Tag: Yorgos Lanthimos

Poor Things

Posted on by victorfraga

Socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg once noted: “ Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” It’s easy to imagine Bella Baxter, the heroine of Poor Things, reading those words. A fictitious contemporary of Luxemburg, her peculiar tale comprises the 1992 novel by the Scottish nationalist Alasdair Gray. Thirty years later, Gray’s postmodern bildungsroman has finally been adapted into a feature film by Yorgos Lanthimos and Tony McNamara, the director-writer team behind The Favourite (2018). With Lanthimos’s flair for corporeal grotesquerie, this visually striking interpretation of Gray’s text pares back the novel’s complexity to hone on the Greek Weird Wave auteur’s fascination with the human body as a site for potential, perpetual transgression.

Bella’s (Emma Stone) story begins with another’s ending as a pregnant woman leaps from a bridge to her watery death. That woman is revived by the alchemical machinations of Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), who surgically replaces her brain with her unborn child’s. Baxter enlists the services of a young colleague, Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef), to assist him in observing the woman he’s christened Bella as her cognitive abilities and sexual curiosities rapidly develop.

At the behest of the benevolent father figure she calls “God”, Bella is engaged to marry the meekly inoffensive McCandless and reside in the Baxter estate. But she’s wooed by the lascivious lawyer finalising the marriage, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), and before long, Bella embarks on a whirlwind adventure with Wedderburn for her benefit more than his. The sights Bella absorbs, lensed in vibrant ektachrome by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, initially captivate her, but gradually revisit the opening scenes’ monochromatic palette as she strives to retain her compassion with every form of opportunism and cruelty she encounters.

The narrative beats of Gray’s novel are replicated in McNamara’s script, though its epistolary passages are understandably streamlined as Bella makes her way from Lisbon to Paris, daring Wedderburn to keep up. Lanthimos’s fascination with awkward expressions of human movement has persevered in his transition to the outer fringes of the mainstream. He has found his platonic ideal in Stone. With fearless physicality, her performance warrants a co-author credit in her contribution to shaping Bella’s transition from farcical naivete to self-assured perspicacity.

Yet despite my admiration for Stone, there are a slew of creative decisions in Poor Things that stymie the radical potential of its central character. Lanthimos visually emulates Bella’s awe at a world beyond any constraints of realism with the production design duo (Shona Heath and James Price) freely fusing Albert Robida’s futuristic illustrations with the buxom architecture in Fassbinder’s Querelle. Robida’s career was effectively ended by WW1, his fantastic machinery having lost their lustre in the face of mass carnage. The Great War ends Gray’s novel, yet it goes unmentioned in the film, which opts for a rare happy ending in Lanthimos’ oeuvre.

However, the parting note of emancipatory joy in Poor Things rings hollow. The sights of systemic inequity which shake Bella resemble those from the book, significantly a sojourn to Alexandria that yields her first exposure to squalor and despair. But it’s telling that while the film bluntly allegorises a gap between the higher and lower classes, McNamara and Lanthimos lack Gray’s interest in interrogating the social or psychological apparatuses which uphold that disparity.

Instead, Lanthimos’ jettisons specificity for a “universal” approach that too often mistakes vulgarity for transgression. The much-ballyhooed sex scenes do yield fleetingly pithy observations on the body as a site for pedagogical growth, but their outrageous lunacy plays too often to the peanut gallery. This faux-provocative attitude is bolstered by McNamara’s odious use of anachronistic swearing to get an easy laugh. “Hope is smashable, realism is not,” a cynical figure (Jerrod Carmichael) tells Bella. But Lanthimos’ inability to explore the complex methods of maintaining political hope belies his progressive overtures.

The result is a postmodern exercise in packaging history as a spectacular singularity, however fearful of pushing its audience to look beyond their own bodies. To that end, Poor Things is a film whose remarkably bold central performance is left to wallow in a secretly feeble movie.

Poor Things showed at the 61st New York Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It premiered in September in Venice, where it won the Golden Lion. The UK premiere takes place in October, as part of the BFI London Film Festival. It also shows in the Best of Festivals section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. In cinemas on Friday, January 12th.

Nimic

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

A cellist has a mind-bending encounter on the New York subway in Nimic, a brief riff on the theme of The Double from Greek maestro Yorgos Lanthimos. Baffling and inviting in equal measure, it will delight die-hard Lanthimostans while easily alienating fans of conventional three-act structures. In any case, it shows what Lanthimos is capable of with smaller resources and only 11 minutes of runtime.

