Ryan Marshall

Greek writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos, born May 27th 1973, got his start in television and theatre production throughout the 1990’s before trying his hand at feature filmmaking, co-directing MY BEST FRIEND with Lakis Lazopoulos in 2001. Today, he is best known as the mad genius behind 2016’s THE LOBSTER – his first English language film – starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly among others. That film is unquestionably unique, balancing Bunuelian social satire with much more profound commentary on the rules of attraction. It is also the director’s fifth feature. As such, it may be interesting to backtrack a bit to get a sense of what paved the road to the director’s latest.

Lanthimos’s first solo effort was the surreal KINETTA, a difficult film to acquire until fairly recently when the British home distribution company SECOND RUN DVD gave it, at last, a proper re-introduction.

Next, Lanthimos made the brilliant DOGTOOTH in 2009, which was later nominated for an Academy Award (Best Foreign Language Film) and solidified its director as a truly unique new voice. He then followed his newfound success with the enigmatic ALPS – which may be his most intentionally cold film to date.

Lanthimos’s films are interesting because they all share, essentially, a similar theme regarding the breakdown of social constructs, with the director revealing them for how ridiculous and/or frightening they really are at the core. They are also quite funny – with THE LOBSTER being the most universally resonant of the lot – as well as genuinely disturbing, but nonetheless genuinely provocative. One gets a sense that there’s much subconscious cleansing going on in his cinema, or so the shared scenes of simulated animal violence would suggest.

However, challenging his films can be, they never fail to give the viewer some solid food-for-thought.