Day 285: Wednesday Reviews - The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The atmosphere is so taut in The Killing of a Sacred Deer - Yorgos Lanthimos’ most recent film before his current award-magnet The Favourite - that it is like a metal cable stretched through the narrative, yowling under the tension, threatening to snap and tear the picture in two at any moment.

Filmed in eerie and sometimes fish-eyed perspectives that push subjects into the distance, or into the depths inside us, this modern day thriller is at times deadpan suburban drama, at others otherworldly psychological fable.

Colin Farrell, star of Lanthimos’ previous hit Lobster, here plays Steven, a heart surgeon with his life carefully structured, clinically empty. Nicole Kidman is his wife Anna. They have a teenage daughter, a younger son, live in an expansive, and expensive house, exquisite, perfectly tended. They are the vision of order. Praising her son’s long hair, Anna turns to her daughter. “You have lovely hair, too. We all have lovely hair.”

At work Steven cuts away at revoltingly realised hearts that pulse and squirm, their corporeal fleshiness standing in shocking contrast to the lugubrious corridors and polished dining tables that make up the meat, so to speak, of the film’s images. But after surgery Steven strips off his blood-stained gloves and discards them, back to tidiness, in a move that is mirrored in his stripping of Anna’s underwear at night, as she poses perfectly still on their bed in an act of marital roleplay they term “general anaesthetic”.

Sex, desire, craving (Steven, we learn, is an ex-alcoholic), all are overt in the opening by way of their lack - the film is shaped out of the negative space carved by their absence. Dialogue is colourless and flat. Colours are cold. The camera moves as smooth as a hearse. Steven and Anna’s life is controlled, staged, unnerving.

But into this order comes Martin, played in a standout performance by the young Barry Keoghan. Steven meets regularly with Martin in a diner, drives out with him in his car, buys him an expensive watch. Martin feels a bond, and a debt, to the teenage boy, although we are not immediately sure why. As the answer forms, Steven’s tidy life begins to unravel.

The film initially feels like a classic thriller, Martin ingratiating himself into a family in which he doesn’t belong, at first charming, then increasingly dangerous. But there is much more to it than this.

Lanthimos, with scriptwriter Efthymis Filippou, blends, crosses at will between, the real and surreal; Steven’s son and daughter begin to fall strangely ill, apparently due to a curse Martin is invoking. Or is the kid merely unhinged? Are there rational explanations? Are we within Steven’s disintegrating mind? That Lanthimos refuses to provide answers, plays all avenues at once, will no doubt confound and frustrate some, but I found it to be a powerful approach.

Our lives are filled with secrets, regrets, hidden horrors, that, like our bodily organs, beat and thrash beneath the surface. Steven has crafted an existence out of carefully excising the aspects that do not align, arranging his surface reality to mask what he cannot control - and Martin represents the dark forces rising up between the cracks to reclaim what they have been denied.

It is a disquieting, deeply unsettling tale. It looks incredible, rich folds in fabric, thick texture, Kubrick-esque corridors - emptily expressive artifice, and the wailing, screeching soundtrack is ominous, brooding, and jarring. Farrell and Kidman are powerhouses, and Keoghan is a creepy, malevolent, awkward, and unfathomable presence throughout.

Rather than look for literal meaning, it is best to feel your way through the themes. The Killing of a Sacred Deer speaks of sacrifice, yes, and revenge, but also guilt, loss, love, masculinity, not to mention our relationship with the subconscious.

It is dense, complex, yet surprisingly approachable; desolate yet invigorating. I appreciated it a great deal.

Day 284: Gesticulating

Waiting at the bus stop in the evening fog, the line of commuters weaving ahead and behind. Heads bobbing. Weight shifting from one foot to the next. Breath in puffs in a long line.

The bus pulls in and the line wobbles, lurches to life. Front few swallowed, further back heads crane behind from experience, watching for the second bus, the later bus, that could arrive any time, the adjustments and optimisations of the accomplished commuter, a professional peel from mid-queue and dart onto the empty deck, bench to yourself, pulling away while the earlier arrival remains bogged down by the masses. A last minute win, after a day of drudgery.

But no second bus tonight. We all press forwards, are swallowed into the steamy maw. The driver slumped in some unremarked suffering, eyes the colour of wet cardboard, sliding back into his skull, collar too tight, dumpy and acne scarred and skewered in his seat. He grimaces, prods his ticket machine, stares through us towards the end of his shift.

