The Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos: Films, Form, Philosophy

Description

From the critical and commercial fanfare his films generate, it is largely understood that Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the more interesting filmmakers to have emerged out of the new century. A markedly transnational filmmaker, between Dogtooth and The Favourite Lanthimos has managed to traverse the gap between the art-house and mainstream while not once sacrificing his unique style and worldview. His films, while often difficult, showcase his talents as a filmmaker, collaborator, and commentator on the human condition. Accompanied by a trademark acerbic wit, Lanthimos's films take aim at humanity's more contemptible and absurd designs as he explores a thematic preoccupation with, among other things, power, trauma, isolation, sex, and violence. This edited collection covers everything from an early career that was marked by experimentation with a range of different media to international festival hits including Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and the Academy Award-winning "historical" epic The Favourite, Lanthimos's most successful feature to date. All his work demonstrates a fascinating contravention of aesthetic, thematic, and generic boundaries that forms the basis of some of the analyses to be found here. Featuring a roster of talented scholars, both new and established, The Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos: Films, Form, Philosophy provides a timely compendium of critical approaches to one of the most distinct voices in contemporary film.

Eddie Falvey completed his PhD in Film Studies at University of Exeter, UK and is now an academic researcher and educator. He has published widely on film and associated media and his most recent research focuses on spectatorship and ethics in relation to screen violence. He is author of Re-Animator (2021) and co-editor of New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror (with Joe Hickinbottom and Jonathan Wroot, 2020).

Bringing together 15 new essays, this first ever book-length collection on the cinema Yorgos Lanthimos attests to the continuing fascination with his work by scholars, critics, and audiences alike. Spanning from his explorations in 1990s Greece to his recent star-studded films, the essays examine recurrent themes and motifs - confinement, animality, absurdism, apathy, adriftness -, position his work within cultural, literary, cinematic, and philosophical contexts, and open new pathways of understanding his enigmatic, weird, films. A significant and welcome contribution. * Lydia Papadimitriou, Reader in Film Studies, Liverpool John Moores University, UK * Yorgos Lanthimos is a slippery figure in contemporary cinema. Across his strikingly stylised films, he has been both Greek national and cosmopolitan flaneur, realist and surrealist, dark pessimist and utopian dreamer. This superb, in-depth book brings together all the director's many facets. * Adrian Martin, Adjunct Associate Professor, Monash University, Australia * Lanthimos the weird; Lanthimos the formalist; Lanthimos the Greek-it is high time that a scholarly collection took aim at this most fascinating filmmaker, who attracts a variety of labels only to confound them all: an absurdist who grapples with relational ethics; an aesthete whose work is awash in critiques of rule, law, and history; a director apt to reimagine the Hellenic specificity of Euripides in the midst of wildly transnational co-productions. This excellent assemblage cuts across these contradictions, encountering Lanthimos over and over again in different guises by way of a final epithet: Lanthimos the philosopher, one whose thinking of affects, ethics, aesthetics, and politics will continue to reside at the heart of 21st-century cinema. * Eugenie Brinkema, Associate Professor of Contemporary Literature and Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA * In recent years, few filmmakers have caused more debate with their work than Yorgos Lanthimos. An exciting new collection of critical essays, edited by Eddie Falvey, brings this work into sharp focus as an outstanding group of scholars engage with the core questions that define Lanthimos's filmmaking. Their original perspectives, insightful analyses and impeccable scholarship make The Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos a must-read! * Yannis Tzioumakis, Reader in Film and Media Industries, University of Liverpool, UK *