The Favourite [2018]

 Who could’ve guessed that Lanthimos – one of the spearheads of the Greek Weird Wave – would make a period costume drama, and one as stunningly mounted, resplendently designed, gorgeously composed and ravishingly filmed, as The Favourite! But then, this was so much more. Mordantly funny, decadently ribald, viciously satirical, gloriously outlandish and defiantly anarchic, this baroque work used early 18^th century British monarchy as both springboard and point of departure. The state of affairs of the kingdom is captured as both chaotic and carnivalesque, what with an incessant war being waged with France, the Treasury running low, and constant infighting between the outrageously puffed up ministers in the royal court and chamber. However, the broader internal and external historical references aside, this was ultimately a fierce chamber piece centered around the machinations of three extraordinarily enacted women – Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), who’s gout-ridden, perennially sulking, emotionally fragile and subject to wild mood swings, and loves being cloistered indoors with her 17 rabbits; Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), the ferocious and formidable Duchess of Marlborough, who happens to be the Queen’s closest confidante with their relationship going way beyond the official and the prudish, a master of realpolitik, and the de facto controller of the state’s affairs; and Abigail (Emma Stone), Sarah’s wily and ambitious cousin who’d fallen on hard times and a natural-born seductress, who becomes a ferocious competitor for the Queen’s affections. Class, power, genders and sexual politics, therefore, were some of the key themes here. The film’s visual splendour, dizzying technical bombast – filled with ultra wide-angles, fish eyes, whip pans, dollies – and rapturous use Western Classical music, including some anachronistic ones, made the subversive farce all the more rollicking.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire/Historical Drama

Language: English

Country: UK

The Lobster [2015]

 In the bleak dystopian future of The Lobster – Greek New Wave auteur Yorgos Lanthimos’ dry, brutal, wickedly funny and absurdist satire – choice is literally between the metaphorical frying pan and fire. Imposition of hyper-conservative conjugal and gender roles, interestingly, have been recurring motifs in dystopian literature – be it sex being solely for reproduction in Orwell’s 1984 or women serving as breeding vessels in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – and that, in a sly maneuver, was the theme here too. The setting is an unspecified future where anyone who’s become single must rush to find a new spouse, else be banished. David (Colin Farrel) is a mild-natured man who, when his wife leaves him for another man, is escorted to the Hotel where, like its captive residents, he must find a life partner in 45 days, or else – as he’s informed by the authoritarian Hotel Manager (Olivia Colman) – he’ll be transformed into an animal of his choice. There he befriends a lisping man (John C. Reilly) and a limping man (Ben Whishaw), and portrays himself as heartless to get into a relationship with a sociopathic woman in the nick of time. However, when his façade collapses, he escapaes into the woods and gets absorbed by the Resistance led by an equally authoritarian Leader (Léa Seydoux) who’s outlawed romantic liaisons; falling in love, therefore, invites dire punishments. He, however, gets involved in a relationship with the tale’s deadpan narrator (Rachel Weisz) who’s short-sighted like him. The darkly funny tyranny of “mandated matrimony” vis-à-vis “enforced singlehood” – and the biting commentary via these contrasting oppressions – may remind one of the extraordinary Her where the protagonist, to combat loneliness, falls for a self-learning AI bot.

 

 

 

 

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire/Political Satire/Thriller

Language: English

Country: UK

Carol [2015]

 The different personas defining the same individual – how the society perceives you, how others expect you to behave, what you essentially are and want to be, what you end up being while striking a compromise – and hence, in turn, the diverse roles one is compelled to enact within a conservative societal construct, were the key tenets in Todd Haynes’ tender, intimate and aesthetically gorgeous film Carol. During the Christmas season of 1948, Patricia Highsmith – then a temp employee at a Bloomingdale store in NYC – was approached by a blonde woman in mink coat to order a doll from her; using this as the springboard  she wrote 4 years later The Price of Salt, albeit under a pseudonym in order not be tagged as “a lesbian-book writer”. That fleeting contact formed the starting point in the movie too, for its achingly portrayed love story between Carol (Cate Blanchett), a well-off housewife whose marriage is on the tatters on account of past homosexual indiscretions, and the much younger Therese (Rooney Mara), an amateur photographer working as a department store clerk, in 1950s USA. When her husband (Kyle Chandler) literally dupes her off their daughter by slapping her with a “morality clause”, Carol, almost on an impulse, embarks on an aimless cross-country road trip with Therese – they’d only briefly connected prior to that – over the course of which they fall in love, in defiance of the men in their lives and their stifling conformist expectations. The film’s richly melodramatic tone – accentuated by the splendid visual palette dominated by warm colours and misty windows – affectingly portrayed the timelessness of the human drama, while also underscoring the tale’s compelling queer stance and contextual specificity.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Todd Haynes

Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama

Language: English

Country: US

Night Moves [2013]

 Night Moves remains such an atypical entry in Kelly Reichardt’s marvelous canon! What immediately set it apart is the fact that it’s a thriller centered around eco-terrorism, with its narrative structured like a straight-up genre movie with pre- and post-crime segments, and that made it so dramatically different vis-à-vis what she’s made before or since; and, it was also overly and vocally political, unlike her preferred mode of understated explorations on gender, class and race. But these facets, ironically, made this quite radical too! The moody pacing, bleak ambience, existential fatalism, allegiance with and empathy for outsiders, deep and progressive sociopolitical consciousness, and not to mention, Oregon setting – her unmistakable signatures, however, were there alright. Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), who works at an organic farm, Dena (Dakota Fanning), his sole close friend, and Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), an ex-Marine who they’ve somehow become acquainted with, are radical environmentalists who’ve decided to blow up – using home-made bomb – a hydroelectric dam they believe are severely harming the environment, in order to make a political statement, even if that might not make more than just a ripple in the ocean. Their meticulous planning, the tension, the anger at the hyperconsumerist capitalist world around them that compelled them to undertake something as audacious and desperate as this, and even the act itself, however, might seem like the easier part when it comes to living with guilt and in perpetual secrecy upon realizing that something has gone terribly wrong that they weren’t prepared for. Eisenberg and Fanning’s brilliant turns, the moral ambiguity and the bleak nihilism made this a lot more than any run-of-the-mill thriller, despite a few pitfalls that one might associate the film with.

 

 

 

 

Director: Kelly Reichardt

Genre: Thriller/Crime Drama

Language: English

Country: US