2024-07-04 09:23:28
Ein the words of wisdom says that “everything in life is about sex; Sex is only about power. ” According to this, power will be the immutable motivation of all human motivation and therefore even the most insignificant action will be its result.
Like all monocausal theories of social life, this has the weakness that it is not true. The truth is too complicated for that. At the same time, however, it has the advantage of not being a bad information for many things that we take every day. That sounds paradoxical, but it’s not. You can imagine it roughly like Newton’s and Einstein’s theories. Newton did an excellent job of explaining how an apple falls from a tree. A rocket flying to Mars that follows Newton’s principle, on the other hand, will land somewhere in the middle of nowhere. On a cosmic scale, where subtleties matter, you need Einstein’s theory of relativity. It has the advantage of being precise and the disadvantage of being incredibly complex.
Which brings us to Giorgos Lanthimos. Among film directors, the strange Greek – Greek Weird Wave is the name of the picture movement, of which Lanthimos is the most famous representative – is clearly of the Newtonian type. Since its beginning around 20 years ago, it has looked at people through its camera as if through a microscope – and always focused on one aspect: its power and relationships. Its purpose is to explore the relationships and dynamics between friends, colleagues, partners, etc. Lanthimos isn’t exactly squeamish about it. In “Dogtooth” (2009), for example, he broke the kinship taboo, but the ritual killing between members is also something that will be rare in his work. He often spins terrible parables, as if he has mixed two parts of Kafka with one part of Buñuel – “The attempt” of the “part of freedom” is how to sum up the first part of his new film.
Before we get there, a word about “The Favorite” and “Things Are Bad.” These two films, from 2018 and 2023 respectively, gave the director his worldwide success, with all kinds of Oscars and the devoted loyalty of Emma Stone. The actor is also in a new movie in the past called muse Lanthimos. This is not easy anymore today. First you will have to consider whether the concept of muse is compatible with femininity at all. Interestingly, viewers and critics ask themselves exactly the same thing about “Poor Things”: Is this self-powered journey of Frankenstein’s woman through steam-punk Europe in contrast to black and white and exploding with color female female? Or the “male eye” worse, as the theory should call the relational sexuality that is explained from the perspective of the male, the male sex leader?
Lanthimos himself did not comment on the discussion. An American man found the best picture for his silence: it seems that he has doubts about a man who is presented by a woman as her boyfriend, when he wants to date only. Yes, in all probability Lanthimos does not care about feminism in a narrow sense, as long as it prevents his own, more dynamic studies of power. Lanthimos sees us all as poor, struggling sausages, regardless of gender.
“Likes” and “Bad things” have a lot of exposure and even an ending, which explains their popularity, but in retrospect it has to be dismissed as an accident. Both times the script is from Tony McNamara. Lanthimos wrote previous films himself, including “The Lobster” (2009) and “The Role of the Sacred Deer”, assisted by his colleague Efthimis Filippou. Here we are dealing with the “real” Lanthimos, so to speak – breath to the point of p, cool to the point of icy temperature.
The hardships are worth it
It’s an inaccessible cinema that has fans, but more like Lars von Trier’s than Sofia Coppola’s or Wes Anderson’s. The latest movie, Kindness, belongs to this group. It’s so repulsive it’s almost laughable – a clear rejection by Lanthimos of the initial commitment. This small deviation should be almost enough. If you show too much, you’ll take away most of the tension. Because once again there is a great appeal in piesing together the crazy worlds that Lanthimos has come up with. In three episodes we meet the same cast in different roles: Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. The latter won an actor’s award at Cannes for his actions. Well deserved, by the way. This has proven to be definitely worth the effort.
In the first story, accompanied by the haunting, haunting sounds of “Sweet Dreams”, we follow a man whose boss makes all the decisions – even what he should eat for breakfast and how often he should he sleeps with his wife. You are not even allowed to choose your wife. Good instead of bad. But Lanthimos says this: What if total submission is the highest form of happiness? We know it from fascism. And in the course of the film we actually meet a totalitarian sex cult whose members, when they do not take the guru’s bathwater, are looking for a new Lazarus. Sometimes, we watch a man turn into a little killer to show that his wife is a stranger. This little summary might be enough to decide if the movie might be something for you. Of course you would be right.
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