Why Do Yorgos Lanthimos' Movies Feel So Weird?
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- čas přidán 26. 11. 2020
- Stream Yorgos Lanthimos' newest film NIMIC and get 30 days free at mubi.com/thomasflight
In The Lobster, director Yorgos Lanthimos constructs a bizarre and absurd world. In this video, I examine the unique way Lanthimos constructs the strange realities is creates in The Lobster, The Killing of A Sacred Deer, and his new short NIMIC. And how he uses those worlds for social commentary.
Thank you to MUBI for collaborating on this video, by allowing me early access to NIMIC, and giving me free rein to incorporate footage from it into the video!
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"is it harder to pretend to have feelings for someone when you don't, or to pretend you don't when you do." One of the lines from The Lobster, perfectly sums this beautiful film up.
Very good question.
I know I'm pretty randomly asking but do anyone know a good site to stream newly released movies online?
@Oakley Jensen Flixportal :D
@James Major thanks, signed up and it seems like they got a lot of movies there :D I appreciate it!!
@Oakley Jensen no problem :)
Yorgos Lanthimos's characters are unnerving, I feel, not because they have something to hide but rather, on the contrary, because of their absolute transparency. It is the fact that they explicitly share their feelings, plans, and desires, even when it seems unwarranted or better left unstated. I think this is what contributes to the "uncanny" atmosphere of all his films.
If one does this, why would they and how would that be percieved by others, what is that characteristic representative of
The hotel manager looking like the Queen of England to me tho
Which one though?
Both are Olivia Coleman.
Olivia Colman is wonderful
How 'bout her partner - the bald man - looking like Alfred Hitchcock? I was half expecting him to bring out a camera and start filming the guests
I've been a fan of her ever since Mitchell & Webb, but I can't quite get past the fact that no matter what role she's playing, she always just sounds like Olivia Colman. She's kinda like Michael Caine in that regard. So I don't think she was a good choice to play The Queen, because (unlike Claire Foy, who absolutely nailed it) she can't do any voice other than her own. Even when she put on a West Country accent in Hot Fuzz, she still just sounded like Olivia Colman trying to do a funny voice.
Dogtooth, The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite? This guy has potential to be of the greats
he is
I messed up when I booked my ticket to watch The Favourite and bought a seat for 12 hours later. That was their only showing of the day so I watched Mary Queen of Scots instead. Just happened to also be about a British monarch too. It was okay. Still have yet to watch The Favourite but I do have the book however not yet read it either.
StickManApple Don’t read the book. Make sure to catch the film.
feel like he already is
His other film, Alps, is still his best, imho.
What I understood from Lobster was the same thing I got from the Fight club - if you try to escape from the system, you will end up in another system.
That's a really good point.
but i love that the character actually tried to escape the second system too, and when he did that, i think the last scene shows like the choice he had to face (spoiler), hurt/mutilate himself in order to be loved and fit or not? he already had rejected other systems that where like that, but this time he has doubts and he might do it. i find that pretty interesting. like maybe "L'enfer c'est les autres" and you will always have to repress a part of yourself in order to live in society, or maybe not. or maybe being alone is better. who knows. i like that the ending is open in that sense.
to simplify it like that is really lame. That kind conclusion lacks any depth.
I think it’s more about how people choose to make their lives dependent on the look or other trivial things.
That’s not really it though…
This is basically a dream converted into a movie… dreams often have strange settings and different realities but you almost never questioning anything you just accept that things are the way they are.
This honestly reminds me a bit of Kafka! We read Metamorphosis the other day in German class, and in that book none of the family question why the protagonist Georg woke up as a bug one morning. Of course, they are scared of it and worry etc, but neither them nor Georg himself even once ask the question of what happened. I’ve only read that one book, but apparently Kafka does that a lot. He seems to have had a lot in similar with this director! :)
I was thinking the same thing!
