Unreleased in Italy, Dogtooth tells a story of imprisonment, where fear for the world around us leads us to seek refuge in prisons that are not very gilded and yet reassuring. But what is the price to pay? And, above all, to what extent can the denial of reality work?

A family, father, mother and three children, lives in total isolation inside their villa. In this artificial microcosm the experience of life is totally disconnected from the outside world, with the exception of the father, the only one who can leave the house, but, above all, the undisputed master of the fate of his loved ones. Supported by his wife, he raises his offspring, shaping a distorted universe, where planes rain from the sky and women give birth to animals. The manipulation is total and also includes language, children are taught that the rifle is a bird and the sea is a chair. However bizarre, the education imparted is anything but a nice joke and the acquiescence of the three young people contributes to strengthening the surreal character of the events, with the result of generating a persistent feeling of bewilderment in the viewer. Despite everything, the staging seems to work perfectly, but a force linked to the outside world will corrupt the unhealthy family balance...

Dogtooth teaches us first of all that from a simple idea you can derive a work with multiple meanings and therefore capable of fueling the curiosity of the public. The presence of the narrating instance almost dissolves in the flow of events, their genesis is unknown and what remains is their essence. From here comes the waltz of meanings, the search for which is left to the spectator. Among the various allegories, the criticism of contemporary Western society stands out most clearly, which if on the one hand is denied, on the other is faithfully reproduced in scale. The great transnational powers (the father) have total control of the system and with the connivance of the local elites (the mother) maintain control over the population (the children) distracted by futile commitments as well as narcotized by the media, which has the task of keeping in mind a fictitious and alienating communication apparatus comes to life. For everything to be stable, loyalty and belonging must be unconditional and are guaranteed by fearing exogenous threats that strengthen intra-group cohesion. Whether it's a cat or terrorism that scares doesn't matter much, the important thing is the presence of the enemy which makes us all watchdogs, ready to bark to protect the owner and our all-encompassing garden. Unfortunately, the status quo and the efforts made to maintain it become sadly ridiculous where the underlying nonsense is highlighted. Society is an arbitrary construction and as such has no foundation. Language itself is nothing more than the invention of terms to define objects, but then, finally, there is no way to explain what the connection is between a word and its real counterpart. Why do we call a barking four-legged mammal a “dog”? There is no answer. Similarly, there is no explanation for the choices of this family. Certainly, the abyss of lack of meaning terrifies us and this fuels the mechanism by which it is much more reassuring to believe in a false truth than in a true relativity.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that this film is full of pessimism was born in Greece, at the dawn of the crisis that tormented it. Never before has cinema become a precursor of history as in this case. Giorgos Lanthimos immortalizes the zeitgeist of a people called to face the looming threat, highlighting immobility and apathy as the main reactions. The individual closes himself in his world, becoming vulnerable like a sacrificial lamb, whose defenseless candor manifests itself in the milky photography. At the same time, the uniform slowness of the rhythm gives a sensation of the inexorability of events which is difficult to escape. Added to this are the convincing performances of the small cast, in particular the interpreters of the children reveal with calculated inexpressiveness an illiteracy of emotions that is at times disturbing. Everything is supported by Lanthimos's restrained direction, which successfully aims at introspection and recalls by analogy the cinema of other more well-known directors, including Haneke and the Dardenne brothers. The absence of comic or spectacular elements, combined with the director's lack of international fame, banned Dogtooth from the Bel Paese for more than ten years. Only thanks to the success achieved by the director with his subsequent works was the film finally distributed, in August 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. This is not an (almost) masterpiece.