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Greek writer director Yorgos Lanthimos makes oblique films about the human condition, and since switching to English language cinema, Hollywood stars have flocked to him.
The Lobster saw Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and John C Reilly sign on for a story about a dystopian society where being single was against the law.
Now, his follow-up — a meticulous, austere psychological horror — sees Farrell and Nicole Kidman play Steven and Anna, a cardiologist and his wife who face a ghastly ultimatum.
As usual, Lanthimos imposes a detached, almost Brechtian coldness to the performances. The distancing effect reminds you the film is not just about the drama within the frame, but about the characters as archetypes, the story as metaphor. You can feel the Classical Greek tradition echoing through the film.
He depicts the couple and their two, well-adjusted children Kim and Bob, surrounded by ordered, leafy suburbia and sterile hospital settings.
But a combination of distorting lenses and forward-tracking shots lends an off-kilter momentum to the film, like a train rounding a bend too fast.
The not-quite-right tension finds expression in an unassuming, droopy-faced teenager named Martin, played by Barry Keoghan (also in this year's Dunkirk).
Steven and Martin enjoy a friendship that appears benign, but when the older man tells different stories to different people to explain who the boy is, the missing truth becomes a compelling mystery.
Echoes of Kubrick
Sporting a thick, bushy beard that obscures most of his face, Farrell is the portrait of stoicism in a film that questions the limitations of rational thought.
The opening shot — a close-up of a beating heart during surgery — is a symbolic image that invites you to ponder the difference between humans as mechanical organisms that can be repaired, and as spiritual beings who must face a moral reckoning to atone for their wrongs.
The story that follows bears the influence of Kubrick's fables about male hubris, in particular the 18th century boom-and-bust tale, Barry Lyndon — including a pivotal scene of shambolic gunplay.
But the darker aspects of the story, including a mysterious, debilitating illness that has shocking symptoms, recalls another, more recent film: Jigsaw — the latest instalment of the Saw franchise, which sees a killer return to capture and torture his victims until they fess up to past wrongs.
In The Killing of a Sacred Deer, while Martin may not be a serial killer, his malevolent interaction with Steven and his family is a similar exercise in forcing someone's hand.
Steven's subsequent unravelling — subtle at first — occurs in tandem with a gradual disintegration of the film's formal elements. A hand-held shot, a burst of slow motion and some zooms signal a coming off of the rails.
Kidman, with pitch-perfect, icy poise, seems the only one able to hold on.
A film pitched at adolescent level
It would be a spoiler to reveal any more. But suffice to say, Steven suffers a wrath befitting a pantheon of angry gods.
But why?
As the film enters its lesser final stretch, its grievances start to mirror the concerns of Lanthimos's previous work. His world view — full of youthful concerns like rebellion against family hierarchy and the struggle to form intimate relationships — is decidedly pitched at adolescent level.
It's angry, it's vital and intense. But at times it lacks an appreciation of the grey zones of adulthood.
Perhaps this reflects a lack of sophistication from the gatekeepers who nurture and finance such work (his backers include Channel 4 and the Irish Film Board).
Whatever the case, Lanthimos doesn't yet display the nuance of Kubrick, Tarkovsky, or any of the other greats he appears influenced by.
His film is the best thing out this week — it's breath-taking in stretches. But its lack of empathy for the human condition it so presumptuously lectures us about is a nagging flaw.
Topics: film-movies, thriller-films, horror-films, actor, drama, director, united-states
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