Luis Martinez
Updated Thursday, January 25, 2024-21:34
Interview Jonathan Glazer: "We still look too much like those who committed the Holocaust. And that terrifies us"
Review The area of interest: A masterpiece built at the foot of the abyss (*****)
Criticism When evil lurks: Blood, viscera and Argentine metaphors (****)
Yorgos Lanthimos (Athens, 1973)
is not just any director. First of all, he is Greek. Which means that if at one point in the interview he confuses the myth of Sisyphus with that of Prometheus (as happened) the degree of perplexity is very notable. For some reason, we tend to believe that if someone is born in the Peloponnese he knows the legends of his land like the Spanish know the fortunes of bullfighting. And it is not the case. In none of the cases. It would even be said that Lanthimos has made perplexity his hallmark. All of his cinema since he burst onto the international scene with
Canino
in 2009 literally lives in the astonished face of the viewer. In his filmography, names change, rites announce cataclysms and the world as we know it always seems different.
"The nature of the monster may be the most beautiful fact,"
he says at one point in the conversation, without it being entirely clear whether he is talking about his latest film, Mycenaean mythology, or, to put it briefly, about himself. He's not just any guy.
Poor Creatures
, his latest film, does nothing more than demonstrate the thesis at hand. It's not just any movie either. Beyond being in all the forecasts that predict awards, medals and Oscars (there are 11 nominations) since it was blessed with the Golden Lion in the last edition of Venice, it is an essentially anomalous film. And it is because of its ambition (a fantastic film that is overwhelming in its visual proposal that formulates the possibility of a new world created from scratch), because of its plot (a revision of the myth of the new Prometheus - not Sisyphus - or Frankenstein, but of reverse according to the novel by
Alasdair Gray
) and, much more evident, by sex. It tells the story of Bella Baxter (sublime Emma Stone), a young woman who, after returning from the dead, rediscovers her body, the world, and the ways in which her body relates to the world in a completely new way. And of course, the rules, including those of female sexuality, are blown up.
«If you suddenly stop experiencing shame, life is completely different. If we reflect a little, it is easy to realize that
shame has shaped the world today.
Many of the communication problems we suffer, as well as the resistance to changing what is wrong, find their root in our inability to show ourselves as we are. “Shame is an internal barrier that prevents us from acting,” comments the director to draw the space of action of his character. His heroine suddenly identifies what gives her pleasure and, without shame, throws herself into it. “The strange thing,” Lanthimos continues, “is that in our society violence does not experience any type of censorship. It is celebrated and, except in extreme cases, it is understood that its most common and standardized representation has little to do with reality. We assume it. However, that doesn't happen with sex. We have evolved and, in general, we are much more tolerant of traditions and customs. However, cinema, for example, has become much more conservative and puritan over time. And, honestly, I don't understand it.
Lanthimos says that the first rule of the film was not to be prudish. And that is how its protagonist Emma Stone understood it and promoted it as a producer. «She understood from the first moment that
nudity was a requirement.
The difficulty was to be bold and provocative, without turning the screen into a spectacle for exploitation as, perhaps, cinema has done too many times. We were aware that we had to create a new code.
Do not shy away from sex or use it as another consumer commodity.
And then there is the second part: the viewer. What for some may be too much, for others, barely anything. What for some, feminism; for others, the same as always (that is, machismo). Therefore, the important thing was to be faithful to the character only," she says, in order to specify what seems like pure imprecision. And one more: «In other films, the question that naturally arises when faced with a sex scene is always the same: "Is it really necessary? Does it contribute anything?" And you do them because you don't want problems. Sex scenes usually bring them.
In this case, sex is the essence of the film.
It is clear.
What the director is clear about is that, compared to any other work in his career,
Poor Creatures
is something else. Entirely shot in a studio, it is difficult to find that love of veristic environments, always so close to reality and at the same time so far, from each of his previous films. «In reality, rather than risking doing something different, the impression I have is that I have ended up doing what I have always wanted to do. I stumbled upon the novel in 2010 and was captivated by the way Gray makes you think about and discuss our place in the world. In fact, I went to meet the author in Glasgow. Then he would be 80 years old.
The first thing he did was take the jacket and have it follow him throughout the city behind the places that inspired the text.
He, through a friend of his who had left him the DVD, had seen my film
Alpes
and he confessed to me that he had liked it. He told me, "You're good. Do it." Now he has already died, but I feel honored to have carried out his orders », he comments.
Be that as it may,
Poor Creatures
hits the billboard in a way that only monsters are capable of. Monsters, Guillermo del Toro often says, don't lie because they don't hide, they don't have masks. His necessarily deformed face is always the possibility of a new form.
"Its nature may be the most beautiful fact."
Peculiar Lanthimos.