The Killing of a Sacred Deer

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Movie
German title The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Original title The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Country of production Ireland , UK
original language English
Publishing year 2017
length 121 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Giorgos Lanthimos
script Efthymis Filippou ,
Giorgos Lanthimos
production Ed Guiney ,
Giorgos Lanthimos,
Andrew Lowe
camera Thimios Bakatakis
cut Yorgos Mavropsaridis
occupation

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a thriller by Giorgos Lanthimos , which celebrated its world premiere on May 22, 2017 as part of the Cannes International Film Festival and competed for the Palme d' Or . The film was inspired by the stories about Iphigenia by the Greek playwright Euripides .

action

The respected cardiac surgeon Steven Murphy leads a fulfilling family life with Anna, who runs a clinic as an ophthalmologist, the pubescent daughter Kim and the younger son Bob.

For some time now, Steven has been meeting 16-year-old Martin, a teenager from a rather humble background, whose father died two years ago during heart surgery performed by Steven. Steven feels sorry for the boy and also feels guilty because he was an alcoholic at the time and was under the influence of alcohol during the operation. Martin is looking for a surrogate father in Steven. Steven goes into this a little, gives Martin presents and at some point invites him to dinner with his family. There Martin and Kim begin to lean towards each other.

As a result, Martin pressed Steven more and more. He visits him at work and visits the Murphys more often. When Martin invites Steven to make a return visit, he tries to pair Steven with his mother, who is also very interested. Steven quickly leaves the house and tries to reduce contact with Martin. Martin reacts angrily.

Soon afterwards, Steven's son Bob suddenly suffers from paraplegia for which no medical cause can be found. In the cafeteria of the hospital where Bob lies, Martin Steven threatens that his wife and two children will die, all following the same pattern - first paralysis, then refusal of food, then eye bleeding and shortly afterwards death - if Steven as atonement for it that he murdered his father, not killing any of his family members. Steven has Martin thrown out, but is horrified to discover that Martin's curse continues to be fulfilled. Kim is soon paralyzed too and both refuse to eat. It also becomes apparent that Martin can suspend suffering at will.

Since they cannot be helped medically, Kim and Bob are moved home on artificial feeding, where Martin continues to visit. In his desperation, Steven traps Martin in his basement and tries to make him compliant with the use of violence and massive death threats, but Martin is determined to the extreme. Kim, familiar with the Iphigenia substance from school , offers herself to her parents as a victim. It was only when Bob began to bleed that Steven was forced to accept Martin's request. He ties his wife and children to pieces of furniture, stands with a rifle in the middle, pulls a knitted hat over his eyes, begins to turn around and shoots blindly. Only after several attempts does he meet - Bob dies.

In the final scene, Steven, Anna and Kim are sitting healthy in a café. When Martin enters, walks past them and sits down at the counter, the three of them leave the restaurant.

production

Meaning of the film title

Because Agamemnon had killed a sacred stag, he had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia . In the picture a mask discovered by Heinrich Schliemann , which he assigned to the mythical Agamemnon

The title of the film refers to the beginning of the myths surrounding Iphigenia . Her father Agamemnon was punished by Artemis for killing a deer in her sacred grove. As a result, at the beginning of the Trojan War, she prevented the Greek fleet from continuing to Troy under Agamemnon's command and only lifted the calm when the latter sacrificed his own daughter to the goddess as atonement. The film mentions that Steven Murphy's daughter wrote a class test on the myth of Iphigenia.

Staff and film genre

The film was jointly funded by Film4 and New Sparta Films with Hanway Films. The direction was taken over by Giorgos Lanthimos , who wrote the screenplay for the film together with Efthymis Filippou . In his film, in the tradition of the Iphigenie or Abraham myths, Lanthimos draws on an archaic subject of Western culture, which he transposes into the present day and not staged as a pitiless drama, but rather cushioned with pitch-black humor that pervades the entire work . As in the myth of Iphigenia, in his film someone who takes something, like Agamemnon the beloved stag of Artemis, has to return something valuable to restore balance. Dominik Kamalzadeh of Der Standard explains in his review of the film that Lanthimos and his long-time screenwriter resorted to the character of the intruder to tell a drama about guilt and repression.

