Rare Beasts: A Look at the Not So Rare Broken Collective

Rare Beasts is the directorial and writing debut of Billie Piper, who also stars in this peculiar and sometimes nauseating look into broken people attempting to find love and acceptance, at the cost of their dignity. It seems to be a commentary, in fact, regarding how alike so many of us are in our insecurities under the weight of toxic society and a look at the journey to find clarity in the recognition of just how broken we are.

Hi! I Don’t Love Myself!

Mandy (Piper) is an eccentric, single mother navigating life in the midst of deep depression and is a slave to the toxic masculine that permeates her world. Her ailing mother Marion (Kerry Fox) and extensively quirky son Larch (Toby Woolf), live with her, adding a greater level of stress and tension to her already screwed up existence.

Pressure is mounting for her to find a man and get married as she is an “older” single woman, i.e. “less than” in toxic masculine parameters. She meets Pete (Leo Bill), the living embodiment of toxic male insecurity and anger and all but forces herself to fall in love with him because he “tolerates” her.

Mandy is a prime asset to the toxic masculine because she has been trained extensively by her broken parents to embrace and become the toxic feminine. She works with the worst of troglodytes at her job and is immersed in drug-addicted, toxic friends.

Desperation Makes A Terrible Partner

Source: Brainstorm Media

As the film continues, Mandy becomes more desperate to hang on to Pete. She settles for his abusive moodiness to both herself and her son. Paralleled throughout, is the toxic relationship that her parents had while she was growing up. Dad Vic (David Thewlis). is a philanderer and a drunk and mom Marion, a jaded depressive living with her daughter because Vic left her no place to go after their divorce.

We begin to see why Mandy is the train wreck that she is. Aspects of mental health abound throughout but is never talked about by the characters. Instead, rampant drinking, drugging and smoking keeps all of the characters repressing their pain and acting out in a myriad of unhealthy ways.

Even when Mandy has her realization at the end that she is broken, there is little solace that she is headed in the right direction after. She has no person of clarity in her life who can elucidate the way out of the brokenness she now owns.

In All Honesty…

There are a lot of aspects of the film that I liked and that seemed promising, but the confusion in how the film was put together made it difficult to love. I was never quite sure where the film was going or what message Piper was trying to convey.

The editing was rather clunky and added to the confusion overall. Mix that in with ridiculously loud and seemingly unnecessary musical montages throughout and lucidity in purpose stayed muddled. Maybe this was intended for artistic reasons but it was not effective in conveying any sense of hope or transparency, which was sorely needed.

Source: Brainstorm Media

Still, I did like the underlying themes of how women and men are raised in and then consumed by, toxic masculinity. It perpetuates a never-ending cycle of the broken raising the broken. Women become the unwitting victims of toxic masculine privilege and rage, while perpetuating and succumbing to it in countless ways.

Capitalist society encourages self esteem issues, bombarding you with messages and products that tell you that you are not enough as you are. Why wouldn’t they? They stand to make billions on it. Toxic society tells you that you’re too ugly, fat, stupid and flawed, but only those with money can afford the “treatments” to fix all of that.

The problem is, none of the products fix anything, instead they keep us focused on the soulless, shallow pursuit of “perfection” that is sexist, racist, ableist, fatphobic, LGBTQ-phobic and impossible.

Piper magnified this in the film when, no matter what Mandy did or endured, at least she looked good. Several men symbolically pat her on the head with a condescending “but you’re so pretty” or “hot” as if it was a shame she was messed up, because her “prettiness” was being wasted.

Society tells us that “pretty” is the most important thing for women to be, regardless of if it’s pursuit devastates our lives. It is pervasive in all of our media and men are allowed to look and act out all kinds of “ugly” and still get jobs, relationships, power and respect. In that sense, Mandy is a poster child for how sick our society is.

The truth of it is, perfection can never be attained as humans and while we are broken we will never have the healthy relationships we crave. We first must heal from our own trauma and learn to love ourselves before we can ever really love anyone else.

However, one needs to wake up and attain clarity before they can shift tracks and that is incredibly difficult with all of the garbage dumped on us from day one. The broken don’t usually have the mental, emotional or physical resources needed for clarity and toxic society thrives on that.

One of my biggest takeaway’s from the film is that Mandy, Pete and their families represent an unfortunate majority rather than a rarity. I think many viewers can find things to relate to in these damaged characters, and hopefully, it will resonate enough to shift perspectives for the better.

Because we all have it within us to uncover our unique lights that were meant to shine in this world, but we must have the courage to walk through the dark in order to find them.