We hustle into seats, squeeze in next to one another, sweltering in the many-bodied heat. Gloves come off. Scarves are unwound. Bags are opened, breakfast bars come out, left over from lunch. Books. Headphones. Screens. A corner that is mine in the crowded din.

We inch through traffic. Pavements bathed in neon pass by behind clouded glass. Kebab shops and discount offies reflected in the shimmer of traffic. Store fronts repeat.

People sigh, lean back, cough once or three times. We can’t cope one more second. We must wrench up seats and riot. This quotidian pain. These coats and bags and flasks and sandwich boxes. This fucking life. Oh, but oh. Swallow misery, sigh again, let eyes go glazed.

We pass an ambulance driver gesticulating in front of hospital side doors. A wave goodbye? A problem? A game? There is too much distance between us, selves separated by skull and glass and empty air and skull again. The central impossibility of comprehending another life. All these lives, the breadth and depth, all rich and convoluted and labyrinthine. How can you be in there and me in here? My self is made up of your other. My other is made up of your self.

The bus climbs forwards. My lids start to drop. I conserve my energy. There is a long journey ahead.

Day 283: The strange man

There was a strange man got on our bus. The bus was loud but the strange man was louder. He was swaying at the bus stop, he swayed up the step, in water, in whisky, in dance. He was singing to Irish music on his phone. He had on an old waxed cotton jacket, smelling of fishing boats and cigarettes and rope. He tried to take a seat but he fell down and he didn't seem concerned and he pulled himself up and adjusted his threadbare hat and carried right on singing.

No one paid attention. We looked out of the windows. We were tired from offices and libraries and long shifts shouldering burdens and we thought, collectively, Go right on. Be that way. We don't care.

The strange man looked around, he asked some people how they were doing, they nodded and turned away. He looked at two girls, and we clenched our teeth, but he told them only It's a good night, then his eyes went roving on.

He talked to himself. We were tired from long shifts and we mostly looked at phones, out of windows, but we half watched when someone new got on the bus, the vague sport of what would happen. Everyone new was being tested; everyone sitting down was the old guard. We wanted to see the moment the new people discovered, whether they would sit beside him without realising, how that would play out. We were tired but we half watched for this.

Or we half watched the strange man himself, squinted a little, tutted just a little, silently to ourselves. We were doing badly, we were lonely and disappointed and lost, but we weren't the strange man. We all had at least that.

The strange man coughed a hacking cough and swayed and sang to his Irish song. The bus moved on up the hill. A middle-aged couple in matching felt coats and scarves sat down opposite the strange man. The strange man watched the couple a long time, started talking, and the couple stared ahead.

The bus got full and the strange man stood up to offer a woman his seat. The woman said No, don't be, and the strange man said Hey, it was, all was, come, all come - he said some strange thing, the woman said some flushed thing, moved off to stand down the bus. The strange man shook his head, shook in offence or disbelief, sat himself back in his swaying lagoonal glow.

We looked at phones, out of windows.

I'm sorry. That's what the strange man said to the couple. I'm sorry it's like this. I've lost... my. I've lost my... son. How do you carry on. How do you carry on when you've lost your son.

He said more, but we couldn't hear, no one could hear save the couple, and they weren't in the mood for talking. The bus moved on.

Day 282: Tightrope

Hullo. I’ve been feeling bleak as a barrow today. So that’s good!

No, I’m OK. Just been a bit hollow and sluggish, a creaky old ship with the wind howling through my timbers, but I’ve been sailing on through. Spending recent days trying to let go instead of grasping at negative thoughts, trying to relax away from the swirling vortex of rumination, has been tiring. It brings them all on worse. It’s frightening, in a way, an act of faith - I guess there’s something of a defense mechanism at play - you get a negative thought smashing in from nowhere and it’s like you’re being attacked, and you tighten yourself all up, tense yourself, get prepared for battle. The rumination is like analysing the attack from every angle, replaying it over and over and over, without being able to diffuse it.

So to practise the art of yielding, of nodding when a negative thought arises, ungrasping, unclasping, and moving on, is distinctly bizarre. It’s counter-intuitive, you feel dizzy, worried you’re making yourself vulnerable.

And the negative thoughts come thick and fast. They have been today, yesterday, the day before. But I’m telling myself this is because they’re worried, they’re doubling their efforts, hitting me with all they’ve got, because they sense me breaking away from them.

