Yorgos Lanthimos: ”The Favorite Never Becomes a History Lesson”
The director Yorgos Lanthimos is known to the audience primarily for his fantastic dystopias, including the films "Lobster" and "Fang". But the last work of the Greek director, The Favorite, transported Lanthimos' admirers to not quite familiar territory - the courtyard of Queen Anne of England, mistress of the throne of the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 18th century. The film, which is based on her brief and turbulent reign, has already won over 100 film awards, as well as ten Oscar nominations - just as much has been achieved by Alfonso Cuarona's Roma. In an interview, Yorgos Lanthimos told why everyone but him has fun on the set, why there is so much sex in his films and what role rabbits play in the plot of The Favorite."The Favorite" is your first film, for which you did not write the script yourself, although your influence on it is very strong ... This is because I spent a lot of time developing this script - even more than my other texts. It took us almost nine years to reach the goal. Not that we worked without breathing, of course, there were breaks. But this is a project that took a long time to mature. Your film is a fascinating exploration of the phenomenon of power: how it can isolate, exacerbate fears, or make a person infantile ... Many things can affect people's decisions: personal relationships, mood, chance. And when a person is in power, his whims can change the fate of a nation. It's pretty scary to think about it, but it's still relevant.  The exploitation of a child-like leader now resonates very strongly in America ... And people haven't changed much. Queen Anne repels on one side, and touches on the other. How do you yourself feel about this character? Much of what is written about her shows how she suffered from all of her miscarriages, as well as the children who died. It is written that she was not a strong monarch and that she was probably manipulated by others. In the end, we wanted to make the heroine what Anna was - a complex person.  In this movie you worked with three amazing women: Rachel Weiss, Emma Stone and Olivia Coleman. What are your impressions? That was incredible. Dreams Come True! I was just trying to give them space and not interfere with filling the heroines with myself, my personalities. This must be a hell of a lot of fun, huh? Not for me, because on the set I am very excited, although the actors, I think, had some fun. It is important that we had weeks of rehearsals before filming, so they managed to fool around and felt comfortable by the time they were in front of the camera. Did the Queen Anne bunnies actually exist? Or is it your invention? This is one of those elements that we took the liberty of adding. We felt that we needed to somehow visualize the loss of this woman, but not too darkly. This is how rabbits appeared. The world you created in the palace is surreal. Animals are running around, men are playing strange games, the dances are definitely out of date. How did you approach creating this atmosphere? From the beginning, we knew we wanted to use elements that would make the film more relevant. Language was the first thing we had to deal with, but there was not even a discussion about trying to imitate the kind of speech that we think people were using at the time. This film will never be a history lesson. For costumes, we used materials like jeans, leather, synthetics, but kept the silhouettes of the clothes of those times. It's the same with music: they used both historical and modern.  In addition, it seemed to me that in historical films we all lack physicality. As if the people of the past were much more balanced, walked in a certain way, spoke in a certain way ... I wanted to do something about it. I felt that the theme of the body and its physics should play an important role in our film. As a result, she found expression in everything: from everyday movements and dancing to violence. Men in "Favorite" with their peacock habits are completely different from women ... If you pay attention to the artifacts of that time, especially painting, you will see that men used to be much more elegant with all these wigs, stockings, pantaloons, high heels. And women looked much more natural: unpretentious hairstyles, a minimum of makeup, simple dresses.  While watching "Favorite" I remembered Sophia's movie Coppola's "Marie Antoinette". Were there any specific pictures that you used as a guide or just watched during production? Well, for example, "Whispers and Shouts" by Ingmar Bergman. This is a dark and dramatic film, its color palette is very limited, the heroines wear only black and white, and the action takes place in red rooms. Our film also has a dramatic aspect, but still: we filmed a comedy with tragedy intertwined in some of its parts. Peter Greenaway's "Draftsman's Contract", a highly visual film, also influenced this work. Their team used simple fabrics and kept silhouettes. Perhaps a slight exaggeration was the work with wigs, although this can be doubted: when we plunged into this topic a little, we discovered that there are simply fantastic versions of wigs. For camera inspiration, we watched films by Juraj Hertz, The Madness of King George by Nicholas Heitner and Amadeus by Milos Forman. We were inspired by great directors, but of course we never tried to steal anything. When you watch your film after the final cut, is there something that catches your eye especially? I don’t look. I watched it enough times when I was working on it. Perhaps I will do it in 10-15 years.  Why? .. Well, first of all, I am quite critical of what I do. After you've finished the movie, you remember every stitch, you see every unevenness. And when time, years pass, you become a little different person, and this allows you to evaluate the film differently, to notice certain things in it. Let's talk about sex. In this picture, he is strictly connected with power: obtaining, issuing, finding out who has this at the moment. Why this particular focus? Not only sex, but any other activity is associated with power. Emma Stone recently talked about filming one of her sex scenes ... It turned out to be quite awkward. When you create something that looks like a sex scene, you are just trying to get the job done. The hand must be in a strictly defined place, camera, position, that's all ... Therefore, filming an intimate scene is more about logistics than about sex.  Considering how your paintings are greeted, I always imagine (I don't know if it's for better or for worse) that you are just fucking with the viewer ... Why is this happening? Whatever you mean, fucking with you, I enjoy the awkwardness. I think this is an important feeling for people. Perhaps, it generates some kind of thirst to think about things, phenomena. In any case, I like to be in a position where I do not understand how I should feel and if my feelings are appropriate. Source: Interview, Esquire, Vox The Topic of Article: Yorgos Lanthimos: ”The Favorite Never Becomes a History Lesson”. |
