P.

05 Shapes

P.09 Cameras

P.21 Lights

P.23 Filmography
Shapes

Title
Magic Realism in Cinema

Author
WA Media

Link
vimeo.com/319654444

05
[1] [2]
 Born in 1973, Yorgos Lanthimos graduated in directing
from the Stavrakos Film School in Athens. He made
his debut as a film director in 2005 with the feature
film Kinetta. With a form that immediately confuses
and disorients the viewer, Kinetta has been defined
as Lanthimos’ poetic manifesto, the epitome of the
stripping down of the film medium that will also affect
his other feature films in various ways.
Lanthimos belongs to a group of directors such as
Tim Burton, Alejandro Gonzalez and Wes Anderson
who exploit magical realism through tragicomic tales.
These films are not intended to be a means of making
political commentary but represent values of ethics,
sacrifice, justice, defeat, thus becoming allegories
of the human condition.
Lanthimos’ style is hermetic; from the point of view
of direction, he masterfully adopts a conventional,
linear style, without plot twists (plot twist) while
managing to transform the narrative into a slow climax
of evolving and intensifying events. His directorial
forms accompany the viewer towards the revelatory
moment of the narrative (slow reveal), often adopting
a cinematic exposition focused on a detail [1-2-3-4].
This deliberately clumsy, imprecise and amateurish
visual language is similar to a human tendency
to focus on seemingly useless details, leaving out
everything else that surrounds us. This masterly
approach succeeds in bringing the viewer to an
awareness of his own ineptitude by introducing a
highly introspective aspect of the human condition,
drawing our attention back to the ‘automatisms’
we perform without realising it.
His films are a distortion of objective reality by means of
a directing style oriented towards visual dystopia that
at the same time generates worlds out of the ordinary.

06
[3] [4]
 Cameras

Lanthimos deconstructs the very principle on which the

art of cinema is based, the illusion of fiction, reducing
the film’s ‘heartbeat’ to a minimum, stripping away
the scenic devices and making the camera’s eye
perpetually intrusive through handheld use, based
on crude and out-of-focus movements, [5-6-7-8]
which make for disturbing viewing.
The impact is reminiscent of the avant-garde film
movement conceived in 1995 by Lars Von Trier
and Thomas Vinterberg, which called for a “vow of
chastity” of the film medium by means of a total purge
of excessive “cosmetics”, i.e. the complex of special
effects and technical devices for staging fiction
typical of high-budget films such as the soundtrack,
lighting, artificial camera movements, set design
and digital retouching.
The shooting sequences are formally correct, but
deliberately amateurish deviating from the shots
of traditional cinematography.

Thus, behind-the-back shots [9/20], below-the-

waist shots [21-22], dolly zooms [23/25] on
environments and slap shot panoramas [26/29]
on the characters are trademarks of the endless
tragicomedy consummated in slow motion.

09
[5] [6] [7] [8]

[9] [10] [11]

[12]

[13]

[14]
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[15] [16]

[18]

[17] [19] [20]

[21]

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[25]

[26]

[27]

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15
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 Cameras

The camera is experienced as presence, that follows

the characters above them or crawling from below.
Generally there are not many shots at eye level, there
is a constant feeling of someone being in a corner
or behind a door [30/35] to spy on the scene.
The strength of his cinematic language is more
interesting considering that dialogues are minimum
reduced, everything is based on sub-texts, leaving
the camera to direct the narrative, analysing the looks
and movements of the performers. Often the camera
is positioned in a spot getting most of the information,
thus managing to convey the whole plot without
having too many scenes and too long dialogues.
This visual way of telling the story supports the
psychological tension of the characters and
differentiates them from what is considered a
conventional narration of events. In order to better
highlight this strategy, the author works with
contrasts, offering a point of view that is extraneous
to the story, that of the camera, capable of bringing
an objective gaze to the scene. It seems that you
cannot look away from this type of storytelling
because it makes you an active spectator who wants
to be part of the creation of the plot.

Magic realism is a fascinating way to approach

filmmaking. It offers the possibility to move away
from complex visual effects that mask reality.
Is a simple style but one that radiates power by
extrapolating the story from the fictional world
around it. With magical realism, the author designs
immersive atmospheres in parallel worlds.
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[31]

[32]
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[33]
[34]

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20
Lights

21
 In Lanthimos we find the grotesque, the extreme
exasperation of an acting tendency, aimed at
bringing the actor-human being identificated with
someone other than himself and the expression
of human emotions.

The aesthetics of the films’ images are so clean

and precise that they appear sterilised, surgically
processed. Yorgos Lanthimos prefers to shoot his
scenes using natural light and positively capturing
unexpected weather changes. He rarely uses artificial
light, considering it a waste of time and money when it
is automatically ordered by the production.
As a result, the already sterile and minimalist settings
are also reduced to the bone in terms of lighting and
colours, favouring a washed-out and desaturated
colour palette. This naturalness of the environment
is also reflected in the characters, who rarely wear
make-up. He prefers to see a clean face, without
further disguise. These choices, as well as having
visual effects, also have positive consequences
during production. Indeed, without lighting and make-
up operators, the set becomes a much more intimate
and quiet place and they can redo scenes without
too many interruptions.
What is created in Lanthimos’ films is often a
microcosm, as parallel as it is close to reality, that
stands on its own and has its own system of rituals,
laws and superstructures; a veritable miniature
society with its own distorted system that manipulates
the lives of the characters.

22
 Filmography

Title
Truth is stranger than fiction:
Magical Realism in Cinema
Author
WA Media
Link
vimeo.com/319654444

“Go West”, 1925, Buster Keaton

“Erendira”, 1985, Ruy Guerra
“Edward Scissorhands”, 1990, Tim Burton
“Amelie”, 2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
“The Royal Tenenbaums”, 2001, Wes Anderson
“Kinetta”, 2005, Yorgos Lanthimos
“La Noche Boca Arriba”, 2005, Rubén Marquerie
“Casa Tomada”, 2007, Lucila Presa
“Dogtooth”, 2009, Yorgos Lanthimos
“Black Swan”, 2010, Darren Aronofsky
“Alps”, 2011, Yorgos Lanthimos
“La Noche Boca Arriba”, 2012, Hugo Covarrubias
“Birdman”, 2014, Alejandro González-Iñarritú
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”, 2014,
Wes Anderson
“The Lobster”, 2015, Yorgos Lanthimos
“The Killing of a Sacred Deer”, 2017,
Yorgos Lanthimos
“The Favourite”, 2018, Yorgos Lanthimos
“Alejo y lo Real Maravilloso”, Unknown

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06/05/2021 23
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