Giogos Lanthimos | The Killing of a Sacred Deer / 2017

what’s wrong with this picture?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Giogos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou (screenplay), Giogos Lanthimos (director) The Killing of a Sacred Deer / 2017

 

Like the two previous movies by Greek director Giogos Lanthimos, his 2017 film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is rather quirky work that in its highly fictional elements blends a kind of Kafka-like world with a naturalist presentation. In all three films, despite the impossibilities of the plot, Lanthimos treats them as full realities in which we have no choice, if we are to follow his movies, but to enter; and once we do enter that world we realize despite their lack of credulity, his stories still have deep meaning and connection to our own lives. No, we are not living in separate, imaginary world such as that the parents create for their children in Dogtooth; nor are we forced into marriages, as in The Lobster, with a danger of transformation into animals if we do not marry. Yet, metaphorically speaking, we are the products of our parental upbringing, which we can all perceive as rather strange at moments; and we are, in our societies, often shoehorned into the marital condition.

 

     Nor are we all punished, as in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, for our major failings in the past, particularly not by being forced into a decision for which our children will be permitted to live or die; yes, we have similar stories throughout literature, including the Biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (in that instance the child was saved), William Styron’s painful novel (and later movie) Sophie’s Choice, and Euripides’ ancient drama Iphigenia at Aulis, which is referenced in Lanthimos’ film. In that play the Greek warrior Agamemnon is forced to sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, in order appease the goddess Artemis who has refused to allow the winds to rise enough so that his fleet might leave its port.

      In this case, it is Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell), a successful cardiothoracic surgeon with an almost perfect family—a beautiful wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman), an intelligent older daughter, Kim (Raffey Cassidy), a talented and precocious son, Bob (Sunny Suljic), and a lovely home—who is required to make the sacred sacrifice. Although everything may seem perfect in his life and household, we immediately recognize, as critics have pointed out, that something is not quite right. When he has sex with his wife, also a doctor, they play roles, she pretending to be an anesthetized patient so that we might get an erection and, so to speak, rape her. Although Kim is pretty and sweet, they overpraise her singing skills, which, it is clear, are not very impressive. Bobby is praised for playing the piano, although—perhaps fortunately—we never hear him play. Steven may now be a highly vaunted surgeon, but in the past, he has evidently had serious drinking problems, one such incident perhaps responsible in a long-ago patient’s death after a car crash.

       A bit more troubling is that before the first frame of this film Steven has been regularly meeting with a teenage boy, Martin (Barry Keoghan), giving him money and gifts. Obviously, we can only wonder, at first, why they are meeting, and we are set up to expect that Steven may be a kind of pedophile; certainly, when Steven’s anesthesiologist friend, Matthew (Bill Camp), perceives that his friend has bought the boy an expensive watch (one which Matthew himself previously recommended), he might have come to the same conclusion. Accordingly, despite the picture-perfect vision of Steven’s life, we know there is also something amiss.

 

      The surgeon’s relationship with Martin, Lanthimos gradually reveals, is not an issue of illicit sex but of guilt, for Martin is the son of the man who Steven, ten-years earlier had operated on after drinking. It is this occasion of bad medical practice that clearly haunts our hero, and his friendship with Martin is an attempt to assuage his guilt and to rectify the years the young boy has been fatherless.

        But in his bland appreciation of Steven’s good intentions, we realize there is also something strange about Martin. Nonetheless, the surgeon eventually invites the boy to share a dinner with Anna and his children, Kim immediately taking a liking to the polite and seemingly shy boy, despite the fact that he, quite apologetically, has recently taken up smoking. The family has little knowledge of why the boy is in their home, since Steven gives only a vague notion of his interest in the teenager, but all seems to go so nicely that Martin returns the favor, inviting Steven into his own far less well-off home where he lives and seemingly dotes on his mother.

