kinds of kindness (w&d lanthimos, w. efthimis filippou)

Lanthimos is back, baby! Todo bien con Poor Things, but it didn’t feel like pure Lanthimos, a smart director who knows how to play the long game and not get pigeonholed as one of those insufferably European arty types. All the same, this blog feels more affinity with weirdo Lanthimos, and in Kinds of Kindness, he’s back with a vengeance. We get mind control, reincarnation, and self-mutilation, among other choice cuts in this anthology piece, which is scripted with co-writer, Efthimis Filippou. There’s more than enough surreal meat on these bones. Stone and Plemmons deliver in spades, giving the more arcane philosophical elements of the film a consistently plausible human root. The script delivers, not least Stone’s monologue when she talks about dog-world, dialogue which is echoed in some of the smart cut-aways, not to mention Stone’s abuse of a stray dog in the film’s third chapter. The animal elements lend the film a Rilkean dimension: humans are shown to be naive, befuddled, cruel, desperate, in contrast to the more straightforward world of the animals. The ensemble use of the same cast across the three stories adds another playful dimension, reminiscent of Buñuel. What is the film actually about and how might this tie in with its cryptic title? I guess it’s about what it means to be human in this day and age, the desperate need to belong to a tribe in a world where fools are lauded as kings or queens. 

poor things (w&d lanthimos, w. tony mcnamara)

I realise this is a stretch, but it crossed my mind that Lanthimos’ film is perhaps stepsister to Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, which I saw on the Montevideo stage last year. Like Faustus, Bella Baxter goes on an educational tour of Europe (the Grand Tour). Like Faustus, hers is a voyage of discovery: the limits of human pleasure, and power. Faustus is almost the anti-Hamlet, the proto-magic cyborg, who can indulge his whims at will, just as Bella does. Like Faustus, Bella satisfies her desires in an almost mechanical fashion, bereft of any eroticism. For all the sex in Lanthimos’ film, it is doggedly anti-erotic, in a Barthesian or Bataille-esque sense: this is sex as ‘furious jumping’ rather than an exploration of temptation or transgression. Faustus is a child of the devil; Bella Baxter is a child of a Scottish Frankenstein - neither are their own person, even if Lanthimos twists the tale at the end to suggest that this is where she is headed. Bella’s encounter with the radical sex worker echoes Faustus’ visit to Heidelberg, which is echoed by Hamlet’s academic companionship. All of which makes Bella a kind of Faust de nos jours, only one who rather than being condemned to hell, is rewarded for her vaulting ambition, as she is rebirthed into a 21st C variation of the happy nuclear family, with her husband, her lover and her tamed monster in a garden of Eden. If Marlowe’s Faust represents the last cry of medieval man, whose blind faith in magic/ knowledge will soon give way to Hamlet’s alienation, does Lanthimos’ Bella Baxter represent the last gasp of optimism in the possibilities of five centuries of faith in science and its empiricism? 

the favourite (d. yorgos lanthimos; w. deborah davis, tony mcnamara)

Lanthimos may well clean up at the oscars. In a similar vein to Jenkins with Moonlight a few years ago: the indie world sneaking in to steal the crown. Moonlight and The Favourite are very different films, sin dudas, but they have this in common: a technical bravura, which says as much about the work of the DOP as the director. In the case of James Laxton, the bold use of colour; in the case of Robbie Ryan, the nerve to use innovative perspective in a period piece, notably the fish-eye lens shots which capture a wealth of detail in the frame, as well as offering a ‘modern’ eye on this antiquated world. The Favourite’s popularity is also down to offering three actresses the opportunity to strut their stuff. The performances of Coleman, Stone and Weisz possess a verve which complements this contemporary vision of a period piece. They feel like real people, battling out their bizarre menage a trois, people one can identify with, no matter how remote and distant the world of wigs and periwinkles might be. 

On the other hand, The Favourite, in keeping with The Lobster, is a film that entertains rather than engaging on an emotional level. The script creates a world of feckless characters whose primary motivation is to screw each other over. It’s interesting to note in this regard that Sarah Churchill, Weisz’s character, was a mother, as well as being a dashing bisexual. Children are written out of this world, which is a playground for childlike adults. The contrast with Dogtooth is intriguing: whilst Dogtooth also depicted a cold, harsh world, this was predicated on the interactions of a family, which gave the harshness a pathos which The Favourite never seems to aspire to. In that sense, despite the director being Greek and the final draft of the script being written by an Australian, it manages to feel like a very British film, where wit and a cold heart trump feeling every time. 

dogtooth (d. giorgos lanthimos, w. lanthimos & efthymis filippou)

The Dogtooth - do you possess one? Are you likely to lose it at any point? If you do have one and circumstances demanded you had to remove it, how would you do it?

I don't know how the word Dogtooth sounds in Greek, but it sounds perfect in English. The writers of this film have as creative an attitude towards language as they do towards familial perversity. Levi Strauss wrote about the controlling power of language, and the way in which the deranged parents control and distort every day vocabulary offers an immediate insight into how power and information are intrinsically connected. In the parents' world, a zombie becomes a little yellow flower. A cat is a killer. The every day is laced with poison.

This is a beautifully conceived and observed film. No explanation is ever offered for the parents' need to manipulate their children. The conscientious father, played with a furrowed brow by Christos Stergioglou, and his wife have created a terrifying kind of Eden, which is observed with comical attention. Like all Edens, the seeds of its destruction are lurking, but having established the logic of this world, the film succeeds in convincing us that there's no reason why the children should not have bought into it.

Whilst it could have dwindled into becoming an exercise in post modern cleverness (ie How many ways can we reinvent our world?), the persistent threat of violence and fear lend a tension to proceedings. Furthermore, in her coming to terms with her relationship to her dogtooth, the older daughter acquires a terrible heroism, worthy of any Russell Crowe movie, and the film emerges as an eloquent testament to humanity's intractable quest for independence.

In the one interview I've seen online with Lanthimos, he talked about a whole community of Greek filmmakers, also mentioning that the film had, at the time of the interview, not succeeded in obtaining a release in his own country. Assuming the country survives into next week, it will be fascinating to see what else emerges in the wake of this remarkable piece of filmmaking.