The film begins with dramatic music scoring Father (Matt Dillon) waking up next to his wife (Susan Elle) and eating breakfast with his children. The music stops and starts, quickly revealing the Father rehearsing an orchestral piece. This deliberate use of artificial music helps to set the tone for Nimic, which is all about artificiality of performance itself. After rehearsal, he takes the New York Subway. He asks a woman (Daphné Patakia) the time. She pauses, looking like a typically antisocial user of New York transit systems. Then she copies him: “Do you have the time?”

This is a deliberately repetitive movie, working like a piece of music itself, repeating brief poetic motifs — a boiling egg, a subway ride, a cello being played — at a smooth and intriguing rhythm. She is his mimic. She follows him. He goes home to the mother of his children and says: “Children please, tell your mother who their real father is.” The mimic repeats the same, and the children respond: “How should we know? We’re just kids.” To the average person, this should seem obvious, but in Yorgos’ world, it’s a deliberate provocation; asking us to question standard norms in favour of strangeness and paranoia.

For Lanthimos completists — who are more likely to seek the movie out than the average viewer — Nimic presents all of his usual tricks. The usual perspective distorting fish-eye lens is here, along with whip pans and lateral tracking shots. Actors in Yorgos Lanthimos films do not emote very much. Like in Kubrick, their deadpan faces are part of the theme itself; a reflection of a dystopian world where nothing makes sense. Circling upon itself with twisted glee, this is a concept that could conceivably go on forever, a kind of Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) for nihilists.

Perhaps the title can give us a clue, yet it seems to be another one of Lanthimos’ tricks. On first glance Nimic looks like a deliberate misspelling of mimic, yet a cursory look at Wiktionary tells me that it’s the Romanian word for both “nothing” and “anything”. This double meaning is a fitting descriptor of the film itself, which some will find laden with deeper themes and others will find rather empty. Perhaps I need to watch it again. And again. And again.

The film premiered as part of the Fuori concorso: Shorts programme in the Locarno Film Festival 2019, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK in October, as part of the BFI London Film Festival. Out on Mubi on Friday, November 27th (2020).

The Favourite has Barry Lyndon written all over it

Posted on by victorfraga

Asking somebody to pick their favourite Kubrick film is like asking a parent to name their favourite child. The Kubrickian genetic code means you possess a strong affection for all of them but – let’s be honest – there are some films that give you more satisfaction than others. Barry Lyndon (1975) is the neglected child. The one most fans shove aside. In the playground line-up, Barry Lyndon is the thin, bespectacled kid who is only ever chosen when everyone else has already been picked.

Yet, Barry Lyndon‘s legacy is momentous, and not limited to its technical wizardry. Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film is an epic story, a profound character study and a razor-sharp satire of the British aristocracy. It has influenced many period dramas since. For example, the ornate, Carnivalesque atmosphere of Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1985; pictured below) echoes Barry Lyndon. Katherine (Florence Pugh) of Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd, 2017) has a predicament very similar to Barry’s, of a social climber entering the aristocracy. Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995) shares costume and locations that consistently remind me of the beautiful tableaux of the 1975 film. Martin Scorsese and David Chase (writer of television series The Sopranos) both single it out as a major inspiration.

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Lanthimos’s favourites

Yorgos Lanthimos, Greek auteur and figurehead of the weird wave of Greek cinema, has made a welcome addition to the list. The Favourite (which is out in cinemas right now) portrays a triadic power struggle in 18th Century England between Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) and sycophantic Abigail and Sarah (Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, respectively). And it has Barry Lyndon written all over it, at least in my opinion. Even if Lanthimos doesn’t recognise it.

In a short YouTube video, the Greek director talks about some of the films that inspired The Favourite. They include Peter Greenway’s The Draughtman’s Contract (1982), Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972) and the aforementioned Amadeus. Lanthimos’s omission of Barry Lyndon is blatant and conspicuous. For starters, both films take place in 18th century Britain. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg of similarities. Perhaps Lanthimos wanted to avoid the comparisons because the similarities are so glaring, and he could be branded unoriginal.

