killing of a sacred deer

Seemingly there has been a slew of films lately with a broiling emphasis on shock and violence packaged in a polished, artistic sheen. Yorgos Lanthimos' (The Lobster) The Killing of a Sacred Deer, along with Darren Aronfsky's Mother!, are those rare occasions where the boundary-pushing vision of a filmmaker is put on display for cushy seated multiplexes. It's hard not to compare these two pictures as they both share a confounding plot with a nightmarish sensibility. They are also slickly made and seductive; the tastelessness of some of the horror elements are in the forefront but they are also juxtaposed with "tasteful," graceful film-making. In that respect, these pictures owe much to Polanski and Kubrick. Deer, in particular, is a riff of sorts on Kubrick's The Shining. We even have the shaggy-haired young son of the piece, Bobby played by Sunny Suljic, bearing a resemblance to Danny Lloyd.

Deer is a hollow picture that looks incredible (supple lighting work and photography--the cinematographer is Thimios Bakatakis), centering upon a hollow family. We are introduced to them in their beautiful, sprawling home in a dinner scene that highlights their wan, somewhat lifeless personalities and peculiar precision with their speech and manner. Steve is a cardiovascular surgeon (bushy-bearded Colin Farrell) at the head of this opus, whose previous carelessness is coming back to roost. Because the film--seemingly rooted in Biblical and mythological lore--takes its sweet, dread-infused time to get to the mysterious perils that befall the family, it's a difficult piece to surmise without giving much away.

Despite the movie's repetition and pace--a heavy touch that doesn't really create potential comedy or suit the already lugubrious material, the film has some strong assets. Especially accordionist Janne Rättyä's cutting score cues (in the vein of Mica Levi). The flat line deliveries which worked so effectively as humor in the more funny and intriguing The Lobster is more safe and banal here. The main players help galvanize the movie as well. Farrell does his usual sturdy work and as his steely wife, Nicole Kidman, whose done some of her best work ever lately, commands a sort of strength and palpable, visual energy. The camera adores her in close-up, simultaneously aglow and bitterly icy. She's solid at portraying her characters' drifty convictions. It's fun to see Alicia Silverstone too in a small bit. But really the erratic heart pumping the film (the human heart anoints the opening--I had to look away) is Barry Keoghan as Steve's mysterious younger friend, who figures as a squirmy, hovering presence. It's an acrobatic, unmissable turn that piques curiosity about the story that may have been completely lacking without him. **1/2


-Jeffery Berg

the beguiled

Watching The Beguiled, I sometimes misheard the word Corporal (as Colin Farrell's Union soldier character is dubbed) for "corporeal"--which means pertaining to the body instead of the spirit. In Sofia Coppola's humid drama, the wounded soldier is taken into a southern girls' seminary deep in Virginia (though obviously Louisiana-shot) in the midst of the Civil War. For much of the film he is indeed only a body, stitched up and mended. We get oozy closeups of his shellacked leg. We sense the erotic pangs for him from some of the women.

Nicole Kidman plays the headmistress running the mansion, who lost her husband to war. Kristen Dunst is the main teacher, attracted to the Corporal and also to his idea of running away with him out West. We sense the loneliness from both the aesthetics (pent-up emotions in stitching and the tied knots of ribbons) and the actors themselves--Dunst in particular feels the most immediate. Kidman still delivers the best ice-glares of any living film actress but also discovers an acute physicality in elegant and symbolic poses--a brave protector of sorts of her girls. And Farrell always has a knack of absorbing his characters believably and without hesitancy. Elle Fanning as the loopy, more brazen student, is, perhaps purposefully, affected with more contemporary acting choices and colloquial language. 

The film is based upon a novel by Thomas P. Cullinan which was adapted in 1971 by Don Siegel for a movie starring Clint Eastwood. Supposedly that venture is much pulpier. Sticking to her trademark style, Coppola's fever dream is visually pitched in muted creams and pinks, with dark backgrounds. There's even the frilly pink lettering of the main title card (similar to the girls' cursive lessons). The cinematography by Philippe Le Sourd is fuzzy like strained eyesight and mis-remembered memories. We watch candle lights flicker, the pale faces of the women and young girls lurk in and out--their dresses glowing faintly in soft-colored cotton and satin. It's beautifully orchestrated, as Coppola's films usually are, with a sharp exquisiteness and a hushed somberness. Like the pet turtle in the movie, slowly moving about, nestled in its shell, there's a sense of isolation and of being cut off from traumas just outside of the setting's perimeter (as in Marie Antoinette): off in the near-distance are passerby soldiers on horseback in the mist, the muffled booms of cannons--smoke rising from trees--a quiet rattling of their coziness and structured daily lives. There isn't much of a soundtrack though this time. Instead Coppola selectively employs brackish, dirgey electronic long notes from Phoenix and the schoolgirls' hummings and out-of-key vocal, piano, and sawing violin renditions of rounds and Stephen Foster tunes. There's also the sound of war muted by distance overpowered by the locusts and the birds (are they larks or just robins?). However the aesthetics are sometimes somewhat out-of-sync with the source material. Even though the more sensationalist, plottish moments (unfortunately predictable thanks to heavy-handed symbols and the movie's thriller trailer) fizzle, perhaps the polarization of these times in America adds to a simmering intensity to the picture right now that the film itself may lack. ***

-Jeffery Berg