A Brief History Of The Greek Weird Wave
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- čas přidán 10. 03. 2024
- With #PoorThings bringing director #YorgosLanthimos to a wider audience, Will Webb explores the Greek film movement that gave rise to him and several other idiosyncratic filmmakers.
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For decades, since the rise of television, Greek cinema was highly experimental and pretty much existed only in the international film festivals realm. With very few commercial films. Every contemporary to Lanthimos Greek director had similar influences. This may create something like a wave most noticeable around the economic crisis. However Lanthimos had a background in advertisement and music videos. This is a very important detail that differentiated him from everyone else in Greece, his aesthetic is very stylized. He constantly evolves bringing complex themes in a wider audience , every time , movie by movie. Now he influences younger directors worldwide, making big budget movies with the same indie soul.
“Pussy is a big light.” 😳 Honestly to this day, Dogtooth is my favorite Yorgos Lanthimos film. It’s dark, funny and takes the whole overprotective Greek parents thing to 11.
My favorite scene was when he accused the mother (locked up in the compound with the kids 24/7) of not spending enough time with their children...
If you do not take this literally, it could also apply to a country that uses propaganda to manipulate its citizens, or a religion..
@@lateralus88vicarious A typical government or institution.
I think you would love the mexican "castle of purity"
Yay, thank you for including Christos Nikou’s *Apples* (2020)! That was a wonderful movie that I feel gets overlooked at lot. 😊 Great video, Will! 💟
This was truly beautiful. Thanks for making this.
Thank you for this primer! After being enchanted by Poor Things it's nice to have a roadmap of other absurd films to dive into.
Really interesting, added a few films to my watch list!
Yep, same here.
0:40 Well they're just agents from the Ministry of Silly Walks
Very interesting. Thanks
somehow related with Luis Buñuel film "The discret charm of the burgoises"
I'd watch these except I've got some drying paint that I've really been meaning to check out.
Same. I'd watch them gladly, if I was tied on a chair and someone was dropping eye drops in my eyes
They seem surrealist? 🤔
Great, I'll wash myself before watching this, and immediately was myself thereafter.
Wow, I needed less than half of this review to know with certainty that I don’t desire to waste my time with the film. Don’t need the other half of the review now either. Thanks.
My thoughts exactly
I feel like Yorgos denounced this idea…for good reason 😅
Attenberg (Yorgos produced) is the only other film in this “wave” that I think that’s worth seeing. (Maybe PITY 2018 should be mentioned)
I really don’t think this is a wave at all though. And something about lumping Yorgos in with them feels wrong. It kind of shows a formal misunderstanding of what makes him and his work different I guess I worry people who don’t think critically will just run with this idea bc it’s easier to just slap a label on something and move on. If you’re going to do video essays that include Dogtooth and Miss Violence, I think you should make some HEAVY distinctions about why they are extremely DIFFERENT movies instead of the very surface connections like weird families.
I’d encourage anyone to see/hear Yorgos speak in his BFI interview about this “wave” and maybe a trigger warning is necessary for specifically Miss Violence…
"Pity" is fire
Not the first one in this series where a filmmaker’s said they don’t agree with the classification!
For me, I view this idea of waves/movements as a lens through which to see the history of cinema, not a hard-and-fast club membership. Like the German New Wave in the 60s/70s, this is a looser collection of films that approach similar themes in different ways (sometimes very, very different), reacting to the extraordinary circumstances in their country.
There is indeed a wave triggered by the economic crisis, you can easily detect it if you also look at other arts: music, painting, theater and performance are all encompassed by this new melancholia, pessimism and hopelessness, showcasing the deep conservatism, hypocrisy and absurdity of modern Greek society, and expressing the mental anguish of young people that are trapped in (and beg to escape) this cultural facade. Athens in particular is at the forefront of this wave. While I agree that Lanthimos is not really representative of it, I would definitely put Dogtooth in the "weird" wave.
@@Indietrixit’s so loose ( pause) and so different that imo the films shouldn’t be lumped together but they are for the sake of making content like this and it’s potentially a little misleading. Its the kind of thing that if it isn’t addressed early it just spins into a narrative that people believe without even really understanding where it came from. A lot of directors have these sort of associations tied to them that we don’t realize are false until they’re like 80 and still disputing it and a new generation comes in with fresh eyes and can see the filmography for what it really is and not just the think-pieces of its time.