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Fish-eyes wide open

The boldest visual choice in The Favourite is Lanthimos’s liberal use of the fish-eye lens. The film is dotted with warped shots, giving the it a feeling of deformity and eccentricity. One such example is pictured above: Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult) tries to convince Sarah to grant him an audience with the Queen. The whole sequence has a humorous quality – including a duck in the middle of the table – that counters the sly political manoeuvring.

Barry Lyndon uses similar tricks. The best example is in a fist fight between Barry and a soldier. The camera rests above Barry’s shoulder but remains wide enough to make his opponent look at once imposing and ridiculous. This happens again during Lady Lyndon’s suicide attempt. Her grief-stricken convulsions are disturbing yet there is pitch-black humour to be found in her failing to take enough poison. We watch her flail about frantically, like a fish out of water. When Barry’s father is killed in a duel, the death is so distant that it’s almost insignificant. Kubrick starts small, and zooms out until the subject becomes a little detail on the silver screen (pictured below).

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Period laughs

Both The Favourite and Barry Lyndon are brimming with comedic elements, with ample opportunities to mock aristocratic rituals and sense of grandeur. In Barry Lyndon, John Quin makes faces to the camera as he marches. In The Favourite, Abigail (Stone) dances with her soon-to-be lover (pictured above). Both sequences are so absurd they border on parody.

Kubrick often mocks the perceived sense of superiority of the British aristocracy by placing people in the background, standing gallantly despite being completely redundant to the action. Lanthimos peppers his film with bizarre events such as duck racing and oranges being thrown at a naked, obese man. Both directors seek to criticise the aristocracy by parodying their inflated sense of self-righteousness. And both are equally successful.

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No mountain high enough

Perhaps more significantly, both films portray “common opportunists” who use their charms and wit in order to climb to the top of the aristocracy.

In Kubrik’s film, Barry is the sole social climber. He successfully climbs to the top of the aristocracy in the first half of the film, only to crash in the second part. In The Favourite, two characters split the social climbing functions. Abigail is equivalent to Barry during his rise, while Sarah is tantamount to Barry during his fall.

Both Barry and Abigail (pictured above) are underdogs in the beginning of the movies. Both of their fathers perished in a freak incident and both of them have our sympathy. Both have a large potential to cause harm and gradually lose our allegiance as they climb up the social ladder. Sarah’s eventual demise mirrors Barry. And they both meet a hapless ending.

Despite the Kubrickian influences, The Favourite remains a very original film. It adds new twists and flavours to many of the techniques Kubrick created, and the outcome is something entirely novel.

The Favourite

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The maverick Greek director of Dogtooth (2009) makes his third English language film and his first period costume drama. The Favourite is loosely based on early 18th century historical record. Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts who was beset by health issues, had some 17 pregnancies including many miscarriages and no heir surviving beyond the age of 11.

Her smart and shrewd childhood companion and friend Lady Sarah Churchill did much of Anne’s thinking for her, pushing her to support the merchant class political party the Whigs rather than the landed gentry party the Tories. The Whigs demanded support for a war against the French, while the Tories were resistant to the heavily increased taxes which funded the war effort at their expense. The relationship of Lady Sarah to the Queen was undermined by the arrival of maidservant Abigail Hill, a ruthless member of the gentry whose family had fallen on hard times and who was determined to fight her way back up the social ladder at any cost.

If that outline is true to the facts, the screenplay fashioned upon their foundation by Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara seek to explore less the historic detail of what actually happened and more the power dynamics of the three women involved. Olivia Colman is magnificent as the shy and vulnerable Anne who nevertheless wields absolute power as monarch. Rachel Weisz makes a fearsome Lady Sarah, whether the powerful manipulator seen at the start or the hideously disfigured victim of a riding accident she becomes towards the end as events turn against her. Emma Stone as the social climber Abigail however seems to be playing the same empowered woman character she always plays.

There’s a strong if historically contentious sexual element, with Lady Sarah the Queen’s clandestine lover until Abigail, who initially ingratiates herself with both Anne and Sarah by using a herbal paste to relieve burning sensations in the bedridden Anne’s legs, replaces Sarah in Anne’s affections. Further intrigues involve the English two party Parliament in the story’s background. Foppish opposition Tory leader Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult, the memorable psychotic from George Miller’s 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road almost unrecognisable under a lengthy, light coloured wig) senses Abigail working her way into the Queen’s favour and wants to recruit her to spy on Lady Sarah and Anne. Although a fringe character, he is more pivotal to the action than his rival the government’s Whig PM Lord Godolphin (James Smith) who the Queen, under Sarah’s influence, supports.

