In many religions, God is the one who creates things by pronouncing their name. Even The Bible begins by saying “In the beginning was the word. The word was with God, and the word was God.”
Dogtooth opens with a voice on a recorded tape which lists the words to learn. The highway is a strong wind, the sea is a type of armchair and later the pussy will be a lamp, just as the lyrics of Strangers in the night will change meaning.
In this case the the power to give a name to things and therefore to create the world belongs to the Father and the Mother. The three children learn the new names; Older daughter, younger daughter and son. None of them have a proper name, because this would mean giving an identity to these individuals, making them become people.
The three children live confined in their parents' villa, they will only be able to go out and face the dangers of the outside world when their canine it will fall.
If parents are those who give name and therefore shape to the world, they are the divinities of this microcosm. The entire perception that the three boys have of reality is filtered through what is told to them. The distortion of reality becomes the means through which to control people. So the planes will be models that fly over the sky and can fall from time to time in the garden and the cat will be a ferocious animal that feeds on newborns and the outside world will be a ferocious place where, beyond the surrounding wall, their lost brother.
The three boys live exactly as in Plato's cave myth. What they see are, in reality, shadows, but for them those shadows are the real world.
The first operation that Yorgos Lanthimos performs in Dogtooth is to transform his third work into a philosophical essay of language and in an obvious metaphor.
Two years earlier, George A. Romero in The Chronicles of the Living Dead, had carried out a similar argument.
In Romero's film the an overabundance of information prevented, just as happens today, the ability to distinguish truth from fake news and the editing of a news program became the means through which to manipulate the facts by giving them a different version.
On the one hand, editing as a tool through which to orient consciences, on the other the language.
The reference is clear, they are the same means that every dictatorship has always used. Intervening on the perception of reality by distorting it, impoverishing and inventing a new language, transforming the vision of the world, dulling consciences to be able to maneuver them at will.
So the microcosm of Dogtooth can be read as the staging of the mechanisms through which dictators, popular leaders and populists from all over the world have always acted.
However, in the case of Dogtooth, we cannot even talk about a distorted reality because the three children lack any external point of reference.
Until, as often happens in Lanthimos' films, an external element arrives to disturb the established order with the role of uncanny, exactly as will then happen in The Sacrifice of sacred deer (http://www.euroroma.net/7016/ARTE%20E%20SPETTACOLO/il-sacrificio-del-cervo-sacro.html) and in The Favorite (http:/ /www.euroroma.net/7462/arteespettacolo/la-favorita.html).
This time the stranger is Christina, hired by her father to allow his son (and obviously only him) to vent his sexual instincts .
It will be Christina herself who gives, again in exchange for sex, some VHS tapes to her eldest daughter.
Let us therefore return to the myth of Plato's cave whose experience has often been compared with cinematographic viewing.
Even the spectator forced into the dark and motionless sees nothing but shadows of reality and only thanks to the principle of suspension of disbelief takes them as real by identifying with them.
If therefore the three boys live the same experience as the chained men in the cave, their liberation, obviously, can only come from another surrogate for reality: cinema.
This is the second theme introduced by the director in his work.
Cinema as an instrument of freedom and grip of conscience.
It is no coincidence that every modern dictatorship has always been concerned with making propaganda and building its own founding image through images, be they television or cinematographic ones.
What amazes and reveals, for the umpteenth time, the very dark humor that Lanthimos possesses is that the films in question are certainly not auteur films.
The discovery of the world for the older sister takes place through Jaws , Rambo and Flashdance of which, during a surreal and alienating performance, he will dance the most famous sequence.
Through these images he becomes aware of another reality so much so that he even gives himself a name, Bruce and therefore an identity.
It will be useful to remember, at this point, that Dogtooth was filmed in the midst of the Greek crisis.
Lanthimos therefore constructs an enormous metaphor of how dictatorships act and it is impossible not to see in his film a clear reference to what his country was experiencing way back in 2009.
At the same time his third work is the most important piece of a filmography which, like every self-respecting author, always revolves around the same themes.
Lanthimos always tells microcosms with their own rules.
It happens in the world of The lobster (http://www.euroroma.net /3927/ARTEESPETTACOLO/the-lobster-nel-futuro-232-vietato-essere-single.html) in which it is forbidden to be single and which is structured around two opposite microcosms, the forest and the clinic.
The the same goes for the family of The Sacred Deer or the court of The Favorite.
However, perhaps, the film closest to Dogtooth is Alps two years later.
In Alps, in fact, we have a community of "actors" who play dead people to help family members and acquaintances process their grief.
Once again we are faced to a distorted reality, indeed we are dealing with a real staging of life, a fiction.
Exactly the same fiction that in Dogtooth is the key through which to become aware of existence of something else, in a brilliant short circuit.
It only remains to be seen whether this awareness is equivalent to freedom.
But, as always, Lanthimos offers no answers.
