Oct
30
Dogtooth (Greece, 2009, Giorgos Lanthimos)
For a change of pace, Dan begins:
In Dogtooth, Giorgos Lanthimos’s third feature film, the Greek director employs some of the chilly mis-en-scene of his Austrian contemporary, Michael Haneke, often placing the camera at a comfortable distance from his actors throughout the film’s most uncomfortable passages. However, it is when Lanthimos taps into his inner Kubrick in the movie’s darkly comic moments, where violence and cruelty slam up against naivete and ignorance, that Dogtooth moves beyond the merely clinical and approaches something closer to art. Ultimately, the film’s barbed and darkly comic commentary on human folly achieves a ruthlessness that is almost punishing.
For a change of pace, Dan begins:
In Dogtooth, Giorgos Lanthimos’s third feature film, the Greek director employs some of the chilly mis-en-scene of his Austrian contemporary, Michael Haneke, often placing the camera at a comfortable distance from his actors throughout the film’s most uncomfortable passages. However, it is when Lanthimos taps into his inner Kubrick in the movie’s darkly comic moments, where violence and cruelty slam up against naivete and ignorance, that Dogtooth moves beyond the merely clinical and approaches something closer to art. Ultimately, the film’s barbed and darkly comic commentary on human folly achieves a ruthlessness that is almost punishing.
