Yorgos Lanthimos on directing The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Greek tragedy, and why he’s not one for explanations
Comedies don’t come any blacker than the latest film from the director of Dogtooth and The Lobster; no one, not even the actors working with him, knows what to make of it, and that’s the way Lanthimos likes it
Dogs, lobsters and now deer … Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos appears to have an animal fetish – although it’s hardly the strangest aspect of his work.
“If you’re working with Yorgos Lanthimos you’re taking a risk,” says Colin Farrell. “His material is so specific and so weighty. It’s provocative and it’s disturbing.”
In 2015’s The Lobster , the director’s first English-language movie, Farrell played a single man living in a weird, dystopian society who has 45 days to find a mate or be turned into an animal of his choosing.
In Lanthimos’ latest film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Farrell is cast as Steven, a surgeon and married father-of-two based in an unnamed contemporary American city who accidentally causes the death of a young boy’s father on the operating table.
What follows is as bizarre as it is unexplained. Steven’s children, Bob (Sunny Suljic) and Kim (Raffey Cassidy), begin to suffer paralysis. He and his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) are at a loss, but worse is to come unless Steven commits the ultimate eye-for-an-eye exchange.
Lanthimos, 44, says he wanted to explore the subject of sacrifice in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. “[The story] starts more with justice and choice and human nature and behaviour. Obviously from mythology and religious stories, [sacrifice has] always been there forever. It’s part of humanity.”