The single scene that defines the work of Yorgos Lanthimos
The idea of ‘helicopter parenting’ takes a whole new meaning in Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2009 film Dogtooth, an uncomfortable yet deeply entertaining allegory about three teenagers who live completely isolated from the real world.
They have parents who create their own unique set of rules and rituals on how to live, an internal language that dictates and restricts their experience of the real world, and as they grow up, the siblings are exposed to small truths that contradict their parents’ ideas, creating a thirst for true freedom.
Through Lanthimos’ trademark cold and unfeeling dialogue, with a clinical and bleached look to the visual style that immerses us in a feeling of unease, the filmmaker uses these elements to explore the abuse of power and brainwashing within the family unit, likening it to a cult.
The perspective paints the nuclear family as a dictatorship in which parenting is a perverse and exploitative attempt at control and subjugation, also poking fun at the absurdity of the traditional values that we place on ourselves.
It’s a motif peppered throughout many of his other films, with The Lobster and Poor Things also mirroring the idea that the people closest can sometimes cause the most damage and how unnatural these relationships can be, despite the messaging that love is the most pure and untainted aspect of the human condition.
In the former, the pressure to find love is highlighted through the concept of a hotel to which people are sent when they haven’t found a partner and are forced to find someone within 90 days before being turned into an animal. The same goes for the latter, which shows romantic and familial love to be a normalized form of brainwashing that alienates you from your true self and purpose.
However, the origins of Lanthimos’ fascination with depicting human relationships in such an ugly and cynical way can be traced back to Dogtooth and one scene in particular that defines the style to have carried into his subsequent work.
In Dogtooth, the idea of being confined to a system of rules and rituals leads to disturbing, bizarre and bloody consequences. After years of having their media consumption controlled by their parents and even having a completely fabricated vocabulary, the children have no understanding of the real world and the way in which this is controlled by their parents. However, after discovering the world of film and television through a mysterious woman who visits her brother, the eldest daughter manages to get her hands on some video tapes that slowly shatter the cruelly constructed world created by her parents.
A seed of doubt is planted in her mind about the validity of her parents’ philosophy, and she plans to escape the house that she has never left by breaking her tooth; an unflinchingly violent scene as she smashes her mouth with a dumbbell, convinced by her parents that children can only leave their parents once their big teeth have naturally fallen out (which is, of course, completely untrue).
This scene perfectly captures the sick magic of Lanthimos’ work. Immense pity and sympathy are felt for the characters. Still, the nature in which the events unfold has an inherent comedic undertone despite the fact that nothing funny is actually happening. It’s sharply satirical and mocking by pushing these situations to the most disturbing extreme but maintains a humanistic core that rings true to real life, reflecting the absurdity of the values that we hold close to us and the sometimes harsh reality of maintaining these values.
Lanthimos is able to make violence feel tender and hopeful, with the characters often doing extreme things in the name of freedom or the chance to be truly loved. Unconditional love is seen as the ultimate achievement, but many of his characters experience a warped version of this that leaves them desperate for safety and comfort, a goal that feels increasingly far-fetched as he propels the audience towards the idea that there is no such thing, highlighting the very worst of humanity and the innate selfishness of people.
In this one scene of a young woman standing in her bathroom, optimistically preparing herself for the pain of smashing a dumbbell into her mouth that she believes is the price of freedom, Lanthimos captures the inherent cynicism of the cinema he is now known for, capturing the unstoppable force of the human spirit on the search for fulfilment and the evil forces that work against us.
Despite this cynicism, there’s an innocence at the core of his work, a childlike curiosity that lures the viewer in by appealing to the most basic human needs, but it wouldn’t be a Lanthimos film if it ended on that note.
And so, he maims and exploits this naivety until there’s nothing left but a deep well of sadness for the vulnerability of his characters and their fanciful dreams of love and safety, leaving audiences feeling both heartbroken and guilty for finding it even vaguely entertaining. Because if you laugh at a Lanthimos film, then what does that say about you?
