The evolution of Yorgos Lanthimos in five films
When the first English language film from Yorgos Lanthimos hit cinema screens, it introduced to mainstream audiences an unparalleled singular voice of modern cinema.
The Lobster, released in 2015, was a bizarre and genre-defying film that showcased the Greek director’s signature style: stilted dialogue, dead-pan performances, a mind-boggling central premise and meticulously framed cinematography.
Lanthimos’ newest film, Poor Things, will be released later this year and follows in a similar vein to The Lobster, working with an ensemble cast of established British and American actors. But even before his first mainstream feature, Lanthimos had been gradually building up a fantastic filmography that demonstrates the evolution of a great auteur.
Let’s take a look at five examples of the director’s work that showcase his rise as one of the most original directors working today.
The evolution of Yorgos Lanthimos:
5. Kinetta (2005)
Whilst not Lanthimos’ debut feature, which he co-directed and co-directed, Kinetta was his first solo outing as a writer/director, and, as seen in the wider context of his work, is the first film to really flirt with the themes and ideas he would go on to explore further.
Set in the coastal town of Kinetta, the film follows a hotel maid, a photographer and an off-duty police officer who bond over a darkly unusual shared passion; the staging and recreation of real-life murders. Visually, the film is quite unlike Lanthimos’ later work, relying mostly on hand-held camera work that lends it a raw, DIY quality. Narratively, however, it marks the beginning of his ability to tell absurdly specific and outlandish stories with absolute commitment and conviction.
4. Dogtooth (2009)
The film that attracted the attention of both Cannes and the Academy, Dogtooth takes the insanity of Kinetta and infuses it with a particularly unsettling darkness. The film depicts the lives of a wealthy middle-class Greek family, taking the concept of the ‘dysfunctional family’ to horrific new heights.
In it, the children have been led to believe that there is no outside world beyond the confines of their home and garden, and having never been allowed to set foot outside, have no reason to believe otherwise. Why the parents do this is unclear; the focus is instead on the strange and often violent rituals the family engage in and the lengths the parents go to maintain their lie. Dogtooth announces the beginning of Lanthimos’ trademark visual style and introduces a cliffhanger ending that he would use again.
3. Alps (2011)
With Lanthimos’ follow-up to Dogtooth, he took the core idea of people trapped in a lie and completely inverted it. His third film as writer/director presents a group of actors who self-impose a fictional world upon themselves by pretending to be the recently deceased.
After honing his visual sensibilities in the previous film, with Alps, Lanthimos is able to apply it to a wider variety of scenarios and settings without the limitation of a single setting. The audience is offered beautifully composed yet distinctly cold widescreen vistas of gymnasiums, lamp shops and conference rooms. He continues the tradition of an unnervingly ambiguous ending whilst giving us a rich array of emotionally stilted characters, both of which the director would explore to the max with his next film.
2. The Lobster (2015)
After catching an incidental showing of Dogtooth, actor Colin Farrell was so impressed that made it his mission to collaborate with the director. Their resulting work together, along with a huge ensemble cast including the likes of Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly and Léa Seydoux, to name a few, earned Lanthimos the Jury Prize at Cannes.
The world and story of The Lobster are almost too complex and inexplicable to summarise, but they involve a hotel for singletons and a deadline which, if not met, results in guests being transformed into an animal (of their choice). It takes the visual style from Dogtooth and Alps and enhances it even further, capturing the story in a carefully considered way and zooming eerily down big empty spaces. The Lobster also showed how Lanthimos could expertly command A-lister actors and wisely spend a much bigger budget.
1. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Reuniting with Farrell once again whilst also giving Barry Keoghan one of his first major roles, Lanthimos’ fifth film is the closest the director has come to making a horror. Nominated for the Palme d’Or and winning Lanthimos the ‘Best Screenplay Award’ at Cannes, The Killing of a Sacred Deer would mark his last time writing his films for the foreseeable future.
A trippy, terrifying descent into paranoia and suspicion, it follows an Ohioan family that has abstract destruction wrought upon them by a mysteriously powerful stranger played by Keogan. Embracing the Kubrick influences, the camera pushes through sterile hospital rooms and the soundtrack thrums with dread-laced classical music. Whilst Lanthimos would go on to make the much-lauded The Favourite (2018), his last writer/director effort remains the pinnacle of all his filmmaking talents.
