Character Studies: Mark Rylance in Bones and All
How a hat and a weird voice resulted in one of the most memorable performances of 2022.
(Character Studies focuses on supporting actor performances that linger in my mind long after I’ve watched them. Some spoilers should be expected).
Though the film industry seemed to be slowly returning to life in 2022, thanks to surprise hits like Everything Everywhere All at Once, legacy sequels like Top Gun: Maverick, and indie horror, a handful of prestige projects still struggled to find an audience. Some box office flops, like The Fabelmans, were genuinely surprising, while others, like David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, were satisfying in a schadenfreude sort of way. Almost entirely overlooked in the glut of winter releases was Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, a horror romance about a pair of teen cannibals that was at least as touching and melancholy as it was dark and gruesome.
One can only speculate as to why Bones and All flopped so hard. It’s a challenge trying to sell such a curious mix of genres1, but for starters, it probably would have been better if had been released around Halloween as opposed to the weekend before Thanksgiving. Now available on streaming, hopefully a larger audience can finally discover this beautiful little movie, a unique combination of Badlands and Near Dark with a pair of appealing, sympathetic leads in Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet.
Maren (Russell) and Lee (Chalamet), the aforementioned teen cannibals who meet on the road and fall in love, crave normal lives, and hope that they can eventually control the innate urge to consume human flesh. They’re harshly reminded, numerous times, of the possible future that lies ahead if they don’t keep themselves in check when they encounter several older “eaters” (including Maren’s long-lost mother), all of whom have given in to their urges and are now unable to exist peacefully among non-eaters. One of these is Sully (Mark Rylance), who initially acts as a mentor of sorts to Maren.
I haven’t read Camille DeAngelis’s novel of the same name, so I am unsure if Sully’s appearance and demeanor are canon, or if Rylance just showed up on the first day of shooting like that and Guadagnino went with it. When we use the phrase “choices were made,” this is what we’re talking about: Sully is a combination of an old hippie and the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, wearing in one scene what appears to be a fishing vest, and a shapeless overcoat covered in pins and brooches in another, always topped off with a jaunty feathered hat covering his long, braided hair. His voice is curiously high-pitched, with an unplaceable Southern accent. It’s impossible to tell where such an eccentric creature emerged from, maybe Louisiana, or maybe Neptune.
Sully appears out of nowhere one evening while Maren is traveling alone in Minnesota. He tells her that he can smell her, which is a heck of an opener, but turns out to be the truth: eaters recognize other eaters by a certain scent unique to them. They spend some time together as Sully shows Maren the ropes of eating people, though he pointedly warns her that some eaters can’t be trusted. “We’re dangerous to non-eaters,” he says. “But we can hurt one another just as bad.”
He also tells her that he gets around the ethical issues of cannibalism by only eating people who are already near death, such as an elderly woman they encounter near the end stages of a heart attack. Further, he points out that he honors those he’s eaten by taking locks of their hair and weaving it into a long braid he carries around in a bag2.
Stripped down to his practical aging man Fruit of the Looms to consume the woman, even covered in her blood Sully is more hapless than menacing. Nevertheless, his calm, even soothing demeanor isn’t enough to avail Maren of the idea that this is not a safe situation for her to be in. She flees, even though as far as she knows Sully is the only other person like her in the world. That is, until she meets Lee, a boy her own age. and Sully becomes a distant memory, some weirdo she met on the road once.
But still, he can smell her.
While Maren probably doesn’t think of Sully much at all, he thinks about her a lot, and her betrayal in declining his offer to be partners. They dined together on that elderly woman, as far as he’s concerned that meant something, and Maren’s perceived ingratitude, let alone that she’s chosen to partner with another eater instead, is something that can’t be forgiven. We don’t actually hear Sully say any of this, but it’s in his expression when he confronts her weeks later. That bland friendliness immediately hardens when he doesn’t get the answer he wants, and whatever unease drove Maren away from him in the first place turns out to have been completely justified. He doesn’t even have to raise his voice: “You dumb cunt,” he hisses, and we know he’s imagining what a lock of Maren’s hair would look like in his braid.
It is, unfortunately, not the last Maren will see of Sully. There’s no sin like the sin of rejection, and he’ll make not only Maren pay for it, but everyone in her immediate orbit, including Lee and Lee’s younger sister. He’s one of three of the very worst potential “Choose Your Own Adventure” endings for Maren and Lee. There’s also leering hillbilly Jake (Michael Stuhlbarg), who extols the virtues of eating a person “bones and all” as a sort of spiritual experience, and Maren’s mother Janelle (Chloë Sevigny), who’s so far gone she’s eaten her own hands. At least with Jake and Janelle, you know what to expect with them. They’re like coiled snakes, and you know right away to keep your distance.
But Sully, he’s different: he’s cultivated an image of shabby genteelness in his soft voice and quirky clothes. He subtly tries to manipulate Maren into believing both that eaters should avoid each other, but that also the two of them should stick together, so that he can guide and protect her (and, in turn, claim ownership of her). Sully confuses Maren’s naivete for ignorance, and her loneliness for desperation. Her rejection doesn’t just come as a surprise, but a grievous insult: how could she turn her back on him when he was so nice to her?
It’s Sully who lingers in the viewer’s mind long after Bones and All ends. We never know where he really comes from, or how many times he’s crossed the vast country, sniffing other young women like Maren out and luring them into his web with feigned kindness. Maybe in other parts of the country he goes by a different name, and somewhere there’s a whole life he left behind. Eaters are born that way, after all. But what we do know is that he’s traveled very far, and that braid of hair he carries with him is very, very long.
If you want to hear more of my thoughts on Bones and All, listen to the most recent episode of Kill by Kill, where I and my co-host Patrick Hamilton go long on this wonderful, criminally overlooked film.
It didn’t help that professional sourpusses like Variety’s Owen Gleiberman immediately dismissed it as being “Twilight with cannibals,” which it most definitely is not.
Much like a serial killer takes “trophies” from his victims, but of course, Maren doesn’t realize this yet.