 

    In retrospect, I perceive that his invitation into his home is almost a possible antidote to what later happens, for in many respects, he is inviting the guilt-ridden Steven to actually replace the father he has lost, sharing with him one of his favorite films; Martin’s mother (Alicia Silverstone), in fact, attempts to seduce him, encouraging him to stay, even after Martin has gone to bed, to try her “tart.” It’s quite clear that she would be glad to become his mistress or, if possible, his wife; and perhaps had Steven taken the bait, his own family might have been saved. True to his own wife and family life, however, he hastily departs.

      Soon after, Steven’s son Bob finds that he can no longer walk. Rushed to the hospital Bob is found to have no neurological problems, and his parents can only imagine that his inability to walk has been psychosomatic, a diagnosis confirmed, apparently, when the boy eventually regains the use of his legs. Yet, as he leaves the hospital, in a long and quite shockingly-filmed scene, the child descends the escalator with his mother, only to collapse as he comes to street level. He also finds that he wants nothing to eat, and later begins to bleed profusely from his nose.

     Immediately after Steven, despite all of his scientific education, begins to perceive that something supernatural is occurring, his daughter also loses the use of her legs and shares the same inability to consume food. The two siblings share the same hospital room, while Murphy revisits Martin’s home, where those within refuse to respond.

      Only later does he again meet with Martin, who calmly explains that both children will die if their father does not make a decision to kill one of his beloved offspring as retribution for his acts.

      Murphy’s relationship with Anna is also in jeopardy, particularly since he had hidden his connection with Martin and she discovers, through Matthew, that Murphy had drunk during the morning of operating on Martin’s father.

      Critic Brian Tellerico argues that the situation is one of a kind of “god and devil” playing out their destinies:

 

“Steven plays God. He saves lives and he makes mistakes that take lives. And he sees the world in that kind of black and white. Martin breaks down his perfectly controlled worldview, and demands something rarely asked of the gods, personal sacrifice.”

 

      Yet, we also perceive just how ungodly Steven has truly been, despite the suburban castle which he inhabits and the moral sacred ground in which he has pretended to live. Like all of us, Steven is an ordinary sinful being of whom the devil or simply a supernatural force is now demanding revenge. As in all of this director’s films to date, we are forced to ask the simple question: “What is wrong with this picture?”—not necessarily the “motion picture” we are watching (although by extension Lanthimos also asks you to judge his highly improbable conceits) but the extravagant societal structures which his films represent. Something is truly rotten in all his various Denmarks—the Danes now described as one happiest of people on earth.

      By film’s end it appears that Steven has no other choice left, as he covers his children’s heads and shoots randomly toward them. The first two bullets miss, but the third kills his youngest.

      Later, at the diner where Steven first met with Martin, the remaining family sits, Martin entering and all exchanging horrific glances. The family quickly stand and exit while the devil, or perhaps just a still-longing boy, stares after them.

 

Los Angeles, December 28, 2017

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2017).

Miguel Lafuente | El primer beso (The First Kiss) / 2023

kiss and run

by Douglas Messerli

 

Miguel Lafuente (screenwriter and director) El primer beso (The First Kiss) / 2023 [14 minutes]

 

Since 2010 Spanish director Miguel Lafuente has written and directed about 8 short films and, more recently, as begin a TV series. His films, which have grown increasingly in popularity, concern family and situations in which young gay men are often ostracized from it and bullied by outside forces as well. The most despairing of these may be his My Brother (2015), where both sons of a homophobic provincial family are gay, the younger having been virtually abused by his own parents to such a degree that he commits suicide, with the elder’s parents attempt to cover up. Yet in nearly all of these works, there is also a truly positive and hopeful element that, without precisely cheerleading, provides the LGBTQ community with true sympathy and hope.

      Since 2012, moreover, Lafuente has served as the artistic director of the Madrid International LGBTI+ Film Festival, LesGaiCineMad.

      The most recent short film, The First Kiss has almost all the typical elements of a Lafuente film. A young teen, Andi (Julio Bohigas-Couto) has discovered he is gay, but is afraid to come out to his mother, who he perceives as quite conservative. His father, as he describes him later in the film, could not “give a shit.” But he has come out to his loving straight elder brother Raúl (Álvaro Lucas) who despite his macho teasing of his virgin brother, looks after him and provides him with the kind of fatherly love the younger boy seems to be missing.

