The Killing Of A Sacred Deer review: Can Yorgos Lanthimos make it a Cannes 1-2 with his first movie since 2015’s highly regarded and highly original The Lobster?
The Killing Of A Sacred Deer review by Paul Heath at the 2017 Festival de Cannes.
The Killing Of A Sacred Deer review
Following up his 2015 Cannes break-out, the stunning, very original dry comedy The Lobster, a film that we really loved – Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos enters the official competition at Cannes 2017 with this drama of family matters and other dark materials.
We open to a full-on close-up of a beating heart – exposed mid-surgery – closely followed by Colin Farrell’s cardiac surgeon taking off his mask and throwing his blood-stained gloves into a nearby bin. This one obviously hasn’t gone well. Farrell plays Steven Murphy, a devoted family man with a history of drinking. Murphy, married with two children,his alcoholism now firmly in the past, has befriended a teenage boy Martin (Barry Keoghan), who’s connection to the cardiologist is not immediately apparent. Martin is an only child to Alicia Silverstone’s character, who’s husband we learn passed away a few years previous. The two hang out at a local diner and by the river in this nameless town/ city, Murphy often plying the young adult with gifts – like a leather-strapped watch which is waterproofed to 200m – a key fact. Their ‘friendship’ is not known to either individual’s families, and of course the audience expects the obvious relationship between the two – one a very prosperous career-man and father figure – the other a young boy with dreams of pursuing a career in medicine. Of course, Lanthimos and co-writer Efthymis Filippou have other things in mind for us – this being the man behind the aforementioned award-winner that revolved around people that would turn into animals if they didn’t fall in love at a mysterious retreat.
Related: The Lobster review
The similarities are endless between the characters we find in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer and Lanthrimos’ previous effort, Farrell performing Murphy with the same dry delivery and the monotone drawl of a broken man. Murphy seems to have a strange sexual desire of asking his wife, a brilliant Nicole Kidman, to lay down on the bed as if she was under a general anaesthetic while the surgeon goes about his business. These random acts of strangeness are literred throughout the extremely dark narrative which eventually takes a turn for the even darker plot-point 50 minutes in which steers the movie into a completely different direction, very much for the better.
The Killing Of A Sacred Deer review
Farrell is as good here as he was in The Lobster, once again putting on a paunch of a middle-aged man who only wants the best for his family. Kidman, as stated before, has never been better as the up together wife, a fellow doctor and equal, but it is the younger cast who also impress, particularly the formidable Barry Keoghan as Martin, the absolutely terrifying young man who threatens to inflict huge supernatural damage unless his demands are met. Expect huge things from this gifted Irish thespian.
Possibly the Marmite movie of Cannes 2017 – comparisons to Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon from last year could be drawn in terms of its reception here – as many boos were heard as cheers as the credits rolled – but make no mistake, this movie will affect you in some kind of way. Chilling, with obvious influences from everything from Stephen King to Kubrick, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is absorbing, beautifully shot with a wonderful rousing score, bloody nasty, and strangely funny in a way that only Lanthimos can deliver – and is actually a definite step-up from The Lobster which already sat high in our estimations. While that one was blamed for running out of steam and ideas towards the end, the same certainly cannot be said for his follow-up.
Call it dark; call it depressing and any other similar adjective, but make no mistake this is masterful stuff and a definite awards-botherer of the future. The best of Cannes so far.
The Killing Of A Sacred Deer review by Paul Heath, May 2017.
The Killing Of A Sacred Deer premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22nd 2017, will be released in cinemas late 2017.
