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Rating: "The Lobster", for which @aleradio was thrilled clenching his fists under his chin like a Japanese teenager, I missed it.
And yes, I wanted to see it, Collin Farrell turning into a lobster (ahaha).
Instead, I watched this "sacrifice of the sacred deer," which I shouldn't have seen; I was about to watch another one, and in hindsight, I should have listened to my instincts, since this film, all in all, is a bit of a mess.
There’s Collin Farrell again... he's a surgeon facing the revenge of a boy, son of a patient who died under his tools, perhaps culpably.
The revenge will strike his entire family, his two children, and his wife, a Nicole Kidman à la eyes wide shut.
Up to this point, it's somewhat acceptable. However, how the revenge manifests is not explained... witchcraft? It's unclear, it just happens.
And how do you get out of this fierce revenge? With a sacrifice…
Summing it up quickly, I should say something about the film.
Farrell and Kidman are very good, a guarantee. Even the boy and the two children manage quite well.
There are several sequences that leave a mark. The film is technically very proficient.
Lanthimos, a 45-year-old Greek director, works hard with tracking shots, aerial shots, a sense of symmetry (someone ventured a comparison with Kubrick for this choice). Even the use of the soundtrack is reminiscent of the choices of the great master. In the soundtrack of The Sacrifice of the Sacred Deer we find György Ligeti (whose music Kubrick used not only in Shining but also in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eyes Wide Shut).
Sumptuous and oppressive, the sacrifice is a drama-family-movie with strong tones, too strong... it’s unclear where it intends to end up, let's say it starts as a kind of thriller that then turns into horror...
Although Lanthimos has already stood out as a breakaway auteur director, one of those you either love or hate, and for this reason, he has been compared to Lars Von Trier or Michael Haneke (in this film he "cites" him, nowadays it’s called citing… not copying) with whom he shares a powerful sense of provocation/shock towards the viewer, although (as we were saying) although blablabla……… although nothing!… I think Lanthimos lets something slip from his hands and above all establishes himself, for me, as a breakaway director, yes, but of nuisances!
Now, I've seen little of Von Trier and perhaps understood even less, but Haneke... Haneke in his Funny Games (a masterpiece for me) doesn't just provoke and disturb the viewer but shows an explosion of violence as something monstrously "normal" within a sick, deviant society. Damn, there's content and everything is functional to its expression. Everything is coherent and unfortunately realistic, possible... and even if you have the remote control and you can decide to stop the massacre, it would still happen, maybe with the rewind... or somewhere else where you don't have the remote control...
In the sacrifice, instead, there is not only a lack of suspension of disbelief, necessary to accept this revenge simply because... mainly, there’s a lack of logical connection (???) that is: it will be the sacrifice to close a circle that is not a circle...
Result? It won the Cannes prize for best screenplay! Ahaha, what characters these French!
Anyway, if we overlook that the story and ending are nonsense, that it's derivative here and there (but also below and above and to the right and left), the film is good and Lanthimos (the auteur director of the moment you must like) is very talented.
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