       This 14-minute film begins with changing shirts several times, finally choosing one of his brother’s, admitting that he has his very first date. He and Raúl live in a boring suburban community, and he’s taking the train into Madrid to meet up with a on-line friend for the very first time, clearly exited as well as being a bit frightened, particularly when his brother insists it will probably end in his first kiss and forces a couple of condoms on him, “Just in case.”

 

     In the city, the shy provincial boy meets up with the gregarious Néstor (Aritz Itoiz), who takes his new friend to a gay bookstore, to several others of his favorite spots, and ends in one of Madrid’s most notable gathering spots in the Chueca district. Andi finds himself thrilled by the people and the surrounding action, skateboarders, street performers, couples kissing, café diners sipping on coffee nearby and the numerous other street activities that simply do not exist in his “dead” as he describes it, hometown.

       At the end of the day, the two boys discover themselves in a small park sitting on children’s swings, checking their text messages and promising to get together again soon. Finally, as Néstor readies to leave, he leans over to give Andi his famous “first kiss,” but at that very moment three

park hoodlums (Javier Amann, Jandro Cambello, and Samuel Díaz Sánchez) suddenly appear out of nowhere reading to bully and beat the two gay boys.

      Néstor goes on the run, with two of the boys running off after him, while the shocked and puzzled Andi remains, shoved, thrown to the concrete, and kicked by one boy who finally, losing interest in his passive victim, runs after his friends in their chase of Néstor.

      In the very next scene, Andi is back in his bedroom, desperately trying to contact his Madrid friend to find out if he’s survived the attack. He finds that Néstor is okay, after they chased him into the Metro; the boy apologizes for running off and leaving him behind. But all Andi can wonder, in his confused and dazed condition is if his new friend will want to meet up with him again after what has happened. And finally, the whole terror of the ordeal comes over him in as in a wave and he begins to cry, his brother holding him close to comfort him.

    This time when his mother enters, it is far more gently and understanding that her previous appearance in the film. She asks her son if he’s ready to go to the police, where they plan to report the attack. Clearly she now knows of Andi’s sexuality, has assimilated it, and, like Andi’s brother, is ready to help him through his difficult spots.

      One can only hope that someday, this boy can look back upon his first kiss and laugh, perceiving it as being something so momentous that it brought out bullies into the streets in an attempt to squelch the power of the young boys’ blossoming love. In the end, sometimes it is only through humor that gay men can face their lot in life.

 

Los Angeles, April 16, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2024).

 

James Vincent | Stolen Moments / 1920

the intruders

by Douglas Messerli

 

H. Thompson Rich and Richard Hall (screenplay), James Vincent (director) Stolen Moments / 1920

 

James Vincent’s Stolen Moments (1920) has got to be one the strangest “who-done-its” ever made. Superficially, however, it’s all rather pat and absolutely straight, if quite convoluted.

      Rudolph Valentino, playing a villain. José Dalmarez, in a secondary grade B movie for the last time, is a handsome womanizer who romances naïve young woman, wowing them through his charm and his fame: he is a popular Brazilian novelist whose works are read, apparently, even in the US. Encountering a wealthy woman Vera Blaine (Marguerite Namara) who lives in the neighborhood of his Florida mansion, he approaches her and lures her into his home where he gives her a photograph in which he’s a written a testimony to his love on the back. Vera, no true beauty, is completely taken back by his attentions and, although she pleads that she must rush back home, promises to meet him the very next day, clearly already having fallen in love with the charming writer. Evidently this romance has been going on for some time since there appear also be love letters she has previously written still in his possession.

      Meanwhile, the curtailed plot—it was originally a six reel film, winnowed down to three reels, shot and cut quickly so that Valentino might return to Hollywood from this film’s St. Augustine, Florida and Savannah, Georgia locations in time for him to star in his first major role, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—inexplicably cuts to the mansion of Vera’s lawyer guardian, Hugh Conway (Albert L. Barrett) where we meet his mother and his long time “college chum” and “partner” (presumably his law partner, Walter Chapin) whom he greets with great joy and zest, putting his arm around his shoulder as the two go off to sit together alone in the palatial living room of his house. As they settle into a small couch, the intertitle appears across the screen: “Love speeds the hours — and a new day comes.”