Regarding the genre of the film, Jenny Jecke from moviepilot.de says, boiled down to the essentials, this has the plot of a horror film in which a rational man is confronted with the scientifically inexplicable. Carsten Baumgardt von Filmstarts also speaks of an actually very simple horror plot, and Lanthimos gives the plot, but also the staging, a little alienating twist into the surreal: "He never loses the relation to reality, but he cushions the archaic cruelty of Euripides' Tragedy Iphigenia based on Auli's premise - a father has to sacrifice one of his children to prevent an even worse disaster - something. ”The film finally descends into a kind of Old Testament frenzy instead of a cathartic purification as envisaged by ancient tragedy , says Baumgardt. Andreas Kilb from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung explains that one of the rules of the game in horror films is that the victims only gradually realize who wants to kill them and that the perpetrator has supernatural or at least extraordinary powers. There could be no question of either in the film, continues Kilb: “All actors are in the picture from the start. And the violence that occurs has no visible cause, it comes from nowhere. All we learn is that the disaster will continue to advance as long as the surgeon has not made atonement for the death of his patient. ”For Daniel Kothenschulte of the Frankfurter Rundschau , The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a pitch-black thriller with biblical motifs , comparing the character of the increasingly vicious Martin with that of Damien from the horror classic The Omen .

Cast and dubbing

The main role of surgeon Steven Murphy was cast with Colin Farrell , the role of his wife Anna with Nicole Kidman . The young actors Sunny Suljic and Raffey Cassidy play their children Bob and Kim. The role of 16-year-old Martin was cast with Barry Keoghan . Alicia Silverstone joined the cast in August 2016 . She plays Martin's mother in the film.

In the German dubbing, Markus Pfeiffer lends the surgeon Steven Murphy his voice and Petra Barthel his wife Anna Murphy.

Filming and film music

Filming began on August 22, 2016 in Cincinnati . There they took place in the Christ Hospital and in the area around Hyde Park. Regarding the camerawork at the beginning of the film, Dominik Kamalzadeh from Der Standard says that the clinical setting on the human heart will be kept in view for so long that one will remember Luis Buñuel's famous cut through the eye in his film An Andalusian Dog . Carsten Baumgardt from Filmstarts explains what also seems strange, especially some image compositions and setting sizes . In the long shots, for example, the camera is often further away from the action than one is used to, which sometimes creates the effect that it feels as if you are not watching people made of flesh and blood, but rather characters in a doll's house or research subjects in an experimental setup. Andreas Kilb from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says that sometimes at Lanthimos you have the feeling that it is enough to just look for something terrible to happen, and the perspective tricks of the cameraman Thimios Bakatakis heightened this discomfort: “The corridors in the hospital open up for him like gaping wounds. The dim rooms in the surgeon's house look like burial chambers. The outside world of the anonymous American city in which the film was shot (it is Cincinnati) seems frozen under the breath of the plague. ”Thomas Assheuer from Zeit Online also notices the striking distance from the action, photographed with cold precision, and the distance torn open by the wide-angle lens Totale creates a skeptical distance, whereby the shrill, impertinently used music sounds like the warning chorus of Attic tragedy .

The selection of film music includes a cross-section of Western music, for example by Johann Sebastian Bach , Franz Schubert , Sofia Gubaidulina and György Ligeti . Peter Debruge of Variety says of the pieces of music used in the film that they are allegories of extreme discomfort and are masterfully orchestrated, like in a classic Kubrick film . Jenny Jecke from moviepilot.de explains that Lanthimos, which is his trademark, accompanies the emotionally comedically chilled events with overwhelming operatic arias and dissonant strings.

Publication and exploitation

The distribution rights for the USA are held by the independent film distributor A24 . As part of the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, Haut et Court secured the distribution rights for France. The film celebrated its world premiere on May 22, 2017 as part of the Cannes International Film Festival and competed here in the international competition for the Palme d'Or . During this time, a first trailer for the film was also released. From September 7, 2017, the film was shown at the Special Presentations as part of the Toronto International Film Festival . In Europe, the film was shown in October 2017 at the Zurich Film Festival , the London Film Festival , the Hamburg Film Festival and the Warsaw International Film Festival .

The film was released in Dutch cinemas on October 12, 2017 and in selected US cinemas on October 20, 2017. Alamode Film has secured the rights for the German market. The film was released there on December 28, 2017.

reception

Age rating

In Germany the film is FSK 16 . The statement of reasons for the release states: “The gloomy atmosphere combined with eerie images and eruptive violence can irritate and frighten children and young people under the age of 16. However, 16-year-olds are already able to process these aspects on the basis of their media experience and genre knowledge. The guilt-and-atonement theme of the film opens up to them, and the artificial design makes it easier for them to distance themselves. In this way 16-year-olds can deal with the film independently without the risk of fear or disorientation. "

Reviews

So far, the film has won over 80 percent of Rotten Tomatoes ' critics and received an average rating of 7.7 out of a possible 10 points.

