A Greek myth revisited: The Killing of a Sacred Deer
- thechamberoforchid
- 8 nov. 2017
- 5 min de lecture
To the happy few for whom Greek mythology is a daily companion, the title of Yorgos Lanthimos' last movie is unequivocal. For those who studied mythology way back in their teenage years (like me), the allusion to Iphigenia might have triggered some memories. For those who never heard about Agamemnon's misdeed and Artemis' retaliation, well... I guess the movie was quite baffling, and I hope they enjoyed the acting and the music.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer indeed revisits and modernises the myth. In the initial story, the goddess Artemis demands that Agamemnon, who inadvertently killed a sacred deer, sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. In exchange she promises to rise the winds so that Agamemnon's ships reach Troy. The versions disagree as to whether Iphigenia is actually sacrificed or saved, at the last minute, by Artemis herself. But in Lanthimos' movie (spoiler alert), a deer (a dear?) is sacrificed all right.
So here's the plot: Steven (Collin Farrell) is a successful cardiologist, who apparently lives the American dream: he has a beautiful wife (Nicole Kidman), two beautiful kids, a gigantic house and an honorable reputation. But this well-polished varnish crackles from the very beginning, when we discover him spending time with Martin, a young man (Barry Keoghan) who seems slightly unbalanced, in what appears to be an ambiguous relationship (enough for Steven to hide it to his wife). The strident violins, who become more and more aggressive as the story unfolds, make any apparition of Martin noticeably unpleasant, if not stressful. For the audience, there's something amiss with Martin, and we wonder whether Steven knows and ignores it or genuinely tries to help the kid.
And sure enough, the family is rapidly stricken by tragedy: one fine morning, the younger son Bob (Sunny Suljic) wakes up with no sensations in his legs. A few days later, his sister Kim (Rafael Cassidy) collapses in the middle of a choir repetition, affected by the same ailment. That's when Martin/Artemis (see how the names are imperfect anagrams...) reveals to Steven that this paralysis is the first stage; refusal to eat will follow and later, tears of blood, foreshadowing imminent death. What Martin wants is Steven to choose one member of his family to sacrifice, to make their families even, as Martin's father died on Steven's surgery table two years ago. From this point, Steven fights (in my opinion, rather feebly) to save his children, while the atmosphere gets more stifling by the minute.
Rafael Cassidy and Barry Keoghan in The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Now... Why did this movie make me feel like I had wasted two hours of my life? There are many reasons but I think the most important is frustration. It is one thing to rewrite a myth and adapt it to a modern context. It is another to use this myth as an excuse to stage what look like supernatural phenomena without ever giving them any explanation, whilst all the while setting the story in a unmistakably realistic context. For the most part of the movie, my boyfriend and I thought it was a manipulation game that would be rationally, or at least psychologically explained. And that would have worked; there was a potential in this story for a psychological or psychiatric thread that could have given a new reading to the myth: viewed from our contemporary condition, Artemis's wrath and demand is nothing but pure psychopath delirium. But Lanthimos doesn't explore this aspect. The family is subjected to Martin's power who wrecks their lives, but this power remains unexplained. Thus, the mythological references are merely reduced to a convenient deus ex machina, unreasonably justifying unjustifiable events.
The other reason that made me hate this movie is the values it conveys. Under the gloss of a glorious and harmonious family life, the audience recognises the patterns of unhealthy relationships: each parent has a favourite kid and is uncompromising with the other, which leads to more than one upsetting scene. The parents seem to share a sweet intimacy but when the audience is invited to their bedroom and witnesses a bizarre sex game, the uneasiness is palpable. And what about this scene when Steven tells Bob how he wanked his drunk father when he was younger, just to see how much sperm would come out of his father's penis? Can someone tell me what healthy values this scene conveys? So yeah, maybe that was not the point (I hope it wasn't!), maybe the whole point was to show how Steven loses it, but still; I was horrified by this scene and wondered how it was for the young actor to be told such a squalid anecdote.
If you've not seen the movie and still wish to, I'd advise you to stop here as the following paragraph will discuss the ending of the movie.
The ending was maybe the most horrifying moment of the movie (although I hesitate with the one when the mother kisses Martin's bleeding feet, under the gaze of her crippled children). Unable to reach a decision, the father decides to shoot one of the members of his family randomly. So much for the effort to save them. After two failed attempts (and the wild hope that something, anything, will happen to stop this disaster), the bullet finally finds a victim. In the following scene, what is left of the family silently sits at the diner where Steven used to secretly meet Martin. Martin comes in, they exchange murderous looks and after a while (during which we get to watch a teenager spreading ketchup on French fries - ketchup, blood, do you make the connexion?), Steven stands up. "He's going to pull out a gun and shoot Martin", thinks the audience who hasn't recovered from the shock of the previous scene and who begins to indulge in the law of retaliation. But no, he doesn't. The rest of his family stands up as well, and they wall leave the diner, as a family. The camera closes up on Martin's face, at last satisfied that their families are even and that his father's death is revenged. And cut.
So in this world, one can threaten with supernatural events and get his will done. One can kill an innocent family member with impunity and freely go to a diner the next day. Justice can be served by an eye for an eye, a death for a death. And it's okay.
I'm trying to make sense of this. Of course it's a movie, it is art, it is not submitted to any realistic injunction, the title warns us, "we are rewriting a myth". But the thing is that the whole context is set in a realistic, contemporary, scientific world, where we even get to see security guards escorting Martin out of the hospital (which tends to prove that there is organised security, so maybe organised justice, in this world). All the while, Steven seems to hesitate as to whether to believe Martin or not, and the fact that his wife is never affected by the paralysis tends to show that Martin's power is not real and that somehow, the kids have just lapsed into some sort of paranoïa or delirium. If we are tied to our seat during the whole movie, it is because nothing in the story, apart from its mythical source, prepares us for such unexplained, supernatural events, and we are sure that something will come and either switch the balance of power or bring a rational clarification. When Steven fails to kill Martin, we think that killing him won't change anything to the kids' condition, but at least we'll know why, somehow.
Vain hopes.
The audience never gets to understand, and, with such a lack of reason, the supernatural becomes a weak explanation to the killing of an innocent, sacred deer.
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