It's up to we decide, while we remain astonished with our breath literally held in suspense in front of a films that we will not forget.
Dogtooth opens with a voice on a recorded tape which lists the words to learn. The highway is a strong wind, the sea is a type of armchair and later the pussy will be a lamp, just as the lyrics of Strangers in the night will change meaning.
In this case the the power to give a name to things and therefore to create the world belongs to the Father and the Mother. The three children learn the new names; Older daughter, younger daughter and son. None of them have a proper name, because this would mean giving an identity to these individuals, making them become people.
The three children live confined in their parents' villa, they will only be able to go out and face the dangers of the outside world when their canine it will fall.
If parents are those who give name and therefore shape to the world, they are the divinities of this microcosm. The entire perception that the three boys have of reality is filtered through what is told to them. The distortion of reality becomes the means through which to control people. So the planes will be models that fly over the sky and can fall from time to time in the garden and the cat will be a ferocious animal that feeds on newborns and the outside world will be a ferocious place where, beyond the surrounding wall, their lost brother.
The three boys live exactly as in Plato's cave myth. What they see are, in reality, shadows, but for them those shadows are the real world.
The first operation that Yorgos Lanthimos performs in Dogtooth is to transform his third work into a philosophical essay of language and in an obvious metaphor.
Two years earlier, George A. Romero in The Chronicles of the Living Dead, had carried out a similar argument.
In Romero's film the an overabundance of information prevented, just as happens today, the ability to distinguish truth from fake news and the editing of a news program became the means through which to manipulate the facts by giving them a different version.
On the one hand, editing as a tool through which to orient consciences, on the other the language.
The reference is clear, they are the same means that every dictatorship has always used. Intervening on the perception of reality by distorting it, impoverishing and inventing a new language, transforming the vision of the world, dulling consciences to be able to maneuver them at will.
So the microcosm of Dogtooth can be read as the staging of the mechanisms through which dictators, popular leaders and populists from all over the world have always acted.
However, in the case of Dogtooth, we cannot even talk about a distorted reality because the three children lack any external point of reference.
Until, as often happens in Lanthimos' films, an external element arrives to disturb the established order with the role of uncanny, exactly as will then happen in The Sacrifice of sacred deer (http://www.euroroma.net/7016/ARTE%20E%20SPETTACOLO/il-sacrificio-del-cervo-sacro.html) and in The Favorite (http:/ /www.euroroma.net/7462/arteespettacolo/la-favorita.html).
This time the stranger is Christina, hired by her father to allow his son (and obviously only him) to vent his sexual instincts .
It will be Christina herself who gives, again in exchange for sex, some VHS tapes to her eldest daughter.
Let us therefore return to the myth of Plato's cave whose experience has often been compared with cinematographic viewing.
Even the spectator forced into the dark and motionless sees nothing but shadows of reality and only thanks to the principle of suspension of disbelief takes them as real by identifying with them.
If therefore the three boys live the same experience as the chained men in the cave, their liberation, obviously, can only come from another surrogate for reality: cinema.
This is the second theme introduced by the director in his work.
Cinema as an instrument of freedom and grip of conscience.
It is no coincidence that every modern dictatorship has always been concerned with making propaganda and building its own founding image through images, be they television or cinematographic ones.
What amazes and reveals, for the umpteenth time, the very dark humor that Lanthimos possesses is that the films in question are certainly not auteur films.
The discovery of the world for the older sister takes place through Jaws , Rambo and Flashdance of which, during a surreal and alienating performance, he will dance the most famous sequence.
Through these images he becomes aware of another reality so much so that he even gives himself a name, Bruce and therefore an identity.
It will be useful to remember, at this point, that Dogtooth was filmed in the midst of the Greek crisis.
Lanthimos therefore constructs an enormous metaphor of how dictatorships act and it is impossible not to see in his film a clear reference to what his country was experiencing way back in 2009.
At the same time his third work is the most important piece of a filmography which, like every self-respecting author, always revolves around the same themes.
Lanthimos always tells microcosms with their own rules.
It happens in the world of The lobster (http://www.euroroma.net /3927/ARTEESPETTACOLO/the-lobster-nel-futuro-232-vietato-essere-single.html) in which it is forbidden to be single and which is structured around two opposite microcosms, the forest and the clinic.
The the same goes for the family of The Sacred Deer or the court of The Favorite.
However, perhaps, the film closest to Dogtooth is Alps two years later.
In Alps, in fact, we have a community of "actors" who play dead people to help family members and acquaintances process their grief.
Once again we are faced to a distorted reality, indeed we are dealing with a real staging of life, a fiction.
Exactly the same fiction that in Dogtooth is the key through which to become aware of existence of something else, in a brilliant short circuit.
It only remains to be seen whether this awareness is equivalent to freedom.
But, as always, Lanthimos offers no answers.
It's up to we decide, while we remain astonished with our breath literally held in suspense in front of a films that we will not forget.