@@vocalsg13I think Yorgos himself is the entire wave and represents what you’re speaking of and these writers just lump in other Greek films for the sake of content. These other films however to me feel almost “weird for weirdness sake” so much so that I just think there should at least be a tiny nod to the distinct differences between his works and these other few filmmakers.
It's not like Greeks made weird movies before that... Singapore Sling: The Man Who Loved a Corpse (1990)?
Don't bet the Greeks made a movie like that. We have a lot of crypto-foreigners in Greece who run almost everything.
@@PlanetIscandar WTF? Νίκος Γεωργίου Νικολαΐδης is a great director and Singapore Sling a great film.
@@grisflyt I said "don't bet". Nothing more. Thank you for the information. Do you know if I can watch the whole movie somewhere to judge better (regardless of whether it is indeed a patriotic Greek or a crypto-foreign production or script or inspiration)?
@@PlanetIscandar You realize how insecure and pathetic you sound?
I can confirm that my original take away after viewing this film. Dogtooth put me off Greek cinema, then, now and for ever. I will never recover my sanity after enduring this " movie."
Misrule Cinema & the Pink8 Manifesto is weirder than these movies
The ministry of silly walks.
Eh. I’m good, bruh.
"Dogtoof"
Movies for the human misery. And experimental as if it's a quirk to live out horrible things. It's not a weird wave- you say it's a weird wave.
In other words, much of this is contemporary cautionary tales with the psyche of Greek mythology!
Nothing more far than it. Mentality and attitude of ancient myths is totally different.
2012 to 2020. I worked in jeffersonville Indiana and saw how everyone like the same, it turned out everyone was cousin and all white community. They were all the same family.. I am Mexicano and never saw a dark skin Mexicano . It was strange. I am back home Downey California , the owners of company wants me to return. No….
How many of these films had ethnically Jewish directors and producers?
😯
None , Greece has an extremely small jewish community since most of them were killed by the Germans
Only Tsangari SHOULD be Jewish, however you got it right in a sense, all these bunch of people love Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Naomi Klein, Noam Tsomski etc and very warm embracers of US woke
They should have called it "Greek Geek"
Over analyzing bad movies that confuse being try-hard weird for being actually interesting. I look forward to this CZcams channel giving me a thorough breakdown on the unrecognized importance of Adam Sandler’s “Jack and Jill,” in the history of early 21st century cinema next.
🥱🥱
If “culture” is just absurd ( 5:40 ), what then do we base political discourse upon? Perhaps it is this very insight, the absurdity of “cultural leftist” political activity after over forty years of increasingly impotent and academic and tribal and gatekept discourse in the face of rising wealth inequality and the general shift to the right of the mainstream of the political discourse that filmmakers like Lanthamos seek to lampoon. Perhaps the absurdity of cultural responses and social justice activity to material economic and militaristic, law enforcement and surveillance activity from the state failing to contain and inddeedn even encouraging a strengthening radical right wing containing clear and increasingly public fascist tendencies that would seem to point to more traditional materialist Marxist socialist action from the left encouraging not cultural analysis and social justice, but rather class struggle and economic justice.
Maybe that’s just me? Absurdity, satire and subtlety at this point in our devolution and loss of ground to the right and the power of the rising oppressive aristocracy of wealth and their cynical empowering of a second wave of populist fascism seems irresponsible to me. Both on the part of the rich ruling class when history has made abundantly clear how deeply destructive unleashling fascism is just to avoid a peaceful and orderly round of wealth redistribution. And irresponsible on the part of the left as well, now that it’s become abundantly clear that calls to direct action and plans to organize from our thought leaders is what is required of them … not satirical or absurd art.
loss of ground to the right???? Are you kidding?
@@fiat2496 Yes. Yes. Ideology follows material wealth and power. And the ruling class dedication to the capitalist principles that have resulted in the creation of the largest wealth inequality favoring the top 2% ruling oligarchy ever seen American history since at least 1900 has resulted in a radical shift rightward in every principle that matters; all those that have to do with wealth, power, it’s accumulation and its inheritance from one generation to the next.
