By the time that Kitao Sakurai stepped behind the camera for the second season of Netflix’s Beef, everything is becoming more and more tangled. Niceties have given way to rage and anger but then, miraculously, they are softening and evolving to create unlikely bonds. Is trust forming before our very eyes? How much should we trust these new friendships? Just remember to keep your eyes on that glass of orange juice…
Sakurai and I begin our conversation about continuing the threads of deeply felt anger through the arguments between Carey Mulligan’s Lindsay and Oscar Isaac’s Joshua. As their anxieties climb over their lost dog, the beloved Burberry, their resentments flood their home and Sakurai explains how much he enjoys employing movement to accelerate a scene’s tension.
The filmmaker then reveals how he uses a camera’s focus to make the audience realize whose point of view we are actually in as a scene unfolds. This happens twice across episodes five and six. When Cailee Spaeny’s Ashley encounters Lindsay looking for her dog, we feel her guilt for perhaps leading to Burberry’s escape, but then that feeling is flipped when she explores Austin’s phone so she can make sure that he isn’t still chatting with Eunice. The camera backs out of the room as if we have walked in on something that we haven’t seen.
There are so many moments where Sakurai employs the camera to enhance intimacy and tension in his two episodes. At the end of episode five, Joshua and Lindsay admit to themselves that they need to separate, and Sakurai keeps the camera mostly still and the atmosphere quiet. After so much emotional volatility up until that point, he allows the honesty to bleed into the scene with a revelation of calm. That stillness is very much juxtaposed by the stillness and control of YounYuh-jung’s Chairwoman Park. She wields that quietness like a weapon, and you understand her power when you watch her scenes again after knowing how the remainder of the season plays out.
Do you fight with control and calm or scream and thrash to make your case known? Sakurai can play in both worlds with sturdy, assured effect.
Beef is streaming now on Netflix.
