A24 will stream Warwick Thornton’s “looping film”… | Little White Lies

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A24 will stream War­wick Thornton’s loop­ing film” The Beach this Thanksgiving

02 Nov 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

The con­tin­u­ous, week-long sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence” lux­u­ri­ates in the trop­i­cal vibes of the Aus­tralian shore.

The abo­rig­i­nal Aus­tralian film­mak­er War­wick Thorn­ton was ear­ly to the self-iso­la­tion trend, seques­ter­ing him­self on a stretch of shore­line on the Dampi­er Penin­su­la long before the pan­dem­ic forced every­one to coop up in their homes. He’d gone there for one month all by his lone­some to shoot a slow-cin­e­ma project called The Beach, pre­vi­ous­ly broad­cast as a three-hour event on Aus­tralian TV net­work SBS, and now com­ing to a glob­al audi­ence in a curi­ous altered form.

The trail­er below announces that through their live-stream­ing Screen­ing Room plat­form, A24 will bring The Beach to view­ers all over the world, but there’s no need to wor­ry about meet­ing spe­cif­ic show­times. In a first for the ser­vice, they will run the three-hour pro­gram on a con­tin­u­ous loop that those will­ing to fork over six Amer­i­can dol­lars for a tick­et can access and return to at their own leisure.

The idea is that the film has no set begin­ning or end, instead more of a med­i­ta­tive medi­um meant for mind­ful immer­sion, as hint­ed at by the tagline of Breathe in’ repeat­ed in the trail­er below. (Which itself loops three times, giv­ing a small impres­sion of the pure vibes in which we’ve been invit­ed to bask.) A view­er can sit down for the com­plete three-hour film, or pop in and out for an hour – with­out much of a plot to speak of, there’s no set onboard­ing point.

The film sees Thorn­ton him­self wan­der­ing around an idyl­lic clime, his actions guid­ed by the imper­a­tive of low-stakes sur­vival: he makes a hut, shel­ters from the unfor­giv­ing sun, and most impor­tant­ly, he finds enough nat­ur­al boun­ty to feed him­self. There’s a hint of food porn to this sooth­ing vis­it to the great out­doors, as we watch Thorn­ton pre­pare fish and fruit with crisp sound effects to rouse our appetites.

Dur­ing the Amer­i­can hol­i­day of Thanks­giv­ing, there’s always a slow burn of anx­i­ety for those bustling about with fam­i­ly, much of it relat­ed to elab­o­rate meal prepa­ra­tion. What could be a bet­ter ton­ic for that par­tic­u­lar fatigue than soli­tude, calm, and back-to-basics cooking?

The Beach will stream via A24’s Screen­ing Room from 22 Novem­ber to 28 November.

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