Sehr spannend :)
That's what I thought, it's the same feeling
Read more of Kafka. He is amazing
The idea of someone literally becoming a cockroach is absurd, and a discussion of the 'how' would make Metamorphosis or The Lobster different stories entirely. Clearly, the absurdity is meant to be accepted by the reader without question, as the characters in these stories do.
Did you change the thumbnail to feature the new film?
Clever way to play around the system without completely surrender to it.
Right? I was so confused for a second.
yes, I was confused for a sec and thinking this would start off with Poor Things. I had no clue the director worked on The Lobster too! I remember finding that film really interesting too.
I went to watch this video just because of the thumbnail AND because it was uploaded 3 years ago, lmao.
Same here haha
but it seems he changed it once again : /
thank you for highlighting one of my favorite directors. such an absurd, distant and cold feeling to everything in his films. The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is one of my favorite movies of all time. excellent video as always
Rewatched The Killing of A Sacred Deer for this and it's brilliant.
that movie has some of the best camerawork/zooms in recent memory even though it is incredibly kubrick inspired it has an amazing visual style
I agree. Killing of a Sacred Deer is an absolute masterpiece and the closest any director has come to the tonality and imagery of Kubrick, whilst still being completely original and having the Yoros signature. I can’t praise it enough.
by far my favorite yoros film
Really an amazing movie!
I go the hotel where this was set almost every year. It's in Kerry, it's so wierd watching this film considering I've had breakfast in the same room
Which hotel? Holiday planning.
I just realized that the feeling that his movies give off is the same feeling that you get when recalling a dream. Even though you may be cast into the most bizarre, nonsensical situation, you almost never question it. It’s taken at face value, and you just move on. And that’s how his characters are.
I have to watch this again
Hello
I love his films because for me, as an autistic person, it is firstly comforting to see characters who talk unhinged without hurting anybody. Secondly, it shows me a reflection of our world and how it feels to live in a world like ours with so many strange rules, crazy laws and expectations. His movies depict how it feels to live in this world for me. Imagine living in a Yorgos Lanthimos' Movie and being the only one noticing it. It is exhausting to say the least.
I have never been diagnosed with anything, but i do feel this outsider feeling. Like i see this insane world full of crazy rules traditions and societal "norms" that make absolutly no sense. Yet ppl follow them blindly because thats how things are. Interesting to say the least, The spectrim of austism is not understood. I very well could be considered as such. School was easy for me. So much so i retain knowledge without trying. Even activly ignoring things will not prevent me from retaining them. I really hope someday we figure out our brains. So fasinating and we know so little
This is such a good introduction into his films. What I love about them so much, especially in the killing of a sacred deer, is that all the weirdness already lies in the lines, the characters say them even without any emotion so the absurdity of what they are talking about comes up even clearer and cleaner.
I thought this video was recent cuz of the thumbnail
Was shocked to see it be made three years ago hahahaha
My favorite director. His films make humanity based fully on the true intentions of the characters. It’s a bold way to make people less fake and more relatable while they are almost alien.
Pulling a Yanthimos with the thumbnail I see
That's a funny hack :)
The Swedish director Roy Anderson has a somewhat similar style in his trilogy of films (Songs From The Second Floor, You The Living, and A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence).
Thanks for the tip! Quentin Dupieux (Steak, Rubber, Wrong, Reality) also has some interesting worlds, though a bit more meta as he's gone along.
@@sanblasto @SifatShams Bingo! I used to wonder why no one knows about these two brilliant directors! But now found you both.
Cheers guys!! You're awesome. :)
Aki Kaurismakki also
I just posted here that if you like Lanthimos you should look up Chris Morris's old TV show 'Jam.' I don't know of anything else that's as much like Lanthimos.
roy is much more deep
Dogtooth is one of the few films that I still think about years after seeing it. You hit the nail on the head in this video: Dogtooth asks us to consider the rules we accept in our own lives. What are things we been taught to believe on such a deep, fundamental level that we might not even think to question them? Even when we think we are defying authority, is our concept of what rebellion is still shaped by unexamined frameworks?
