Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Talent: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan
Released: 3 November
Paralysis, refusal to eat, blood oozing from the eyes, death: these are the steps the Steven’s family must go through if he does not kill one of them first. With grim fairytale quality, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest feature asks that cruel question of its protagonist: Who’s your favourite child? After inheriting the persistent company of Martin, the child of a man he failed to save during a surgical operation (or to use Martin’s unforgiving terms, “killed”) Steven has to make a terrible choice. Sphinx-like, Barry Keoghan gives Martin a mythic impenetrability, staring at his static victims not with malice, but with a disturbing air of righteousness: a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin, who has come to claim his prize.
Like all fairytales, this one is layered, multivalent, and its meaning depends on which way you read the characters’ disaffected delivery of their lines or the film’s slow, determined descent into madness. It’s hard to know what exactly Lanthimos is slamming – the idea of a stable family unit, or rationality, or the equal distribution of love. A hint at what he’s targeting is heard early on: Steven’s wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman) gushes over her son’s shiny long hair, only to prompt her daughter to ask, “What about my hair?” Kidman rushes to assure her that she, too, has nice hair. She looks around the table, smiling, and declares, “We all have lovely hair.” Martin’s mother tries to seduce Steven after inviting him over for dinner, insisting that she’s thinner now, her hair is dyed a different colour, doesn’t he like it? The nuclear family model, when brutally scrutinised by Lanthimos, becomes dangerous, and when tested spins rapidly out of control: Martin’s mother begs him, “I won’t let you leave until you try my tart.” She is frustrated, having been betrayed by that apple pie lore that promises happiness if you conform to it: the worlds of confusion in her eyes say it all.
Attempts at pleasing everyone skews the disorder that is natural: in one strange sex scene Anna undresses, lies down next to her husband, asks, “Anaesthetic?” and goes limp, eyes closed and limbs dangling over the bed’s edge. He climbs on top of her, suggesting that this is a regular occurrence. Does that sound like a stable family unit? In fact, the film spends most of its time on the idea of stasis; the fear of stasis. The camerawork is slow and precise: at times I think it’s constantly doing its best not to halt completely. We are often excluded from events; we are kept in a darkened hallway, or have to peer in a window to the occurrences within, trying to needle in on this strange family. Mobility and movement become increasingly endangered. A scene where Kim, Steven’s daughter and Martin’s disconcerting love interest, go for a motorbike ride with Martin should be liberating and bold, but the muffled roars of the engine and the rigid camera angle hint at the oncoming stasis. Her head in the blue light of tunnels and night-sky fills the screen like a planet, and we are her diligent astronomers, growing less and less certain of our own freedom; growing fearful of looking away, or finding that we can’t.
Words – John Vaughan
