Yorgos Lanthimos has over the past few years become one of the buzziest directors in Hollywood, collaborating with high profile stars like Emma Stone and Colin Farrell, and racking up award nominations galore. Starting out as a director of experimental theatre, Lanthimos made his filmmaking bones as a fundamental member of the absurdist Greek Weird Wave before taking Hollywood by storm. Following the recent blockbuster success of his celebrated feature Poor Things and the current release of his latest anthology Kinds of Kindness, Universal Cinema takes a closer look at some of the divisive director’s early works.
KINETTA (2005)
Lanthimos’ experimental roots are boldly on display in his first solo directorial outing, Kinetta. Languorously paced with little dialogue, this deep cut from the director’s filmography is definitely one for completists and true Lanthimos fanatics. Set in the desolate Greek resort town of Kinetta, the film follows an unlikely local trio with a very unusual hobby: meticulously recreating the crime scenes of brutal murders. It’s unclear how this off duty police officer, photographer, and hotel chambermaid discovered their shared fascination for the macabre, but their commitment is impressive, bordering on ritualistic. Lanthimos offsets the bizarre reenactments with extended sequences highlighting the otherwise mundane reality of their daily lives. While interesting to see how the controversial director cut his teeth, Kinetta doesn’t quite reach the heights of his later more sophisticated works.
DOGTOOTH (2009)
Dogtooth is arguably the film that catapulted Lanthimos to worldwide attention. Wildly original, deeply unsettling, and darkly comic, the film centres a gripping performance from frequent collaborator Angeliki Papoulia as one of three siblings held captive by their parents in a homegrown compound and brainwashed with absurd stories to fear the outside world. As the children reach the cusp of adulthood and an inevitable reckoning with their own biologies and drives for independence, an interloper threatens the fine familial balance. Lanthimos unspools the plot slowly, leaving the audience in suspense, but fascinated by the strange goings on of this idiosyncratically abusive family. Despite at times drawing uncomfortable laughs, the film is undeniably horrifying, evoking the sensibility of the darker provocative fare of Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke. Considered one of the foremost examples of the Greek Weird Wave, Dogtooth secured Lanthimos his first very well-deserved Academy Award nomination.
ALPS (2011)
Tonally and thematically a companion piece to Dogtooth, Lanthimos has described Alps as a something of a mirror image. While that film explored the plight of a person trying desperately to escape a fictitious world that they have been trapped in against their will, Alps is about a person desperately trying to escape their own reality by entering another. Filtering elements of the sublime Koreeda film After Life through the lens of the Greek Weird Wave, Lanthimos fifth feature is centred on a mysterious group offering a service to the recently bereaved. For a small fee, they will role play as their dearly departed to ease them through the grieving process. Marked by the same strange physicality and perverse interpersonal relativity that characterizes most of his films, the strikingly photographed Alps distils the awkwardness of the human experience into something quite palpable. Papoulia once again gives a bravura performance here, grounding Lanthimos’ wildest instincts in an all too authentic depiction of grief, longing, and alienation.
THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017)
Lanthimos’ second English language feature, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, reunited him with Colin Farrell and introduced many viewers to a young Barry Keoghan in an early but memorable role. Admittedly not my favourite entry in the director’s filmography, the film nonetheless captivated the attention of audiences worldwide. A strangely stilted fable inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia, the film is kicked off by a fateful encounter between successful surgeon Steven (Farrell) and a mysterious teenaged boy named Martin (Keoghan). Quickly insinuating himself into the older man’s picture-perfect family, the disturbing but oddly magnetic young man is quickly revealed to be concealing a dark vendetta. As the story (painfully) slowly navigates its darkest twists and turns, the proceedings rest strongly on a fascinating central performance from Keoghan as a burgeoning psychopath, and benefits from effective supporting turns by Nicole Kidman and Alicia Silverstone.
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