WARNING: This article contains important spoilers “The Menu”
As with the last dish of a multi-course dinner, the ending of a movie can either leave you feeling empty or good.
“The Menu,” which stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult as a couple that dines at the mercy of a world-renowned chef (Ralph Fiennes), combines both structures: the film unfolds over the length of a single day, each painstakingly-prepared course signaling a new chapter in the story.
Though the guest list is exactly what you’d expect of a private island restaurant that charges more than a thousand bucks per head, the same cannot be said of the meal. Slowik raises a cloche to condemn the privileged sycophants who come to eat his food. What begins as a mockery quickly devolves into a series of violent spectacles, leaving it unclear who – if anyone – will make it out of Hawthorne alive.
Mark Mylod, the director of the grand finale decided to crank up the heat. Co-writers Will Tracy & Seith Reiss intended Margot (TaylorJoy) to challenge Slowik (Fiennes), in a showdown that concludes with Slowik ordering a cheeseburger, and her permission to leave the restaurant.
“From the very start, she was always going to outwit him,”Mylod stated that. “It was always the case that she would get out, and that she would use her intuition and empathy [to do so].”
Mylod, however, wanted to make the story more exciting than the one on the page.
Go into the shoot “It was niggling at me that [the ending] didn’t feel quite grand enough, quite cinematic enough for Chef Slowik’s choice as to how he would go out,”Mylod. “It felt that he’d want something a little more heightened.”
Inspiration for the “somewhat operatic” finale – in which Slowik transforms the restaurant into a giant s’more and sets it on fire – came from the Netflix docuseries “Chef’s Table.”
“I started working with an image that was stuck in my head from the opening titles, which is a beautiful top shot that [director and executive producer] David Gelb did down on a deconstructed dessert in Grant Achatz’s restaurant Alinea in Chicago,”He explained. “The dessert is basically spread out and smashed and smushed in this very artistic fashion over the entire table top.”
“I started to think, ‘Okay, what if we did that over the entire restaurant?’”He went on. “And all the lovely craft [departments] started jumping in on how we could achieve this.”
It is amazing to see the end result: Hawthorne explodes into flames toasting everyone inside, while Margot watches from a boat, with a cheeseburger in her hand, as Hawthorne toasts everyone.
“It was actually really tricky, but I loved the result and it felt like a truly unique ending to the film,”Mylod has been added “I’m really proud of that.”
Nov. 18: The Menu opens in Theaters