So I’m trying to walk the line, to do the things, to go to work, do the work, go food shopping, cook vegetable chilli, portion the chilli out for the next three days, write my blog, sleep, get up, keep on going.

Trying not to wobble. Trying not to look down. Just go, step at a time, over that chasm.

So I guess I’m not really feeling bleak. There is a lot of bleakness. But I’ve got a tightrope strung out across it. And I’m walking.

...... 

Music: I Forgot to Be Your Lover, by William Bell. What better way to soothe those tempestuous mental waters than with a classic slice of sensual sixties soul? Oh man, this is just, stone cold, the sound of healing. Wait? Did I do this song already? This all seems familiar. After all these days, who the hell knows? And who's counting? Ta raaaaaa.

Day 281: According to

Pooped tonight. Bushed. Beat. Tuckered all the way out. Gonna crawl into bed with my book and get enough sleep to be refreshed for the open tomorrow.

I’m reading Underworld by Don DeLillo. I’ve been reading Underworld by Don DeLillo for about three years now. I started it what feels like an aeon ago, fell away from it, picked it back up last month, and am currently struggling through the verbiage, a sluggish paragraph at a time.

I sort of love it. But it sort of leaves me entirely cold. I can tell he’s an exemplary writer, and there’s so much nuance and exploration of subtle truths in there. But maybe I don’t think he’s a good writer at all - this is the second book of his that I’ve appreciated from afar, or maybe felt I should appreciate, without any of it connecting with me on an emotional level.

Not that his prose isn’t suffused with beauty:

“The rim clouds took on a chromium edge and the high sky was still an easy noonish blue. But the pit went dark in a hurry, the vast plastic liner wind-lapped and making the eeriest sort of music, just outside the wave-fold of nature, and the surface was indigo now, still faintly sky-streaked, washed by gradations of shade and motion. We stood a moment watching and then went back to the car.”

And his dialogue is taut, sizzling, low-key exhilarating. But I’m not really following what’s going on, or why it’s important. There’s someone who works for a waste-disposal agency, and a lot of musing about how waste, trash, excrement, points to something profound and corporeal and hidden in plain view about us all and our place in the world. There’s a baseball that was hit to win the World Series in 1951 that is followed through the novel, a kid grabbing it during the game, his father taking it off him, a collector searching for it in the 90s, something in the 70s - and lots of subtext about sports and achievement and collecting and owning and wanting and What it Means to Be American, which American writers are always trying to answer, which is far less interesting when you’re not yourself American and don’t see why they always have to bang on about themselves so much. There are about fifty more characters who I’ve been introduced to in vignettes so far unattached to anything else, and subsequently forgotten. And there’s someone cruising down freeways murdering people in his car.

That actually all sounds like the kind of novel I would adore. But something about it is so theoretical, so distanced. It’s long, and it requires effort to read - every passage begins in medias res, with characters you can’t remember, pursuing needs that aren’t at all obvious, and after a ponderous few pages you cut away again, unsure of what to make of what you’ve read.

I mean, it all makes sense on the page, and sounds meaningful and powerful and strong. But I’m struggling to transfer any of that from the book into my experience of real life. It’s like it’s encoded with wisdom, but wisdom for an alien lifeform that processes information differently to myself.

Maybe I’m just not smart enough. But I think I get most of it, that’s not the problem - I feel the depths that he’s mining. They’re just cerebral depths, always discrete and unrelated to the heart.

I’ll carry on reading, regardless. Many important works of art only fully connect with me once they’re done, once I’ve experienced them and taken in their whole and felt my own whole being shift to accommodate what they express.

I was just looking for, but couldn’t find, a quote about viewing art. Can’t remember who said it. The gist is that we don’t see art, we see according to art. It changes our viewpoint, changes us, in a very real sense, as we consume it. So far seeing according to Underworld is a lonely, removed way of seeing. But perhaps there will be immense worth in that, once I’m through.

Anyway, that’s enough of my evening spent tapping away. Now it’s time for bed and book.

...... 

Music: Barracuda, by John Cale.

Day 280: Glow

I'm doing better again. Basically back to my old self. By which I mean neurotic, exhausted, wracked with negative thoughts, utterly lost and confused - but trundling along pretty well, all things considered. Certainly I'm not in the pit of vipers as I was a few days ago.

It's good to be out. It is. To breathe freely. Not to feel the universe pressing down, pinning me to the spot, crushing me.

