This movie may be A Banquet, but it’s no feast. It has no fat in it, but no meat either. It’s lean but not muscular – nothing but skin and bones. It might whet your appetite for similar but heartier offerings such as Take Shelter, Horse Girl, or the German Kreuzweg – but then why not just skip the apéritif and go straight for the main course?
The action, such as it is, is triggered by the rise of a big, red moon that sends Betsey (Jessica Alexander), who may or may not be the only one who can see it, into an on-and-off trance. This reminds me of the blood moon prophecies by Christian preachers John Hagee and Mark Biltz, related to a series of four full moons in 2014 and 2015. The prophecies stated that a tetrad (a series of four consecutive lunar eclipses) which began with the April 2014 lunar eclipse was the beginning of the end times as described in the Bible in the Book of Joel, Acts 2:20, complete with the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture.
I’m reminded of this, not because Betsey also starts vaguely prophesying the end of the world, nor because at some point someone appears to be raptured, but because the tetrad came and went and nothing really happened, and the same can be said of A Banquet once the end credits start to roll. Now, at least Hagee’s and Biltz’s prophecies had slight connection with reality; the lunar eclipses were real, albeit with perfectly reasonable explanations – and ‘explanations’ is something sorely missing from this movie.
Don’t get me wrong; a little mystery can go a long way, but writer Justin Bull and director Ruth Paxton can’t be bothered to even begin scratching the lunar surface, as it were. What this red moon hides on its dark side is anybody’s guess. I’m not saying they should have come up with their own elaborate mythology like in Equus (although that is very nice touch), but they could have easily resorted to an existing religion, as Kreuzweg does; either way, give us a frame of reference.
Here, Betsey claims to have been “chosen”, but never specifies by whom. Her brand of eschatology amounts to little more than some refrain about “stars burning”. All things considered, it’s actually fitting, all this talk about the moon and the stars, because A Banquet is all atmosphere, and it quickly fizzles out into the ether. The same applies to the perfunctory attempt at ambiguity made in the form of Betsey’s skeptical grandmother; neither she nor Betsey’s myriad doctors make a big deal out of Betsey’s ability to keep a steady weight without eating. If true, that would be a medical wonder; if not – but let’s just that the possibility that she’s committing a pious fraud is never brought up. By the way, the goal of fasting is that it should entail a sacrifice (as in, once again, Krezweg); Betsey, on the other hand, is just not hungry.