*SPOILERS* for the end of Dogtooth:
One of the girls decides to run away from home. It's an act of rebellion against her parents, isn't it? But first, she knocks out one of her canine teeth, because she was raised to believe that children become adults when a 'dogtooth' falls out. And she hides in the trunk of her father's car when she could easily run away on foot, because she was raised to believe it was incredibly dangerous to leave the house except in the car. At the end of the film, we don't know if she'll get out of the trunk and truly get away. And even if she does, her understanding of reality has been so fundamentally warped; will she ever be able to unlearn what she's been taught? This is the challenge we face when we try to become aware of the propaganda, the distortions of reality we've been immersed in all our lives.
The Greek Weird Wave has produced quite a few hidden gems
The Lobster is one of those films I watched with me family that they all hated and I absolutely loved. Need to watch the rest of this guy's work!
Family dudeeee
I understand why they hated it.. He's not anything special. He discusses common things but through awkward scenes makes them difficult eventually.. He's not achieving to pass the message, and for some reason this is "quality" for Hollywood.
Whatever you do, do not watch Dogtooth with your family
Great essay. Have just recently re-watched The Lobster, and despite the absurdity of this world to the audience, it's also quite a mundane existence, with muted emotional ranges of the characters, a restricted and somewhat bland colour palate, and a controlled chaos. Despite scenes that as an audience we would find shocking, thrilling, frightening, or outrageous, after getting over the initial awkwardness or humour, I found myself thinking, "yeah, fair enough", "Ah yeah, that's completely normal" along with the characters in this world. As an audience, becoming as accepting of the absurdity that the characters are.
It's a bit like the way Magritte painted really odd things but in a totally flat, inexpressive, rather conventional style. A lot of Buñuel's filmmaking works similarly. The first time I saw The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie, I thought it looked like a cheap sit com or soap.
Good for him for playing the algorithm! Giving others a chance to explore the many different worlds of the director. Keep it up!
think about our society, justice, politics, hierarchies, money
it's all just an idea made by us, its not real
Why would you think ideas aren't real? They have immediacy in each one of our heads that few things outside of it have. Not to mention those "not real" ideas very much affect the "real" things in the world. The "unreal" idea of money will give me a lot of "real" pleasure in a form of material goods.
@@nickzardiashvili624 They're unreal in that they're fiction. Money only gives you real pleasure because we all accept the shared fiction that money has value.
@@DefectivlyAwesome No, I mean the actual, real pleasure of a delicious piece of food I can buy for example. Actual, physical pleasure of a comfortable house, etc. All very easily comes from "unreal" money. So why treat money as unreal?
@@nickzardiashvili624 No one is asking you to treat money as unreal. We live in a society where we agree money has value and that's been tremendously useful in a lot of ways. What people are saying is that it's a shared fictional idea that only works because people agree to it. If all of a sudden everyone else in the world stopped using money, it would be useless to you, you wouldn't be able to trade it for anything else.
You guys should read "sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari, he talks alot about how things like capatilism and social norms don't exist beyond our heads and that the definition of religion fits with communism, nationalism, capitalism etc
I like the concept of exploring alternate realities so different from ours in yorghos cinematography. At the same time makes me think that our reality is absurd on its own and could be a yorghos movie.
Why is this video 3 years old, but has a preview image of "Poor Things"?
changed it i guess
he has a time machine obviously
For new/more engagement on his video(s), pretty clever
he swapped in a new thumbnail cuz ofcourse its gonna get more attention
he’s my favourite director, truly a mastermind
You have a certain clarity in your film analysis that I don't really see with other channels, who employ a "throw all the paint on the wall and see what sticks" mentality. In any event, good job with this video. The Killing of the Sacred Deer is one of my favorite films released in the past several years.
