Why Do Yorgos Lanthimos' Movies Feel So Weird?

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!

// WATCH MORE THOMAS FLIGHT

-My Podcast Cinema of Meaning:

-Rent or Buy My Experimental Documentary:

-Read My Newsletter:

// SUPPORT MY WORK
Patrons get access to a discord community, monthly podcast reviews of everything I watch, and more!

Signing Up for Nebula using my link supports my channel financially.

// FOLLOW ME

// CONTACT ME

#ThomasFlight #Movies

[jayeshpatil]

"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.

[happychey]

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.

[billypunton]

Dogtooth, The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite? This guy has potential to be of the greats

[trishplusmama]

The hotel manager looking like the Queen of England to me tho

[TonyIgnatova]

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.

[paulaingrid]

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.

[lania]

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! :)

[godawful]

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

[SirGofres]

Did you change the thumbnail to feature the new film?

Clever way to play around the system without completely surrender to it.

[innesfinlay]

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

[SuicideMclovin]

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.

[ayt.u.]

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.

[ellaaa]

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.

[vsauce]

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.

[blueegg]

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.

[sifatshams]

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).

[glenharris]

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!

[klike]

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.

[pauli_joy]

I thought this video was recent cuz of the thumbnail
Was shocked to see it be made three years ago hahahaha

[MrArgy]

The Greek Weird Wave has produced quite a few hidden gems