THE "WONDERFUL" WORLD OF YORGOS LANTHIMOS OR THE FALL OF THE DOGTOOTH

Yorgos Lanthimos is becoming more and more of a household name in arthouse circles. His latest film, The Lobster, brought him international acclaim and awards at this year’s Cannes film festival. Set in an alternative universe where humans who fail at having a successful relationship are transformed into animals and banished, we can only imagine that Lanthimos is going to be the topic of quite a few discussions to come. This is not by any means Lanthimos first foray into the limelight, a few years ago, in 2011, Dogtooth won him multiple international awards, including an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature. I heard of Dogtooth at the time – well you could hardly avoid it. I avoided watching it though; I always felt that its rather strange and disturbing subject matter would be a little too much for me. Yet, when the film came across my path again recently, I had to stop and think. This guy is clearly not going anywhere soon as far as his name in the art world goes. One might as well come to terms with this fact and get to know the guy. At the very least so one can say succinctly WHY one doesn’t like his films. “They just sound weird” is not really an academic or professional answer to give. So I dove straight into the wonderful world of Dogtooth. And before we kick off, kudos to Lanthimos, he has done a truly spectacular job of creating an almost completely believable alternative reality within the very world we live in… Well, Lanthimos – and the characters he has created.

Our protagonists are a family. Clearly a family of means, the father goes off to work every day while the mother stays at home in the large and beautiful house and grounds with the three teenage children. However, all is not quite as it seems in the idyll. Although provided with every single thing they need, the children are kept, by their parents, in a sort of alternative reality. The world outside is dangerous. So much so that leaving the house before your Dogtooth falls out might well mean death. There are no such things as telephones, videos, newspapers – in fact any connection to the outside world. Nobody enters the house except Christine, brought in once a week to relieve the son’s sexual desires. Apart from that their parents are the only other humans the children (they have no names) know. But, of course, you can only keep humans in such a state of submission for only so long. Eventually real life will creep in through the cracks, somehow, and “pollute” the atmosphere. In this household, kept in this extraordinary state for many years, the consequences will be devastating…

First of all, sensitive souls, take heart. The film is undoubtedly hard to watch, but by no means does Lanthimos make it into an emotional spectacle. In fact the way the film portrays the lives of the family to us is almost clinical. An almost unmoving camera, no real close-ups or extreme close-ups, and reliance on an almost completely diegetic score all means that the film has the air of a very surreal documentary. This effect is also partly due to the way the actors deliver their lines. The limited emotional development the children have been through means that they speak almost constantly with poker faced seriousness. The house itself is quite dour at the best of times. There is no joking, no laughing, no real shows of affection and no pets… It makes sense really, the characters live in such a limited world that they do not need a broad range of emotion. And if they did feel anything new, their father probably would not approve.  The benefits of making the film so clinical are twofold, apart from making the film watchable – you could make the film very melodramatic with completely different style choices and editing – it allows us to take a step back and really think about the film and the messages it is trying to convey. Approached academically, Dogtooth has quite a lot to say for itself…

The film could be of course an analogy for pretty much any repressive state anywhere. On a larger scale, this could be life in North Korea for example, or a secretive country like Bhutan. And the message of the film is clear. No matter how hard you try, no matter how long it actually looks as if you are succeeding for, you will never repress the human soul, the human instincts for ever. Even the best of armour has chinks in it and you are a fool if you think that you can stop all influences for ever. In the film, we get hints that the family actually mean well – they want to preserve the children’s purity, stop them developing bad characters. However, no matter what you mean, repressing a human soul and trying to mould it to your whim will never, never end well and will never fully succeed. In a bizarre kind of way Dogtooth is an ode to the resilience of the human spirit. Its message is that no matter how surreal the circumstances, no matter how vigilant the guards, what is meant to be will, undoubtedly be.

