For a man whose films are often characterized by sadism and cruelty, George Lanthimos It has a rather benign appearance. He greek director, dressed in sandals and striped pants when he enters the hotel room, he seems more like a sentimental counselor than the person responsible for such caustic films as Canine, Lobster and The sacrifice of the sacred deer. Even Emma Stone -the American star of his last three films, The favorite, Poor creatures and the most recent Kinds of Kindness, that will premiere in Argentina in August– admits his surprise.
“I guess I thought it would be much more intense than he is in person,” he said during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, a day before meeting Lanthimos. The 50-year-old filmmaker takes it with good humor when this assessment about his character is asked. during the meeting. “That wasn’t very good! “I’m an intense guy,” He laughs, raising his arms, aware that reserves its savagery for the screen.
For example, Canine, his great success of 2009. The third film of his career (after his debut in 2001, My best friend, and the experimental Kinettafrom 2005), this story of a family living inside an enclosure, conditioned like animals, was rated “exercise in perversity” by The New York Times. There is also its dystopian drama Lobster, in which the inhabitants of the near future are forced to find a romantic partner in 45 days or transform into a beast of your choice. Lanthimos likes nothing more than watching his characters writhe under the microscope of life.
Kinds of Kindness it’s a 164 minute triptych in which Lanthimos tests his characters. Physical or psychological violence seeps into almost every frame. In “The death of RMF”, the first of the trio, Jesse Plemons plays Robert, a man enslaved by the mysterious businessman of Willem Dafoe, which controls every aspect of your life, from your diet to your sexual habits. It is a disturbing and disturbing look at free will.
Lanthimos admits to having inspired by Caligula, the “mad” Roman emperor famously played by Malcolm McDowell on the screen. Reflecting on life and death, and the level of control he exercised over his subjects, the director began to consider the possibility of transferring this idea to a contemporary setting “and taking it to the extreme to see what this type of relationship consists of.” it states. “What does free will, control, believing in someone and trusting someone mean? “It seemed like a complex starting point.”
Little by little, one story became three. In “RMF is Flying”, Plemons is a police officer named Daniel whose wife Liz (Stone), a marine biologist, disappears on an expedition; When she returns, he is convinced that That woman is not your spouse. and puts her to the test, forcing her to perform acts of self-mutilation increasingly horrifying. In “RMF Eats a Sandwich”, possibly the most opaque of the three, Stone’s Emily abandons her husband and son as she finds herself drawn into a sex cult led by Dafoe’s magnetic leader and his equally fascinating partner, played by Hong Chau. Once again, free will is admitted.
The film’s script was written by Lanthimos and his old friend Efthimis Filippou, who worked on the director’s first projects. They started Kinds of Kindness just after finishing their last collaboration,The sacrifice of the sacred deerfrom 2017, the story of a surgeon’s strange relationship with a young man (played by Barry Keoghan of Saltburn). Although it seems that Lanthimos has limited himself to bringing together the same cast and crew of poor creatures (everyone from cinematographer Robbie Ryan to Stone and Dafoe) hasn’t been like that at all. Kinds of Kindness “took many years to complete”, he explains. “And that was quite beneficial…we had time to distance ourselves while doing other things in between.”
For Lanthimos, those “things in the middle” were the period tale The favourite and her electrifying Victorian feminist fable poor creatures. They both took the Oscar for best actress for their respective protagonists: the moody Queen Anne, played by Olivia Colman, and Bella, a sexually liberated creature reanimated Frankenstein-style after a suicide. In their own way, both films launched to the general public the strange perspective from the world of Lanthimos. These and Kinds of Kindness were supported by Searchlight Pictures, a subsidiary of disney.
“They have faith in the filmmakers,” he says of the indie label that has become his home. “It’s the same relationship with other crew members or other actors. If they really believe in you and want to support you, they will.” In his early years, working from Athens, where he grew up, Lanthimos was “lucky” in films like Canine and its continuation in 2011, Alps. “We did them alone, so no one was there to say yes or no.”
Yet somehow, as budgets grew, he was able to preserve the final cut of his work. “I was always lucky to enjoy creative freedom. And Searchlight also saw the potential of this film and jumped on the bandwagon. It was so easy. It is very simple. And they know the type of filmmaker I am, and they know that this is what it is, and it’s like a yes or no. Do you want to participate or not? AND “they wanted to participate.”
Still, it is impossible to believe that Kinds of Kindness will have the same success as poor creatures either The favourite, even though Plemons (quite rightly) was awarded at Cannes with the best actor award for his performance. After winning the Golden Lion at its premiere at last year’s Venice Film Festival, poor creatures collection 117 million dollars at the global box office, even surpassing the 95 million dollars of The favourite. Between the two films, Lanthimos received four Oscar nominations, which are added to the one he received for co-writing Lobster.
However, Kinds of Kindness seems much more divisive, without the funny off-color dialogues of the Australian playwright Tony McNamarascreenwriter of The favourite and Poor creatures. It’s a film for those who enjoyed the noir nature of Lanthimos’ early work, albeit with a more stellar cast. But is your head spinning? In the words of the critic of Slant: “The abstraction is presented with even more saccharine kitsch, the sadism is more juvenile and purposeless, and the humor is simpleton until your stomach turns.”
In promoting a film that resists easy interpretation, Lanthimos is equally reluctant to put labels on it definitive. Like the idea that freedom is a prison. “Well, I guess it raises those kinds of questions,” she says, cautiously. “It shows, I think, the complexity of relationships and raises questions about whether we even know what we want when we are free, or if that is what is best for us. Or if you have some kind of structure and norms in our lives is really beneficial. Or is it also beneficial to break up with them?”
He pauses, controlling his words. “I don’t think I’ve ever made any kind of absolute in my life… or come to a real conclusion that freedom is prison. I just think it’s very complex to know exactly how to handle it and how to navigate those kinds of situations and relationships. And I think that, yes, when you’re totally free, that comes with a lot of responsibility. And each person can handle it in a different way.”
Are your films about the hopelessness that humanity often faces? Certainly, Kinds of Kindness seems the most nihilistic film of his career. “Not having any hope? I don’t know… I just made a movie with a happy ending,” she says. In view of what happens to Christopher Abbott’s character in the finale of poor creatures -without spoilers-, it is debatable to consider its ending “happy”, but that rather typifies the biting humor of Lanthimos.
“I don’t think hope necessarily comes from the plot of a movie,” keep going. “I think there’s hope for me, even if the movie is pretty dark… the humor helps. I think Kinds of Kindness it is enough fun. I mean, I think it’s pretty funny in a lot of ways. I think that’s something: seeing terrible things, but also seeing the humor in them and how ridiculous they are. We are human beings and I think that after experiencing and processing terrible things, we can see the humor in them. So I think that’s part of my offer of hope.”
In Lanthimos’s eyes, creating works that reflect the world and show even the worst of humanity is something positive. “For people to look at them and start thinking about these things and asking questions about freedom or whatever… that’s encouraging“Admittedly, given the stereotypical nature of so many films coming out of the studio system today, He is a director who must be applauded for pushing buttons and boundaries.
Additionally, getting audiences to struggling movie theaters for a community experience – as they did in The favourite and Poor creatures- It has to be welcomed. “I think the process of watching movies is hopeful. catharsis It doesn’t have to be rooted in the plot of a movie. It also comes from collective act to see it, think about it, discuss it, think about it again, see it at another time when we feel different. So I think that’s encouraging.”
* Of The Independent From great britain. Special for Page 12.
