emotional connection.”

A further connection between Game of Thrones, heirand Menu All three stories heavily deal with the rich weaponizing their power and being punished for their arrogance, but all three stories personify those characters.

“That game was always the heart of it,” said Mylod. “With Cotton [Joon-ho] In Parasites, he never intended to consider the poor as the good and the rich as the bad. It’s cliché and it starts to undermine the authenticity of the emotional story he’s trying to tell. We find ourselves in the same place – we want an emotional connection with these characters. We can see how they do stupid things, but I certainly don’t want them to be just cardboard cutouts, two-dimensional stereotypes. We want them to have an emotional life, and we want the audience to feel their danger.”

A man frantically swings a chair against one of the glass walls of a fancy restaurant in an attempt to break it and escape, while the rest of the diners are terrified watching a scene from The Menu

Photo: Searchlight Pictures

For Mylod, the connections between heir and Menu stronger, both in subject matter and in how he works behind the scenes to encourage improvisation and immersion in the cast.

“Something I brought Menu very specific from heir “It’s my lifelong admiration for Robert Altman and the way he works,” Mylod said. “I was fortunate early on in my directing career to work with two actors, Charles Dance and Michael Gambon, who have worked on the film. [Altman’s masterpiece] Gosford Park, and I kept asking them about how he worked. He’s actually the first director in the West to have two audio mixers and captivate everyone [on a set] mik up.”

Altman is known for his natural, overlapping dialogue, captured on set from people encouraged to stay the same. Mylod used that technique on heir and Menu to give his setting what he calls a “Darwinian feel,” where people are always acting, rather than just in short sets where the camera is on them and they have specific lines. in the script.

“Everybody is involved and everyone is improvising, so everyone is alive and present during that time,” he said. “I used it on heirand i used it on Menu. It took a very specific, brave, intelligent, intuitive actor to embrace that. We’ve been very specific in our hiring to get there. [With The Menu], the result was the happiest seven weeks you can have on set, because we were all locked together in our bubble with COVID at the time. All the extras start in the morning, everyone enjoys it, and if they’re off the camera, they’re still supportive, they’re still improvising, keeping the atmosphere of the restaurant alive.

“Those brilliant kitchen staff were there every day, after going through this training on exactly what they should be doing at any given time. They’re doing their choreographed dance, with the precision of the Slowik world. So we ended up with a really loose and free-flowing way of working, which is an interesting counterpoint to the accuracy of text and rhythm in Slowik’s world.”

Director Mark Mylod sits at a table on set with some of the characters from The Menu, gesturing offscreen as he directs, with camera equipment and operators in the background.

Photo: Searchlight Pictures

As far as connected threads heir and MenuMylod said the “cannibal” idea of ​​the powerful being punished is “part of the fun,” but he’s more interested in how both stories deal with distorted creativity and the ideal disintegration of the characters.

“The metamorphosis of art through power, through monopoly, through money, is certainly something that interests me personally. That’s definitely what drew me to heir,” he said. “I worked with [Succession creator] Jesse [Armstrong] in this matter. With Menu, I think the theme of the pure beauty of creating delicious food for others, the act of sharing, maintaining, and nurturing others in a purely fundamental way – it’s beautiful. You can’t get more basic than that, except perhaps in childbirth. And the fact that it’s been corrupted by industry, money – it seems to me like there’s an element of tragedy. [for Chef Slowik]. I think the metamorphosis of an ideal is really interesting.”

Ultimately, the sense of tragedy in one character is part of what defines Mylod’s favorite characters in all three of these stories. While he’s more hesitant to reveal his fan base for one character than another in these three ensemble projects — “That’s like asking me my favorite child,” he says — he admits that he is attracted to villains who see themselves as heroes.

Because Game of Thrones, which means being pulled towards Cersei Lannister. “[Actor] Lena [Headey] very opposite of that character,” Mylod said. “She was so laid-back, lovely and fun, and then she completely transformed into a different person in front of the camera. It’s extraordinary to see the transition. It seems very easy.

“And [Cersei is a favorite] because I remember talking to Lena about how she sees the character — one day she just made a comment about ‘I’m just trying to protect my kids here.’ Just like Cersei isn’t evil, she’s just a woman trying to protect her children. Just looking at it from that perspective, it was a revelation to me. I’m a bit romanticized by how evil she is, and at the same time, she’s just trying to protect her kids. So that’s beautiful to me.

Because heir, Mylod was attracted to Tom Wambsgans (played by Matthew Macfadyen) of the Roy family, also because of the distance between actor and character. “Same argument, really,” Mylod said. “Do not have one the best character, but in terms of who changes the most from themselves to the character, it would be Matthew, because he’s a gentle, quiet, lovable character, and then he turns into Tom This monster.

“And he just brought an emotional side to the character that sometimes broke my heart, because he was just a Midwestern kid trying to make it great, chasing his dream. his dream. So if you look at him and say maybe he’s a bad guy, he just thinks he’s doing a good job. No one thinks he’s a bad guy.”

The same is true of Mylod’s favorite character in Menu: inevitably, its suffering villain, Chef Slowik, also doesn’t consider the capture and torture of his patrons evil. Instead, he sees them as having captured and tortured him, leading to everything that happens in the movie. “That’s why I love him,” Mylod said. “He is the essential, silent tragedy behind what is hoped to be a truly enjoyable ride of a movie. Slowik is in pain. He’s just trying to stop the pain.”

Menu Currently showing in theaters.



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