As rather befits the film, we do not have a “clear” end to the film. Lanthimos averts his (and our)eyes, just at the moment the first real tragedy of the film is about to strike. The horrors and the consequences of this tragedy are left to our imaginations, but there can be no doubt that it will, on some level , bring this strange little kingdom toppling down… Strangely enough though, you can’t exactly be glad it happened… You’ll see what I mean when you see it…  

BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CONTAIN THE "BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD"

I took one look at the trailer for this one and said to myself “Hah. Terrance Malik fan.” This, to be fair, is what most reviewers of the film seem to have thought when watching Beasts of the Southern Wild. But don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad thing. In fact it’s one of the things that pushed me to watching this film. Beasts of the Southern Wild is a wonderfully surreal and – dare I say it - slightly steampunk fairy tale taking place right in the middle of the modern world.

Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) is a six year old girl living in a southern bayou called Bathtub with her father Wink (Dwight Henry). Hers is a rather unconventional life, she goes to school and is taught by Miss Bathsheba who uses her tattoos to tell the children about aurochs and warns them about the melting ice caps. Six year old Hushpuppy has a “house” of her own close to her father’s where she lives with her own things and what remains of her mother’s stuff – her mother “swam away” when Hushpuppy was born – and goes over to her father’s house to eat. So there she lives, in an unconventional world bolstered by her very vivid imagination. But when disaster strikes in the shape of Wink’s failing health and the great flood (Hurricane Katrina), Hushpuppy’s disorganised but happy world comes crashing down. To survive (mentally and in fact physically) Hushpuppy has to grow up very, very quickly indeed.

This is wonderful lyrical story of a completely alternative way of interpreting the world. The perspective of a child, a child who has not been given the hard and fast rules the rest of society has adapted as “the right way” to do things. Do you remember those days? It was quite a long time ago for most of us, so most of us forget pretty quickly, but there was a time when you believed in things that you know think was “childish nonsense”. It could be the tooth fairy, it could be , like me, that when you got into an elevator the elevator was static and the building moved around it (I’ve said this before, I was rather a strange child). Director Benh Zeitlin does this by creating a completely alternative universe in the bayou. The people who live there do not have nearly as many possessions as the folks on the other side of the levee but they have one thing money cannot buy – community. Hushpuppy’s family is not limited to her father, it is the whole community, all her neighbours. The alternative lifestyle is reinforced by the slightly Steampunk looking surroundings; the ramshackle huts made out of disparate construction materials cobbled together, farm animals running practically wild… It’s as close to living in a magical land a person can get to in our modern times… It is fascinating to see, through the eyes of a child, how this perspective copes when the harsh realities of disease and destruction come crashing into this world. Be it Wink’s refusal to come to terms with his illness (we are never told exactly what but it is some kind of blood disorder) or the community coping with the devastating aftermath of the hurricane, it is not just a matter of physical survival; it is a matter of whether the happiness and philosophy of the community will survive. It is easy to put bitterness and hopelessness instead of courage and a sense of togetherness. Even more important is how little Hushpuppy is going to cope with this transition because in all probability it will colour her approach to life for the rest of her days.

For her performance in this film young actress Quvenzhane Wallis deserves nothing short of a standing ovation. This film is her first role as an actress and we have since seen her in films such as 12 years a Slave. Facially and vocally she ably conveys a very complex set of emotions and thoughts that some adult actors may well have struggled with. Dwight Henry is also a strong performer as her father Wink, who obstinately raises his daughter his own way, with an obstinacy and passion that borders on the violent.

The one thing I feel didn’t quite fit into the film are, sadly, the aurochs. They have been compared to the dinosaurs in Terrance Malik’s Tree of Life, and who knows, that may well be the source of their inspiration. They are, basically physical representations (I say physical but needless to say the only exist in Hushpuppy’s mind) of her fears, the difficulties the future will bring and the uncertainty. Although the end sequence with them is designed to bring a rise of emotion in us, to me it felt forced. The same emotion could equally be conveyed (and I personally thought it was) during (SPOILER ALERT) Wink’s funeral, right at the end of the film. I think they felt a little clumsy in what was otherwise a very emotional and delicate film.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a real experience to watch. The silences and surrealism is not for everyone but if you just look past the surface of these it’s a truly beautiful and complex film. Definitely one not to miss.