I didn't cope with this latest fall into depression as well as I would have liked, but I did cope better than I have in the past. I messaged people close to me, I took a single day off work, I tried to be kind to myself. I still spent far too long hiding from the pain by scrolling social media, watching mindless nothings on YouTube; I ate loads of junk food, stayed up too late, fell asleep to the glow of Netflix past 3am, lounged in bed till after midday - but I have definitely done worse. It was only a few days, and although the depression hurt, I didn't fall into despair to such an extent as I have done, and I came out the other side easier than before.

All of which is good. But it is late again, was working a long shift today, and in tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

So I'd better get some rest. Toodles.

Day 279: January in blogging

Hullo chickadees. I'm going to start a monthly round-up of my blogging, collecting all the better, or at least more interesting, pieces, both as a way for me to see where I've been and where I'm going, and for you to check in on the highlights if you don't have the time or inclination to follow me daily, but still have a vague interest in what I'm writing.

Lovely. Here is this month's:

Day 251: Insignificant - A post I wrote to help people feel less self-conscious by reminding them how tiny and stupid and meaningless they are. Also I got to make fun of my friend Mike's enormous head, which to be honest I'm at times surprised fits through my kitchen door when he comes round to watch The Wire. But though his head is enormous (and oh, how!), his life is tiny, and stupid, and meaningless - and I very much hope that this thought brings him solace.

Day 252: Deer - Creativity, I posit here (not exactly originally), is a deer in the woods - you can't go stomping after it ordering it to do what you ask. It will only flee. You have to creep up slowly, gently, wait patiently, and if you are lucky then the deer will wander up to you and nibble strawberries by your feet. Do deer like strawberries? The Deer of Creativity does! Also, you're not hunting the deer in this analogy, so get that macho predator instinct out of your head. You're asking the deer spirit to bless you, and it has to be alive and free to do so. I like this analogy a lot.

Day 258: Storms of tarantulas - Some thoughts on the Welcome to Night Vale novel, and the difficulties in delineating worlds of the imagination.

Day 259: Dried fruit - A post about challenging self-critical thoughts, told through an analogy about making portraits of celebrities out of bits of dried fruit. I don't know what comes out of my head some days.

Day 261: Cherry - About the two kinds of happiness, and how to find peace beyond the attempt to sate desire, told through an analogy about eating iced buns. I don't know what comes out of my head, etc.

Day 264: Wednesday Reviews - Roma - I've started writing film reviews once a week. Took me a while to find my feet, to remember how the form should flow, but I was happy with this one. It was a great film, as well. You should definitely check it out on Netflix if you get the chance.

Day 267: Shrapnel - Notes on how emotional pain is related to physical pain, how the same neural mechanisms fire for both, and why we let down the vulnerable in our society when we fail to recognise this truth.

... And then I got ill. Researching into mental health issues, thinking about my own struggles with such, a mass of negative thoughts that I had been ignoring since Christmas, trying to power through, suddenly came crashing in, and knocked me on my arse. It's interesting looking back and pinpointing the moment it happened, how you can sense I felt I had in some way opened the door to it, allowed the negativity room to manoeuvre, and how much guilt and shame and hopelessness spread through the whole of the following week after it leapt.

Day 270: Rumination - I wasn't well here, but I managed to post about rumination, the constant obsessive worrying about problems without ever actually solving them. Being anxious about why you suffer, rather than thinking about how to overcome suffering. This was exhausting to think about, and to write, but it helped give me insight into something that affects me every single day, and I'm trying to be more aware of it arising at the moment.

Day 272: Implicit - A little post I squeezed out about the role of character in film, how a scriptwriter must be like an animation artist, sketching telling details of a person above the surface to imply a whole mass of depth unseen below, and why for this reason they must be experts in feeling the shape of people, the shape of behaviours, hopes, fears, dreams. Want to come back and flesh this thought out sometime.

Day 276: A different realm - The day or two before this post were my worst this month, completely overcome with depression - but here I gave myself permission to feel as I did; I called in sick to work, treated myself kindly, and began the process of recovering. Weird that this was only three days ago. Truly feels like another time, another me.

Day 277: Back on track - Making sense of the previous week's depression, paying attention to the precise symptoms, making plans for dealing with them when they arise in the future. If you struggle with mental health yourself you may want to read this and see whether any of it strikes a chord, and whether any of the strategies may be of use to you in your own private battles. I hope so.