You cheater! You put a new movie thunbnail to a 3 year old video 😁
But thats a very good move!
ever since i watched "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", i have been hooked on his movies
How is this 3 years ago and have the thumbnail of Poor Things?
You can update thumbnails
I had the same thought lol he must've gone back in only to update the thumbnail. Totally possible but seems a very specific choice to maybe boost old views slightly.
he changed it to get poor things clout
I watched The Lobster two days ago the timing of this video is immaculate 😳
I haven't seen any of these movies, but all of them are on my "must watch" list and I am so glad that I watched this first! Having the theme of "the movies' arbitrary rules reflecting reality's arbitrary rules" is going to make watching these so much better! Thank you. Also, this one video made me subscribe. Seriously well done, short and sweet, and beautifully edited. You don't have enough subscribers.
Yorgos, one of the very few doing real work.
This director is a heavyweight of the past and coming decades.
A bit late but anyway. The Lobster was the first movie I saw from this director and loved it, i've seen dogtooth, sacred deer and the favourite aswell, and I believe that this director is heavily influenced by the work of Franz Kafka. All his world have elements that can be described as kafka-esque. Does someone else feels this way?
Yes!
I love his work. This analysis does anyone excellent job articulating just what makes his films so unique.
I love Yorgos, he’s one of-if not my favorite-directors. Just signed up for MUBI!
I love Yorgos' work. A real weird world builder. Always excited to see what he comes up with next.
the dude just so chill looking. but his art is just *demon chef's kiss
Thank you so much for helping me understand this. I’m such a rookie to things like this. I keep thinking that I’m supposed to understand everything in a film, and this helps me to open my mind up to the films true purpose.
came back to this after binging his entire filmography. The Killing of A Sacred Deer is my favourite then the favourite.
I absolutely love Yorgos’ work so much. This is perfect :) thank you
The immutability of the rules in Lanthimos’ films seems very reminiscent of the ideas put forth by the late Mark Fisher in his book Capitalist Realism. For anyone who’s interested, it’s a short but incredibly worthwhile read
He’s the most incredible filmmaker, like a sadistic crack addict version of Kubrick, SO much influence, but with his own weird style. Absolutely incredible
Thomas, are podcasts something you’re looking into some time soon? Would love to listen to your essays during commutes or while working. Love your channel and your content! Much love from the PH ♥️
While we've put in hiatus for now, I did 12 episodes of a podcast about streaming TV called Stream Theory with Jackson from Skip Intro, you can find it on the podcast platforms.
I'd love to eventually start something back up about film, possibly interview focused, but I don't have any immediate plans.
One of the most talented directors out there in my opinion. Alps and Dogtooth are masterpieces.
Just seeing that tape player, I instantly knew it was that weird Greek thriller and when you said the name of it (Dogtooth), I got goosebumps
Great video. The Lobster is one of my favorite films and I think you did an amazing job analyzing it!
Thank you for another illuminating video. I love listening to you. Lanthimos is one of my very favourite directors and your talk helps me to articulate why I love his movies.
Loved your analysis by the way
The Lobster gives me the same unsettling vibe that reality dating shows do. It's very true to the kind of manipulated narrative and environment that TV shows like the Bachelor/Bachelorette, Love is Blind, and 90 Day Fiancé create, but just presented in a much more artistic, intentionally-disturbing way. It's accurate in that the relationships in these shows are obviously fake, fabricated, and overblown with drama, but the people within them can't see that there's no foundation to begin with, nor can anyone else around them, making these couples the gold-standard for people who are gullible, vulnerable, and feel hopeless in their love life. Much like the film, nobody questions the absurdity of the flawed logic and rules that dating shows set and everybody seems in denial of their sheer rediculousness, as though its a 100% effective way to find love.
I’m happy to see your channel growing. A three year old video still relevant and consistent in your analysis that can easily be applied to POOR THINGS!
Where can I find the old thumbnail?
Colin Farrell is Ned Flanders in disguise
u changed the thumbnail lol haha
Well explained thoughts and ideas of some of my favorite films!
