Léa Seydoux and George MacKay in The Beast Carole Bethuel
Bertrand Bonello
The Beast, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month, is set partly in a near future in which artificial intelligence is in control of everyone’s lives and human emotions are perceived as a threat.
Directed by Bertrand Bonello, the film is loosely based on a Henry James novella, The Beast in the Jungle, but is far removed from that book’s fatalistic manifesto. The story unfolds over three separate years: 1910, 2014 and 2044. In…