Dogtooth (2009)

Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, Cin. Thimios Bakatatakis;
in Greek, with English subtitles;
97 minutes.

A collaboration between the director and cinematographer of the 2016 surreal horror-comedy the Lobster stylistically almost indistinguishable from their later film. Both films find something in society that seems normal—in the Lobster, dating based on interests; in Dogtooth, child-rearing—and present it at its most extreme without rendering the basic concept unrecognizable.

Dogtooth follows a family of five whose children, and perhaps whose matriarch, have been kept from civilization for all their lives. The film succeeded in presenting moments of indoctrination that forced me to fill in the gaps; Dogtooth builds a world. I felt its power less in its obvious conceptual game of taking traditional familial roles to the extremes, and more in the filmmakers’ brilliant and consistent control of the movie. They presented a tense environment dripping with anticipation rife with long, steady shots that forced me to stare with my guts constantly in free-fall. Sure, the symbolism beats the viewer over the head a bit (e.g. equating dog-training with childrearing, planes flying and “falling” as metaphor for escape, shots of the children competing to stay submerged the longest cut over the mother revealing her pregnancy). But in exchange for obvious metaphor, the film was consistently un-obvious and engrossing, telegraphing where scenes would go but never what could possibly happen after two more minutes have gone by.