Giorgos Lanthimos and some of the actors at the screening of the film in Cannes

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter says the impressive rigor with which Giorgos Lanthimos went about his craft, the skillfully subdued intensity of the portrayals by the actors, and the surprising originality of the story made The Killing of a Sacred Deer inevitable for anyone who strives for the bold Filmmaking interested.

Daniel Kothenschulte from the Frankfurter Rundschau explains the basic plot of the film: “If Lanthimos last led into the otherworldly parallel world of a sanatorium with The Lobster , the unreal level is not missing this time either: When the boy fails to couple the friendly doctor with his mother , he blackmailed him with a curse. "

Dominik Kamalzadeh from Der Standard says that Lanthimos has staged a thriller that has a great understanding of the power of the inexplicable, and that the camera places the events in a strangely aseptic world: “It circles the scenes from a distance, upper views increase the depth of field. "

The director, who is a master of the slightly broken dialogues, as in a review of the APA film , draws a felt artificiality with his film that the viewer feels, such as in various conversations that are only shifted by microscopic dimensions and thus in the David Lynch styles made people feel uncomfortable. In the end, this cosmos will not be resolved, but will remain as a parable, a myth of ancient dimensions, and develop a force that is seldom to be found in the cinema in this intensity.

Katja Nicodemus from NDR explains that The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a film about guilt and revenge, and Martin invades the family's life like an angel of revenge. According to Nicodemus, the film combines the saturated way of life of the upper middle class in America with the ancient concept of an iniquity that has to be atoned for: “The discomfort that the film virtuously creates goes beyond the concrete story. It's a shame that he relies too much on horror effects towards the end. "

Thomas Assheuer from Zeit Online also describes the film as a nightmare of guilt and atonement and a cruel chamber play: “Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, an unfathomable mythical space full of suffering and mental agony opens up beneath the surface of a reasonable and enlightened society modern tragedy. "Steven, the man with the Agamemnon beard, has to pay off his guilt and bring a sacrifice of atonement, Assheuer continues, and Lanthimos is doing what intellectually saturated circles contemptuously call cultural criticism in the film . The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a social extrapolation, and the film is about the disappearance of freedom in the present; in any case, life is afflicted by a mysterious paralysis and exhausted in its routine work: “In the lifted monotony of the Murphy family, that is luxuriant Existence self-sufficient, joyless and schematic, with no sense of happiness, pain and guilt. The heart is not a metaphor, it is just a body-technical organ, like life in general is primarily biology. ”According to Assheuer, Martin is not a legitimate mythical hero for Lanthimos, but the personified delusion, a boy who became mad at his pain and is crueler than the ancient story.

In August 2017 it was announced that the film was on the longlist, from which the nominees for the 30th European Film Award will be determined.

Awards (selection)

The film was nominated in four categories at the Irish Film & Television Academy Awards 2018, including Best Feature Film. Below is a selection of other awards and nominations.

AACTA International Awards 2018

European Film Award 2017

Hamburg Film Festival 2017

  • Nomination for the Sichtwechsel film award

Independent Spirit Awards 2018

Cannes International Film Festival 2017

  • Nomination for the Golden Palm in the international competition (Giorgos Lanthimos)
  • Award for Best Screenplay (Efthymis Filippou and Giorgos Lanthimos)

Irish Film and Television Academy's Film and Drama Awards 2018

  • Award for Best Supporting Actor (Barry Keoghan)