      Momentarily we are confused until we quickly realize that the words are referring to Vera and José Dalmarez’s relationship, which is continued in the next scene.

      We later discover that he has been courting Vera, but she has turned him down, surely, in part, because the next day she meets up with Dalmarez again, bringing him a book in which she has, in the manner of his gush of emotions swears eternal love to him. It is all rather innocent and girlish, but for the moment sincerely meant. Indeed, he reports that something has come up and he must return to Brazil, but suddenly asks if she will join him.

        Vera asks for a night to contemplate the startling offer. But in the very next she shows up, with her mother’s ring in hand, prepared for the marriage before their trip. Of course, Dalamarez has not planned on marriage whatsoever, declaiming that their love is beyond the mere institution of marriage, etc.—the standard declarations of a man who wants sex with no strings or rings attached.

        The 1920, well brought up girl, however, is crestfallen, refusing his advances and returns home chastened. We have seen Dalmarez hide her gift away, but make little of it since it appears he may now be out of the plot.

         In fact, the camera follows him to Brazil where we see him once again active in his favorite pastime, on this occasion wooing a young woman Inez Salles (Aileen Pringle) of a very noted family, the father of whom (Alex K. Shannon) seems perfectly charmed by his daughter’s romancer. Not so very happy with the situation is her brother (Alvarez Salles) who meets up with her father, perhaps to express his reservations about the relationship, while also keeping a close eye on Dalmarez’ actions. As he leaves her father, he sees the two in an embrace and challenges Dalamarez. The two fight, Dalmarez throwing him to ground and kicking him, a situation which forces him, obviously, to immediately leave not only the house but the relationship.

       Dalmarez returns to the US, this time seeking out a good specialist in criminal law since, he claims, his current novel is about that subject. That is precisely Conway’s specialty, and the two are brought together and have an enjoyable meeting. As he is about to leave the offices, Vera shows up, having in the years since married her former guardian with whom she now has a young daughter.

 

       Almost immediately Dalamarez, inviting himself to a dinner party they giving that night, beings to remind her of her past with him and his possession of the book and letters. She declares that she was young and naïve at the time and they were written in innocence, to which he responds that they may not seem that way, however, to her husband.

      At the dinner party the conversation turns to his new subject of his new book; Hugh—evidently knowing that it concerns an unfaithful wife, wonders whether readers will actually believe the events. Looking at Vera as he speaks, Dalmarez responds: "I knew a girl who gave herself to a man in just the way I describe, and I could show you the letters and a book of poems to prove it."

      Vera drops her glass, and the dinner party breaks up, she demanding in a whisper, as Dalamarez prepares to leave, that he return her book and letters. He demurs.

       When Dalmarez returns home he surprises his butler in the act of taking a nip from the liquor cabinet. The two begin to struggle, and the butler grabs a dagger Dalmarez has hanging on the wall. Dalmarez overpowers the older man and sends him away without his final wages.

        Vera, still convinced that he might return her letters, arrives at his home soon after, he pulling out the book from its secret hiding place before he returns it, suggesting it and the letters might be hers if only she complies with his sexual demands. Lunging to the spot to where all is concealed, he grabs and attempts to kiss her. She struggles picks up the dagger left by the butler and strikes him in the face. He falls to the floor, apparently dead, as she escapes convinced that she has killed him.

       The next morning Dick Huntley telephones his partner Hugh to tell him that Dalamarez has been found dead, information which Hugh immediately passes on to his wife. Another strange intertitle appears soon after, stating apparently to one particular, “It looks like a woman’s work. If it is — we are certain to get her — women always leave clues.”

        We might well ask, who represents the “we” in this case, and why other than advising Dalmarez are “we”--presumably Hugh and his partner--even involved in this case which the police detectives are already attempting to solve? They have already captured the Butler and discovered that he had returned to steal money; they have only to explain his denial of the murder and the scratch marks on the dead man’s face.

