by Julian Wood
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone
Intro:
… isn’t nearly as good as Lanthimos’s The Favourite or The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Both had such masterful visual style combined with purity of intent. This is looser and more akin to The Lobster but, again, that is not half bad.
Greek Director Yorgos Lanthimos is heading so inexorably towards cinematic canonisation for the current generation of young cinephiles, that it is becoming increasingly hard to keep a cool head when reviewing his films.
Like any director with an auteurist touch, he is snowballing such a cult following that he is more or less guaranteed a small but enthusiastic audience every time. Also, his current rate of productivity is impressive, as more crazy ideas come tumbling out of his brain every year.
Now too, he can command big budgets and a rolling band of Hollywood actors who like to challenge themselves with offbeat material; Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo for example. But his favourite of all must be Emma Stone, who will seemingly do anything on camera if Lanthimos asks.
We saw her throw herself fully into the role that he wrote for her in Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness. Here she is again, in every frame and acting her heart out. To be fair, she is very watchable and her nimble transitions from wild-eyed loon to hardnosed schemer are once again skilfully deployed. She can also deliver complex lines in rapid-fire exchanges without ever seeming to strain for effect.
Here, she plays Michelle, the suit-wearing, high flying female executive whose company makes cutting edge products with scary technical abilities. Their global inventions and far-reaching powers attract the attention of two hapless dolts, Teddy and Don (played by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who conceive the idea of kidnapping Michelle. They then take her to their cabin in the woods and things unravel from there. They are tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists convinced that aliens have already taken over, and they are the only ones to actually solve the problems of this runaway world. They think that they have it all planned out, but only because they are dumb enough to think they are not dumb. Or so it seems.
The often very funny script is co-written by Will Tracy, adapting 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet! His fine work on The Menu and Succession brings extra lustre to the production. His verbal skill, combined with Lanthimos’s high style, means that we are assured plenty of laughs. The pacing and structure are much better than Poor Things and though the film is long, it mostly doesn’t drag. Lanthimos is also technically savvy and cinematically clever; he uses long shots and ‘wrong’ framing in a way that somehow works against the image and unsettles us without us really knowing why. His use of music is also so jarring but somehow completely right. One of the things to admire is how he breaks all the rules to make new ones. There is a lot of skill on display here, even if the whole is not quite as good as the sum of its parts. If there is a reservation it is more with factors external to the filmmaking. One feels that Lanthimos is heading into the dangerous waters that Wes Andrerson now swims in, where everyone loves the style and the schtick so much that they might forget to actually make a coherent movie.
As already implied, Lanthimos is an important talent. He is very near to achieving one of the highest accolades; that of having a recognisable adjective ascribed to him (though Lanthimoseque doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue). His tropes of having absurdist ideas delivered in deadpan dialogue and his ability to move us in a beat from initial refusal to baffled acceptance can feel quite thrilling.
Really, this film isn’t nearly as good as his The Favourite or The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Both had such masterful visual style combined with purity of intent. This is looser and more akin to The Lobster but, again, that is not half bad.
Lanthimos can take a crazy idea and bend it right round so it meets itself and locks us into an absurdist logic in a way that can be delicious. Though Bugonia wobbles a bit, Lanthimos is undeniably a director whose films are still a must see.