Web links

Commons : The Killing of a Sacred Deer  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Killing of a Sacred Deer . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 174262 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Andreas Kilb: Everything is different , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 27, 2017 (page 1).
  3. ↑ http://variety.com/2016/film/news/cannes-haut-et-court-snaps-up-the-killing-of-a-sacred-deer-1201775521/
  4. ↑ a b Cannes Film Festival: 'Killing a Sacred Deer' as a massive parable In: Tiroler Tageszeitung Online, May 22, 2017.
  5. ↑ a b c Dominik Kamalzadeh: Haneke premiere in Cannes: The foreseeable end In: Der Standard, May 22, 2017.
  6. ↑ a b Jenny Jecke: A day with Nicole Kidman and the best film so far in Cannes In: moviepilot.de, 23 May 2017.
  7. ^ Carsten Baumgardt: The Killing of a Sacred Deer In: filmstarts.de. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  8. ↑ a b Andreas Kilb: Everything is different , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 27, 2017 (page 2).
  9. ^ A b Daniel Kothenschulte: The impression of the wrong at Haneke In: Frankfurter Rundschau, May 23, 2017.
  10. ↑ http://www.slashfilm.com/colin-farrell-yorgos-lanthimos-the-killing-of-a-sacred-deer/
  11. ↑ http://www.indiewire.com/2016/06/nicole-kidman-colin-farrell-yorgos-lanthimos-the-killing-of-a-sacred-deer-1201689245/
  12. ↑ http://variety.com/2016/film/global/alicia-silverstone-nicole-kidman-colin-farrell-the-killing-of-a-sacred-deer-1201842845/
  13. ↑ http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/film-commission-more-movie-shoots-coming-to-cincinnati-in-2016
  14. ↑ http://www.indiewire.com/2016/08/the-killing-of-a-sacred-deer-filming-alicia-silverstone-colin-farrell-1201719447/
  15. ^ Carsten Baumgardt: The Killing of a Sacred Deer In: filmstarts.de. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  16. ↑ a b Thomas Assheuer: 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer': In the sacred grove of America In: Die Zeit, 53/2017.
  17. ↑ Various - The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. Retrieved January 13, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Peter Debruge: Cannes Film Review: 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' In: Variety, May 22, 2017.
  19. ↑ http://variety.com/2016/film/news/cannes-haut-et-court-snaps-up-the-killing-of-a-sacred-deer-1201775521/
  20. ↑ Scott Macaulay: The Cannes Film Festival Announces its 2017 Official Selection In: filmmakermagazine.com, April 13, 2017.
  21. ↑ The Screenings Guide - Festival de Cannes In: festival-cannes.com. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  22. ↑ The Killing of a Sacred Deer In: critic.de. Retrieved May 30, 2017
  23. ↑ The Killing of a Sacred Deer - official trailer In: The Irish Times, May 29, 2017.
  24. ↑ Toronto International Film Festival 2017. Official Film Schedule In: tiff.net. Retrieved on August 23, 2017 (PDF; 852 KB)
  25. ↑ Programs 2017 In: zff.com. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  26. ↑ http://deadline.com/2017/08/bfi-london-film-festival-2017-lineup-1202158850/
  27. ↑ Films from A – Z ( Memento from November 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: filmfesthamburg.de. Retrieved September 29, 2017.
  28. ↑ 33. Warszawski Festiwal Filmowy: Programs In: wff.pl. Retrieved October 1, 2017.
  29. ↑ Ashley Lee: A24 Sets Colin Farrell's 'Killing of a Sacred Deer' for November Release In: The Hollywood Reporter, April 14, 2017.
  30. ↑ Focus: Film | News | Alamode brings "Sacred Deer" to Germany. Retrieved June 1, 2017 .
  31. ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Retrieved October 31, 2017.
  32. ^ Reasons for the release of The Killing of a Sacred Deer In: Voluntary Self-Control of the Film Industry. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
  33. ↑ The Killing of a Sacred Deer In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  34. ↑ David Rooney, 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer': Film Review. Cannes 2017 In: The Hollywood Reporter, May 22, 2017.
  35. ↑ Katja Nicodemus: Oppressive film about guilt and revenge In: ndr.de, December 27, 2017.
  36. ↑ Arun Kakar: European Film Awards selects 51 titles for nominations longlist In: screendaily.com, August 22, 2017.
  37. ↑ Hannah Moran: The nominations for the IFTA Film Awards 2018 have been announced In: evoke.ie, January 11, 2018.
  38. ^ Erik Pedersen: Australia's International Awards Lauds 'Three Billboards' As Best Film; Nolan, Oldman & Robbie Also Win In: deadline.com, January 5, 2018.
  39. ↑ The Killing of a Sacred Deer In: filmfesthamburg.de. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
  40. ↑ Hilary Lewis: 2018 Independent Spirit Award Nominations Revealed In: The Hollywood Reporter, November 21, 2017.
  41. ↑ Nancy Tartaglione and Greg Evans: Cannes Lineup: Todd Haynes, Sofia Coppola, Noah Baumbach, 'Twin Peaks' In: deadline.com, April 13, 2017.
  42. ↑ The winners at the Cannes Film Festival In: Welt Online, May 28, 2017.