        Yet we don’t think to ask that question since our attention is focused on Vera and her fears. We are not surprised, in fact, when in the very next scene, we see Vera breaking and entering through a patio window determined to at least retrieve her book.

        Within the dark room we see another man sitting in a chair obviously awaiting something. Is he a night guard? Another intruder? We can’t be sure. But he soon hears Vera’s movements and taking up a flashlight discovers her in Dalamarez’s office with her book in hand. Wrestling with her for a moment, they both finally discover that they are friends: he is Dick, her husband Hugh’s partner. She quickly explains her presence and the situation, she pleading with him, “Dick for God’s sake save me.” 

        By this time, they have moved back to the French window, where Dick sees in the distance a car approaching. He quickly opens the book and reads the long-ago inscription, handing the book back to her and sending her off into the night, apparently afraid that the new arrival might discover her presence.

        As Dick returns to the central room, he hears another noise and soon after discovers yet another intruder with whom he struggles before the arriving guest pushes open the door to discover, when it turns on the lights, Dick standing over the other man, Alvarez Salles, the brother of the Brazilian Inez, whose letters, he explains, were being held by Dalamarez. He had come for them the previous night, he explains, but Dalamarez had tried to prevent him, he taking up the nearby weapon on the desk and providing the fatal blow.

 

     It reminds one a bit of corpse in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 masterpiece The Trouble with Harry, who everyone seems to have presumed they killed.

      The other man who has just entered happens to be Hugh, who now returns to his wife to announce that they have found the killer, freeing her from suspicion, she assured in her conviction that Dick will not reveal her past to his best friend, her husband.

      This murder mystery ends quite happily, accordingly, with the real-life Valentino headed off the Hollywood to become famous.

      I viewed this film only because I found it on one of the several Letterboxd lists of minor gay films. I was so puzzled by its appearance on that list after seeing it, that I completely forgot about it, and checking that list one final time, again came across the film and dutifully rewatched it. My conclusion and puzzlement was the same: this is not a film with LGBTQ content, so why is it on this basically reliable list I asked myself (I have since also found the Letterboxd lists of gay films to be quite unreliable).

      Over the years, I prided myself for puzzling through coded movies, being able to see events by looking into the corners of the film or at the peripheries, reading the language of the film somewhat aslant, or picking up on subtle puns, etc. In short, spotting the wink that would clue me in to the forbidden content. But this time, following the mystery so intensely, I missed it at least twice.

     The one question I should have asked myself was why are Hugh and Dick meeting up in mansion in the middle of the night? Even if we imagine they are amateur sleuths who do this kind thing as a hobby, why work in the dark when clues are not very easy to spot? Perhaps these two “college chums” and “partners” whose “love” for one another “speeds the hours” as the intertitles are “winked,” have far more to hide than Vera might ever have had to explain about herself. No wonder Dick looked so intense at the approaching auto and sped Vera off with his promise to say nothing of finding her there. All the clues at the real “crime,” perhaps a homosexual affair, have been missed even by a suspicious gay reader such as myself. Clearly the “moments” noted by the title were “stolen” by these two men, not by Vera in her youthful adulation of the Brazilian.

      I was going to suggest that perhaps even the screenwriter didn’t quite know what the film itself suggested—that is until I checked out screenwriter H. Thompson Rich’s background. Rich was a Greenwich Village poet who published several poems in Harriet Monroe’s Poetry Magazine, Parisienne and other avant-garde journals, along with two chapbooks, Lumps of Clay: 16 rhythms (1915) and The Red Shame: War poems (1916) published by Guido Bruno, who also published Oscar Wilde, Djuna Barnes, Alfred Kreymborg, Sadakichi Hartmann, and Lord Alfred Douglas. Later Rich published notable science fiction works such as Spawn of the Comet edited several anthologies of ghost tales and science fiction works. This was not a naïve Hollywood beginner, but a sophisticated writer who obviously knew absolutely what he was about.*

 

*I suspect, given his involvement with the group Bruno published that H. Thompson Rich may have also have been gay. I have not read many of his poems, but one in particular, “Desire,” published in Poetry Magazine in June 1916 certainly hints of a man wishing he were either more manly or something closer to a woman to be able to share his love of the figure of whom he writes in the poem, which sounds like a highly closeted gay man:

 

I would send these dreams of yours and mine re-borning:

I would send out love out to seek noble flight—

Over the interminable mountains in the morning,

Over the endless oceans of the night.

