Sophia Michaels
Timothée Chalamet ruminated on societal collapse and the difficulties of growing up in the age of social media during a Venice Film Festival press conference for his new movie, Bones and All.
The film stars Chalamet and Taylor Russell as two outcast teens — who are also cannibals — traveling and eating their way around the Midwest in the thick of Reagan’s America. Despite when the movie is set, and that one particularly sensational detail, Chalamet suggested it was easy to find parallels between the alienated adolescents he and Russell were playing, and the young people of today.
But while their Bones and All characters may have both had an insatiable taste for human flesh, at least, he noted, they didn’t have smartphones.
“To be young now, and to be young whenever — I can only speak for my generation — is to be intensely judged,” Chalamet said. “I can’t imagine what it is to grow up with the onslaught of social media, and it was a relief to play characters that are wrestling with an internal dilemma absent the ability to go on Reddit, or Twitter, Instagram or TikTok and figure out where they fit in.”
Chalamet continued: “Without casting judgment on that, if you can find your tribe there, then all the power. But I think it’s tough to be alive now. I think societal collapse is in the air — it smells like it — and, without being pretentious, that’s why hopefully movies matter, because that’s the role of the artist… to shine a light on what’s going on.”
Russell picked up on that sentiment, talking about her young brother and “the self-judgment and judgment of others that people seem so flooded with every day in such a drastic and severe way.” She added, “[T]he hope is that you can find your own compass within all of it, and that seems like a difficult task now.”
Bones and All will be released on Nov. 23. Along with Chalamet and Russell, the film also stars Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Jessica Harper, and Chloé Sevigny. Also, please stop asking director Luca Guadagnino about the timing of his cannibal love story and the Armie Hammer cannibalism fetish allegations — it’s just a coincidence.
