The cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos is an acquired taste; luckily it's a
taste that many cineastes have embraced wholeheartedly. He is clearly
one of the great directors working today, utterly idiosyncratic and
inhabiting his own very specific world. In other words, he doesn't make
films that are easy to watch or 'realistic'; if his characters seem
realistic they too inhabit worlds of their own.
He came to prominence with "Dogtooth", about a man who keeps his family locked within
the
comforts of a palatially modern Greek house. "The Lobster", his first
film in English, was a dark fairytale that won him the Jury prize at
Cannes and an Oscar nomination and now we have his masterpiece, "The
Killing of a Sacred Deer" which combines elements of a genuinely
disturbing horror film, a very black comedy and even Greek tragedy to
awesome effect.
From the
get-go it's virtually impossible to get a handle on which way the film
is likely to go. His use of architecture, sweeping tracking shots and
discordant music is sure to throw us off balance as is the metronomic
dialogue and almost robotic acting. This time we are in, not a
fairytale, but a fully fledged nightmare as surgeon Colin Farrel's
ambiguous friendship with a surly 16 year old boy, (a terrific
Barry Keoghan), goes not in the direction we anticipate but down a much
darker and dangerous road altogether. Farrell's excellent though
ultimately the film belongs to Nicole Kidman as his hard-nosed wife and
to Keoghan as his nemesis. This is cinema at its most visceral and one
of the best films of the year.
The cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos is an acquired taste; luckily it's a
taste that many cineastes have embraced wholeheartedly. He is clearly
one of the great directors working today, utterly idiosyncratic and
inhabiting his own very specific world. In other words, he doesn't make
films that are easy to watch or 'realistic'; if his characters seem
realistic they too inhabit worlds of their own.
He came to prominence with "Dogtooth", about a man who keeps his family locked within the
comforts of a palatially modern Greek house. "The Lobster", his first
film in English, was a dark fairytale that won him the Jury prize at
Cannes and an Oscar nomination and now we have his masterpiece, "The
Killing of a Sacred Deer" which combines elements of a genuinely
disturbing horror film, a very black comedy and even Greek tragedy to
awesome effect.
From the
get-go it's virtually impossible to get a handle on which way the film
is likely to go. His use of architecture, sweeping tracking shots and
discordant music is sure to throw us off balance as is the metronomic
dialogue and almost robotic acting. This time we are in, not a
fairytale, but a fully fledged nightmare as surgeon Colin Farrel's
ambiguous friendship with a surly 16 year old boy, (a terrific
Barry Keoghan), goes not in the direction we anticipate but down a much
darker and dangerous road altogether. Farrell's excellent though
ultimately the film belongs to Nicole Kidman as his hard-nosed wife and
to Keoghan as his nemesis. This is cinema at its most visceral and one
of the best films of the year.
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