Awesome vid I am excited to watch all of Lanthimos's movies now
This is one of my favorite movies of all time
One of my most favourite films of all time. So great on so many levels.
How can this movie published 3 years ago…have a thumbnail from a movie (“Poor Things”) that came out just a few months ago?
How is this possible?
CZcams creators can change the thumbnail of their videos after they are published
That's what I was saying, I was like "This sly man trying to get people to click for 'Poor Things' commentary... tsk tsk touché"
Same thought.
Awesome video mate cheers!
The 2024 thumbnail made me smile.
You're one of the few video essayists that are actually pleasant orators.
great essay!!! thank you :)
Yorgos has the capability to become one of the all time greats
Thanks for this Thomas; love your take on Yorgos' worlds strange rules. Would love your thoughts on our discussion of the Killing of a Sacred Deer. I haven't seen the short, Mimic, have to see that on Mubi. Also, love you saying Yurgos is playing the role of the father- the rule maker- very cool. You say 'metaphysical' about his worlds- do you think this has to do with Greek myths? Killing is clearly influenced by Agamemnon - yes? Thanks again, this was very cool.
Mimic is great. I loved it! MUBI is the best.
there's something Kafkaesque about his movies
So this guy is some genius world builder??
Damn
Amazing analizys. Thanks!!!
The ending to Lobster is one of the greatest.. just for the simple fact of following through with it's stated absurdity and it's agreed upon shallowness that despite how deep of a connection they develop, he cannot accept that they will be together if they do not share everything.
Lanthimos is an unique director. I like his movies very much!
A fantastic video, thank you
I fucking love the lobster.
THUMBNAIL CHANGE😜😉
renewing my mubi subscription. nmic looks good.
Big fan of the slow zoom, big fan of this video
This video was posted 3 yrs ago? nice thumbnail lol
Our world was created by someone,
and we just blindly accept all the rules
well, there's not much weight to this "we" thing
@@silverblue73 true
I love this movies and now i need to watch it again
These ideas make me think about the manner of describing everyday things in a way that makes them feel strange and absurd
In some cases it's deliberately framed to be strange
"When my clothed get dirty I put them in a metal tube and it spins REALLY fast until they get clean"
other times, the thing writes itself
"the things in my body that act like rubber bands for my bones are loose and stretched out, which means my joints can move as they please. if my joints decide to get out of place, I just have to wait until they go back"
hEDS is a strange beast
Great video!
Can’t wait to watch Poor Things
I watched this so long ago, i think i looked up: "weird films".
the lobster makes you laugh until u dont really know if u are laughing about something in their world or ours
Fascinating. Will absolutely check him out.
Thank goodness for films like these in an otherwise totally robotic industry
Great video 👍
I'm coming back to this after I watch Nimic on mubi
sameee :)
Alps gets slept on all the time and it's a really good watch
It is! It didn't quite fit into this video because it has a slight different vibe but it's definitely worth a watch.
Can you do one on The Favourite, it's my fav of his
czcams.com/video/RtxEmARzEG0/video.html
Here ya go!
I 'll come back after watching all his films!
Yorgos Lanthimos is a blessing for cinema. I love his movies! It's so great to see his creative approaches as contrast to the typical Disney bullshit
I've been waiting to watch Nimic for so loooong lol
Yo. I love your videos.
I absolutely loved this movie.
Loved the part where the couple is given kids as according to the program having kids help couples with martial problems.
It isn't as weird when you view this type of film making the same way you would view the "show don't tell" writer rule. It's like there is not much lore dump/ exposition but instead the "prose" is in the cinematography and acting itself. Meanwhile, the audience, just sits along for the ride like a reader going page by page. It's fascinating actually
It"s like in dreams..there is thousand of absurdity everywhere but you don"t question them! But then the fact that i can"t make a photo with my phone makes me realize that i"m dreaming!
Lobster felt like a fever dream.