The Beach, 2000

March 7, 2022 | ANGEI FERNANDEZ-SALIS

The main character of the film, Richard, goes to Bangkok, Thailand trying to find some kind of different experience compared to his usual life. At his hotel, he meets a crazy man named Daffy that tells Richard about a beach paradise hidden from the world. The next day, Daffy commits suicide but leaves Richard a map to the beach paradise. He brings along a couple from the hotel Francoise and Etienne to find the hidden beach. They travel to nearby islands in order to get close enough to the mainland where the hidden beach is, but in order to get there, they must swim to it. Once they arrived, they almost stumble into local armed farmers who kill trespassers. As they run away from the farmers, they eventually meet Keaty who is part of the beach community and takes them to the rest of the group. At this point, all three are interrogated by the leader, Sal, where she asks about how they learned about the beach and if they had shared the map with anyone else. All three promise to have not shared any information, but Richard had made a copy of the map and left it with other tourists on the previous island.

Once everyone settles, the beach turns out to be exactly how it was described where everyone was happy. One day, Sal chooses Richard to accompany her to go back to Koh Phangan in order to get more food and necessities for everyone in the community. On this island, it's revealed that Richard had shared information about the beach with the other tourists, and Sal tells him to be on guard because there can be no more people on the island but also blackmails him for her silence. Sal had promised the local farmers that the beach community wouldn't grow anymore, and if people still came, then the community would be kicked out of the island. They get back to the beach and everything seems to go back to normal, where everyone is happy. But then two people get attacked by sharks while they were fishing (Sten & Christo), Sten dies instantly while Christo survives. Sal and the community agree that Christo must go back to Koh Phangan because he needs to go to a hospital, but he disagrees and asks for someone to bring a doctor to the beach. Sal becomes furious because no one else is allowed to come and know about the beach's existence. It's decided that Christo will stay on the beach with no medical help, and here he slowly dies. As the days go by, Christo is heard moaning and screaming and this disrupts the community's happiness, so eventually, he is taken to the jungle and left there to die.

After this event, the community goes back to normal where they are happy and having fun. Sadly there's another situation, the tourists make it to the island and Richard is given the task to take the map away from them before the farmers find it. Richard is unable to get the map, and the tourists are killed by the farmers. He does get spotted and is hunted down by one of the farmers, but eventually, Richard kills the farmer and runs back to the community trying to get Francoise and Etienne to leave the island. Immediately the leader of the farmers arrives and demands Sal and her community to leave forever. Sal argues back and outs Richard about sharing the map with people, so the farmer tells Sal to kill Richard if the community wants to stay there. Sal fires the gun at Richard, but nothing comes out, and instead, the whole community freaks out and runs out to leave the island immediately. Sal is left crying on the floor, while everyone leaves in order to go their separate ways.

This film was a lot to take in, but it did contain utilitarianism involving the community. Since utilitarianism focuses on the happiness of the majority, the example in this film was leaving the injured person behind to die & trying to get rid of the tourists in order to keep the beach a secret. Sal the leader made the decision that would best benefit the community, and disregard the lives of the others who would die. One could argue against utilitarianism and say that letting those people die because it disrupted the happiness of the other is morally wrong.