From the critical and commercial fanfare his films generate, it is largely understood that Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the more interesting filmmakers to have emerged out of the new century. A markedly transnational filmmaker, between Dogtooth and The Favourite Lanthimos has managed to traverse the gap between the art-house and mainstream while not once sacrificing his unique style and worldview. His films, while often difficult, showcase his talents as a filmmaker, collaborator, and commentator on the human condition. Accompanied by a trademark acerbic wit, Lanthimos's films take aim at humanity's more contemptible and absurd designs as he explores a thematic preoccupation with, among other things, power, trauma, isolation, sex, and violence.
This edited collection covers everything from an early career that was marked by experimentation with a range of different media to international festival hits including Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and the Academy Award-winning "historical" epic The Favourite, Lanthimos's most successful feature to date. All his work demonstrates a fascinating contravention of aesthetic, thematic, and generic boundaries that forms the basis of some of the analyses to be found here. Featuring a roster of talented scholars, both new and established, The Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos: Films, Form, Philosophy provides a timely compendium of critical approaches to one of the most distinct voices in contemporary film.
Author(s): Eddie Falvey (editor)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 303
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Titles
1 (A Late) Introduction: Framing Yorgos Lanthimos’s Weird Worlds
Part I Origins and Identity
2 Greek Screen Cultures and the Scopic Regimes of the Long 1990s: Exploring Yorgos Lanthimos’s Early Works (Afroditi Nikolaido
3 The Anti-Foundationalist Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos: The Case of Kinetta (Vrasidas Karalis)
Part II Experiencing Lanthimos
4 On Confinement, Sameness, and Grieving: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps (Asbjørn Grønstad)
5 Bodies Out of Place: Ontological Adriftness in The Lobster (Ina Karkani)
6 Notes Toward a Cinema of Apathy in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos (Eddie Falvey)
Part III Form and Authorship
7 Kafkaesque Themes in The Lobster (Angelos Koutsourakis)
8 Animal Instincts: Fear, Power, and Obedience in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos and Stanley Kubrick (Michael Lipiner and Nath
9 Consider the Absurd: Uneasy Proximity in Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Nepomuk Zettl)
10 Dog, Lobster, Deer, Rabbit: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Animal Metaphors (Savina Petkova)
Part IV Genre and Variation
11 Art-House Thriller: Auteur Meets Genre in The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Geoff King)
12 Myth and Mythopoeia in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos (James J. Clauss)
13 Rethinking the Heritage Film: Gothic Critique in The Favourite (Alex Lykidis)
Part V Gender, Sex, and Sexuality
14 Young Women’s Deadly Rebellions in the Early Films of Yorgos Lanthimos (Tonia Kazakopoulou)
15 The “Weird” Sex Scenes of Yorgos Lanthimos (Alice Haylett Bryan)
16 The Queer Posthumanism of The Lobster (Marios Psaras)
Yorgos Lanthimos’s Primary Feature Filmography
Contributors
Index