I would put the lightness of it into laughter,

I would put the sorrow of it into song—

That should go echoing on for ages after,

That should make glad the world whole aeons long.

I would tell in deathless paint the glory of it;

I would tell in immutable stone its majesty—

To hao it and old a light above it,

To temper it with immortality.

     I would spin it to the heavens, span on span…

     Were I but—oh, a little more than man!

 

     The director of this film, James Vincent, appears to be the same man who was silent film star William Kerrigan’s long time lover as fully described in William J. Mann’s Behind the Screen. Mann suggests that Kerrigan was able to get some small roles for his handsome lover in various films. But if it is the same James Vincent, he had already appeared in several stage roles in New York, and played in at least 23 films during his lifetime. Later he was stage manager for Catherine Cornell and served as dialogue coach for George Cukor’s Romeo and Juliet (1936). Mann had wondered aloud in his book whether, in fact, the two appearances of Vincent represented the same man, but according to Wikipedia’s listings, it does indeed seem that they are one and the same, even though Wikipedia makes no mention of his relationship with Kerrigan.

 

Los Angeles, August 14, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).

 

Charles Christie and Scott Sidney | 813 / 1920 [Lost film]

mass masquerade

by Douglas Messerli

 

Scott Darling (screenplay, based on a story by Maurice Leblanc), Charles Christie and Scott Sidney (directors) 813 / 1920 [Lost film]

 

No source that I encountered knew the status of 813, directed by Charles Christie and Scott Sidney, and several seemed to suggest it may now be a lost film. I could find no source for a copy or an on-line viewing in any event and, accordingly have been forced to use the summary provided by the film daily Wyd’s Films and Film Folks from January 12, 1921, even though the film is listed as a 1920 release.

 

   As a kind of early version of the James Bond villains, Robert Castleback (Ralph Lewis) has developed a mysterious power and is now making plans for worldwide control. The crafty gentleman Arsene Lupin (Wedgwood Nowell) may be a master thief but he is also a loyal Frenchman and knowing about Castleback’s secret, attempts to obtain state papers held by the power-hungry evil genius. Two German agents in the employ of the Kaiser, however, are also after the papers.

     Castleback is suddenly murdered, and, of course, Lupin is a prime suspect, but he declares his innocence by his stated intentions to catch the real killer. Disguised as the Chief of Police, and working alongside police officials, he comes in contact with another master criminal Ribeira (Wallace Beery) who is masquerading as Major Parbury. Lupin believes Parbury/Ribeira is involved in the crime.

      Meanwhile, Lupin falls in love with Castleback’s widow, Dolores (Kathryn Adams). Knowing that Lupin is on his track, Ribeira attempts to get rid of Lupin by kidnapping his daughter and informing Lupin that to obtain her release he must go alone to a deserted house. Despite his realization that it’s a setup, Lupin takes the bait and foils the plot to kill him, escaping through an underground tunnel which amazingly ends in Dolores living room. In the mantelpiece over her chimney, moreover, he finds the state papers, but as he turns back to the room, he suddenly is aware of the mysterious man whom he has long been trailing facing him. To his horror he quickly realizes that the man is, in fact, Dolores, who in reality is a German criminal who kills herself rather than be taken to custody. Shocked by the turn of events, Lupin escapes.

      Presumably, Dolores has been appearing in drag, either as a woman dressed as a man, or—since the source does not make that important distinction—as a man who dressed from time to time as Dolores. 

     What is clearly apparent from the plotline as described is that everyone in the film is pretending to be someone other than who they truly are, including Lupin himself.

 

Los Angeles, March 1, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).