Summary
Overview
Acclaimed filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos discusses his distinctive filmmaking style, from his breakout film Dogtooth to his recent work Begonia. He reflects on his journey from making Greek commercials to becoming one of cinema's most provocative voices, his collaborative process with actors like Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, and the intentional ambiguity that defines his films. The conversation explores his resistance to conventional explanations, his discomfort with Hollywood meetings, and his instinctive approach to creating films that challenge audiences.
Dogtooth and Building Unsettling Worlds
Lanthimos discusses his breakthrough film Dogtooth, which depicts parents keeping their adult children imprisoned in their home through deception and language manipulation. He explains how he and co-writer Thymus Filippou developed the film's disturbing premise from observations about Greek family structures, solving practical problems like how to explain airplanes overhead by having parents throw toy planes into the yard. The film's ambiguous ending deliberately leaves viewers uncertain whether the daughter escapes, revealing how audiences project their own desires onto the story.
- Dogtooth opens with parents teaching their children wrong definitions of words like 'sea' meaning 'armchair' to control their reality
- The film cost only 250,000 euros, made with friends working mostly for free due to Greece's non-existent film industry
- Lanthimos observed that in Greek Mediterranean culture, children often stayed with parents until very old, with boys being cooked for by mothers then wives
- The film's ending is deliberately ambiguous - some viewers insist the daughter will escape because they want her to, even seeing objects that aren't there
" David Lynch called Dogtooth a fantastic comedy "
" I remember it was the first time that I talked to people after watching the film and I realized that it really depends a lot on the person that watches the film to make up a lot of stuff "
The Mystery of Meaning and Resistance to Analysis
Lanthimos articulates his fundamental approach to filmmaking: resisting definitive explanations and working instinctively rather than analytically. He disagrees with attempts to decode his films' meanings, believing the 'how' is more important than the 'why' and that audiences should make their own sense of the work. He compares this to tensions in documentary filmmaking where there isn't a single answer but rather competing moral imperatives that viewers must navigate themselves.
- Lanthimos is more interested in 'how' things happen than 'why' they happen in his films
- He dislikes analysis of his own work because it ruins the instinctive creative process
- He believes nothing is 'wrong' in interpretation - different people have different experiences based on their lives
- Louis compares this to his documentary approach of presenting tensions rather than solutions
" I find it more engaging to ask from the viewer to do that work instead of serving everything on a plate. I enjoy that more when I watch something or listen to something or read something "
" How can something that's provocative and interesting and different and relatively original be accepted and liked by everyone? That wouldn't be right "
" It's like you have to kind of let go. People are going to think different things about it. You can't say you're wrong thinking this part is funny and this isn't "
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