Could you at least have the good taste not to pose with something you killed? No? How about keeping the picture to yourself? Well, no, I suppose that’s hardly the point – if you shoot a rhino, you gotta show off to your friends … and enemies … and if some liberal gets offended, hey, it’s a win-win, huh? Hear me out — do you know how this looks? Imagine if aliens abducted you, took selfies during the intense anal probing, and posted them on Interfacebook. Of course, this analogy doesn’t quite hold up – odds are, you’re still alive after a good anal probing – maybe if the aliens murdered you, then stuffed and mounted your ass to a wall and took a proud probe-in-hand snapshot that might be a closer parallel.
Obviously I’m not the world’s biggest fan of hunting, but I’m not the biggest detractor, either – I understand the need for food and population control, but I draw the line at hunting for sport … and pretending there’s a humanitarian reason because your permit $$$ go to a preserve; that’s just disgusting. It describes the kind of person who voted for Trump and claimed the moral high ground simultaneously. [If this does describe you, ahem, you’re a tool … a very ill-informed tool. Plain and simple.]
I didn’t want to get into it so early, but there’s no chance of avoiding a political bloodbath with today’s film, Beatriz at Dinner. This film is guaranteed to piss off somebody in your family, mostly likely your racist Trump-voting uncle, but possibly also your leftist Women’s March sister and everyone else in between.
Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is a massage therapist for a valley out-patient clinic specializing in cancer victims. Her job is alternatively rewarding and sad. As both orphan and immigrant, Beatriz knows struggle. An invitation to a coastal mansion owned by her client Shannon (Chloë Sevigny) is like a journey to an alternative alien universe. There will probably be probing involved. When the work is done, Beatriz tries to leave, but car trouble prevents it. Socially, Shannon has no choice but to add a seventh chair to the dinner party she’s hosting this very evening. Yeah, this isn’t awkward at all – three well-to-do white couples celebrating a business beat-down and a middle-aged, make-up free, Mexican immigrant all dolled up for an afternoon of yard work. It’s awkward when there’s milling; it’s awkward when there’s conversing; it’s awkward when drink orders are being taken. To her credit, Beatriz doesn’t hide: an invitation -no matter how contrived or coerced- is still an invitation.
And everything remains on that uneasy awkward level until Doug (John Lithgow), an unabashed champion of industry, shows up. Doug is a player, the kind of man who owns magazine covers and politician’s ears. He doesn’t live in a world where people tell him, “no.” This is very much the same world President Trump and his cabinet members live in. And the more Doug, destroyer, converses with Beatriz, healer, the more it sounds like two alley cats hissing at one another. It’s horrible and beastly … and yet you wouldn’t dare look away.
Beatriz at Dinner is the first of what I assume will be many, many, many future fictional films deliberately pitting blue staters against red staters. I’m naturally going to root blue, not just because I am, but because despite the standard red media noise, blue is the perpetual underdog. Even when Obama was president, there was always challenge to see what he could 
accomplish pitting himself against an avalanche of red racism and red money; the current government is a bunch of rich, white guys taking a steamroller to the sand castles built by the last administration. I’m sure all you red staters cheer it on big time, or will until you realize most of us, red and blue alike, live in the sand. Sadly, many of you never will find this realization. Anyway, get ready, because there will be plenty more movies where this came from.
We know Beatriz at Dinner is a slanted film; it makes no pretense otherwise. So the key is the portrayals. Is it fair or is this a hit piece? Beatriz may well be a lovely person with benevolence in her heart, but I doubt she and I would be friends; were I her neighbor, I would find her goat-tending amusing for about fifteen minutes. I’d also be supremely turned off by her one-with-nature spirituality. On the flip side, is Doug a fair portrayal or a straw man? Let me ask this: if you were proud of the buildings you built and the obstacles you overcame (including pesky protesters and indigenous inhabitants), wouldn’t you be only too proud to brag about your conquests to dinner guests? How about if you shot and killed a rhino? Would that be something you boasted and wore about on your sleeve? I think this is a fair portrayal of two folks on the opposite ends of the political spectrum who just can’t get enough of confrontation. Odds are you will, too, if you view Beatriz at Dinner with others.
Can’t help but care, it won’t suffice
To not be kind while being nice
Yet those who vote have made it clear
That they do not prefer me here
It does not matter who is right
When policy gives will to might
Tears when I see that flag unfurled
Hopelessly blue in blood red world
Rated R, 83 Minutes
D: Miguel Arteta
W: Mike White
Genre: Our polarized country
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Trolls
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Trump voters