What your talking about no doubt is culture. Immaterial culture. Culture is an epiphenomenon of the material and economic conditions that control the lives of those who who live in the cultural milieu. In our thoroughly capitalist and consumer society there’s no cultural movement (even ones you might call “cultural leftist” that aren’t thoroughly infused with the power flowing from the inherently conservative right-wing capitalist values to preserve the hierarchy of wealth and power that exists in the society. Even the most apparently radical of cultural values you can think of has no real power to effect change without first being transformed by the necessities of the capitalist means of production and consumption. The necessities of capitalism determine first what culture will be and won’t be in society, and who it’s proponents will be, how widespread it will be and what actual political power it will have.
Until a more balanced economic distribution of wealth is achieved again with a large and healthy middle class again society will be inherently right-wing, since the top 2% of society, the super wealthy oligarchy will have an inordinately huge influence on society at every level vis their ownership of assets and media and … everything.
@@fiat2496 Yes. "Wokism" is corporatist. It's purely performative. Hiring a gender fluid drone operator doesn't change anything. Disney, BlackRock, the Pentagon and the entire military-industrial complex are "woke." So is Israel. "Pink washing."
Identity politics and intersectionality gave us Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential candidate. Bernie Sanders supporters were vilified as "Bernie bros."
Want more performance? Try Obama's campaign against sexual assaults on college campuses. College campuses are probably the safest places there are for women. Surely single mothers should have been more of a priority. But that doesn't win support from the affluent white class that got Obama elected.
This was a really cool video but OOP I do not want to see a movie where a trans women has relations with her estranged father… that sounds like an abuse story/horror. Idk how a story that sad and gross could be so compelling but maybe that’s just me being a big weenie 🤢
*man *his
@@plurabelle5 shut up lmao so pressed
As long as he is trapped by his neurotic ego Lanthimos will continue creating weird characters. This is not genius satire, or cunning parody, this is infantilism. Absurdism has its place, otherwise we would be spinning in circles around a burning ball of gas circling around our galaxy forever and ever without a purpose. Oh yeah, never mind.
(Until you see the Buddha nature you are trapped. Whether in a gilded cage, or a joyless, dystopian hell is all the same, it's not real.)
Nobody watches these films in Greece. Possibly not even the friends and relatives of the participants.
Yorgos Lanthimos is to films as Yoko Ono is to music. Sadly, there isn't a sound engineer to appear and remove Yorgos.
That’s a stupid comment
I lived in Greece, if Greece has a fiscal problem it is caused by the culture of tax evasion.
The only significant tax evasion in Greece is done by some multinationals who do not pay a single euro, thanks to domestic crypto-foreigners setting the law.
1,7 billion euros are tax evaded by multicompanies .
Yorgos is the wave, the rest are just weird.
Economides is the wave
still gross
Greek films suck.
It's just complex characters giving simple messages. Not exciting.
....And these weirdos want the Elgin Marbles back.
Don't assume that all Greeks are like these individuals.
Those Marbles do not belong to Elgin, thus it is wrong to call them under his name…if you have the capacity to know of some history, do call them with their real name!
@@CMR10500 What do you mean? The Ottoman Turks owned the Parthenon at the time (for a while it was a mosque).. The Acropolis was an Ottoman fort. The Ottomans gave those marbles to Elgin.
"If you have the capacity to know some history..."
Evidently I do, since I have to point out to you that he was given those marbles by the Turks. From Elgin's point of view, he was saving them from the Turks.
@@MrJm323 See, you are making my point even more obvious...
If you are not a troll then, please do make a research to uncover what has been going on so far...
The short story is that those Parthenon marbles have been stolen and damaged in the process of doing so and even their maintenance in the British Museum is of poor quality...
The truth is more sinister and the British museum in general has a nasty history of stolen artifacts and their controversial preservation in general...
thank God most of us are normal people, nothing like these wankers. And they are 1) sculptures not marbles 2) Acropolis of Athens ΑΚΡΟΠΟΛΕΩΣ ΑΘΗΝΩΝ and not Elgin's. Elgin was the thief. You don't name something after his thief.