Apart from Stone’s arrival where she’s literally pushed out of the carriage into the shit on the ground, her excursions into the forest to collect ingredients for a herbal paste to ease a painful condition on her arm and scenes of Lady Sarah outside shooting and riding, the proceedings play out within the confines of Anne’s vast palace – kitchens staffed with cooks and maids, lengthy corridors with footmen, the Queen’s vast bedchamber which is also a well-stocked library.

Cinematographer Robbie Ryan frequently shoots from bravura angles although his slavish use of Kubrickian reverse tracking shots is less than original and while the overall look and feel of the piece echoes Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975), it lacks that film’s rigorous discipline and doesn’t similarly immerse the viewer in its eighteenth century world.

Lanthimos still hasn’t bettered his earlier, homegrown Greek films like Kinetta (2005) and Dogtooth (2009) both of which not only present strange and unfamiliar worlds to the viewer but also completely immerse him/her in them. Those promised a maverick artist on a par with the likes of Lynch and Cronenberg, on which promise his bigger budget, English language movies (The Lobster, 2015, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, 2017) haven’t to date delivered. As with those films, while there’s much to admire in The Favourite, it still fails to achieve those qualities of Lanthimos’ early films that marked him out as destined for greatness.

The Favourite is out in the UK from Saturday, December 29th. Watch the film trailer below:

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Posted on by victorfraga

Without a shadow of a doubt, The Killing of A Sacred Deer is one of the most anticipated films of the hunting season of cinema. Curzon Artificial Eye had postponed its UK release date, only to make us salivate like a famished dog in front of a juicy bowl of food. That said, I will do my best to write a review without offering you any spoiler. If you are into zoology, then you are in for a treat. There is no shortage of animals in the world of the Greek filmmaker, who also made Dogtooth (2009) and The Lobster (2015). The Killing of A Sacred Deer is even wilder than his previous films. In case you have never watched his films, you might want to take a tranquiliser before heading to the cinema.

Lanthimos cast Colin Farrell in the main role again (after Lobster). The Irish actor looks comfortable in his absurdist universe. This time he is a successful cardiac surgeon called Stephen Murphy, happily married to Anna (Nicole Kidman), also a doctor. They have two children and balance their working life with their parental duties quite well. Both kids have tasks at home: the girl walks the dog and the boy waters the plants.

Farrell has a secret friend, a 16-year-old boy. They meet very often at popular diner, located at Sickamore Street. (The name of the street is not gratuitous, there’s an onomatopoeic value central to the plot). But it is not clear what is this relation all about. Farrell is neither gay nor into young lovers, it seems. On one of these occasions, the teen foresees a tragic sequence of events in Farrell’s family. The boy says that Farrell’s children and wife will die one by one.

This is pretty much what I can tell without ruining your desire to watch the film. I can also suggest that you read a classic Greek tragedy such as Iphigenia (which is mentioned in the movie). The Killing of a Sacred Deer is nothing but a staging of a Greek sacrifice. In Ancient Greece, sacrifice meant killing a domestic animal and offering part of it to the gods, while eating the rest yourself. The Greeks hunted and killed animals for sacrificial purposes, including deer, fish and goats. The problem was that people felt uncomfortable and guilty about killing animals which they reared themselves.

There’s a lot of eating in the film. And guilt and denial too. At one point, Kidman asks Farrell how he is able to enjoy a meal while his kids are sick. Farrell is not a bad father. He tries hard to avoid the tragedy, but that works out just like in the Greek myths. The harder he tries to avoid his fate, the closer he sees it coming.

Although the feature is disturbing as hell, Lanthimos keep reminding us that this is just fiction. Actors are quite distant and even robotic, in good Brechtian style. Lathimos’s style relies on the audience’s reflective detachment rather than emotional involvement. The detachment technique is particularly evident when the daughter sings at the choir, another element of the Greek plays. Music does not cause audience to the daughter; on the contrary, it pushes the audience away from the characters. This is a very dirty and subversive movie.

The Killing of A Sacred Deer is showing at the BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 5th and 15th, and a week later at the Cambridge Film Festival. Theatrical release date is on Friday, November 3rd.