Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos: ​‘Why is sex such a taboo? I real­ly don’t understand’

Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ canon­i­sa­tion as an excit­ing new voice in mod­ern cin­e­ma was almost instan­ta­neous when, back in 2009, his inge­nious and provoca­tive third fea­ture, Dog­tooth, pre­miered to slack-jaws at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. With films such as 2011’s Alps and 2015’s The Lob­ster, Lan­thi­mos offered eso­teric but increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar vari­a­tions on his inter­est in the more arcane and para­dox­i­cal aspects of human psychology.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, for a film­mak­er who in no way pan­ders to main­stream con­ven­tion, he became a house­hold name in 2018 with the scabrous peri­od com­e­dy, The Favourite, on which he devel­oped an impor­tant cre­ative part­ner­ship with actress Emma Stone. Since shoot­ing his lat­est film, Poor Things, in 2021, the pair have made two more films togeth­er (an exper­i­men­tal short titled Bleat and a forth­com­ing anthol­o­gy titled And), but the charmed com­ing-of-age tale of Bel­la Bax­ter, adapt­ed from the clas­sic 1992 nov­el by Alas­dair Gray has been a labour of love – one that began over a decade ago.

LWLies: Alas­dair Gray sad­ly passed away in 2019, but you met him many years before that to dis­cuss Poor Things.

Lan­thi­mos: Yes, it was a long time ago, I think it was 2012 that I met him. When I read the book, I was sur­prised to see that it hadn’t already been made into a film. I think there were a cou­ple of times that they thought about mak­ing it, but it nev­er mate­ri­alised. So he agreed to meet me and I went up to Glas­gow and had a great day with him. I went to his house and he imme­di­ate­ly got up, put on a jack­et and walked out­side, say­ing, ​‘Come, I’ll show you some places.’ We walked fast around Glas­gow, and he would say, ​‘This is the park, this is that, etcetera.’ He walked me up to the ceme­tery where he imag­ined Baxter’s mau­soleum would be and through the uni­ver­si­ty. He was very enthu­si­as­tic, almost like a child. And he was near­ly 80 years old at that point. After, we walked back to his house, and he said, ​‘Well, I’ve watched Dog­tooth, a friend of mine helped me put the DVD in. I think you’re a very tal­ent­ed young man, and you’re wel­come to adapt my nov­el into a film.’ And that was it. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, it took me a while to get there.

The Favourite had been around the indus­try as a project before you came to it but Poor Things came from you get­ting Alasdair’s bless­ing. Did that change the cre­ative part­ner­ship between you and [screen­writer] Tony McNa­ma­ra at all?

For me it’s very hard to find some­one to work with, espe­cial­ly when it comes to writ­ing. Try­ing to find some­one to work with on The Favourite was a very long process, and I read so many sam­ples from so many great writ­ers, but to find the exact voice that you think you can actu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate with, and to build some­thing togeth­er, it’s a real­ly tricky thing. But after dis­cov­er­ing Tony’s work, it was rel­a­tive­ly easy to get going. With The Favourite, we spoke once or twice about what it should be, then he went away and then he brought me a draft – and his first draft was incred­i­ble. He got every­thing that I was talk­ing about, but so much of it is his own voice as well. That’s why I chose him, because I liked his voice and I thought it fit into what I want­ed to do. And from then on, he always pro­duces this great first draft that we work on.

We spend time togeth­er – hav­ing a lot of lunch­es togeth­er because we both love food – talk­ing about it and com­ing up with dif­fer­ent scenes or a struc­ture or sto­ry­line or char­ac­ters and we become spe­cif­ic about it. But there’s already a very strong foun­da­tion that he’s put down, that we are then refin­ing for a peri­od of time. It was the same with Poor Things – I guess for The Favourite, we had the real sto­ry and some of the orig­i­nal script that Deb­o­rah [Davis] had writ­ten, and I had worked with her on. But in this case, there was a much stronger foun­da­tion in Gray’s nov­el. We had a lot to draw on, but I think Tony found it a lit­tle bit more com­pli­cat­ed because there’s a lot in the nov­el – every­thing about Scot­land, and all these small­er polit­i­cal essays. But we’re work­ing on anoth­er adap­ta­tion togeth­er now, and it’s the same again – we think alike and get along and I like his voice. He always pro­duces a first draft which is great, and then we just build on the details.

You talked about spend­ing some time with Alas­dair in Glas­gow, and Scot­land and its polit­i­cal his­to­ry is cen­tral to the nov­el. Was it a prac­ti­cal deci­sion to change the main set­ting to Lon­don for the film?

Well, I think Alas­dair prob­a­bly wouldn’t be very hap­py about that, because he was a very proud Scots­man. But we give [God­win] Bax­ter some of his char­ac­ter, and a Scot­tish accent – Alas­dair was also a great inspi­ra­tion for Willem [Dafoe] as a pres­ence, so we fil­tered that through him. In the nov­el, the Scot­tish issue feels like a dif­fer­ent part of the book, and I felt it would just be like try­ing to make two dif­fer­ent films if I tried to put it into this ver­sion of the sto­ry. Once we decid­ed that the point of view of the film was going to be Bella’s, and it was going to be her sto­ry and her jour­ney, and work­ing with an Amer­i­can cast, it just made more sense to con­tract things.

Mary Shelley’s ​‘Franken­stein’ is an obvi­ous par­al­lel for the sto­ry, but I’m curi­ous to hear about any oth­er sources of inspi­ra­tion for you.

We had an incred­i­ble art depart­ment led by Shona [Heath] and James [Price] that did a lot of work gath­er­ing ref­er­ences from so many dif­fer­ent places. Paint­ings and pho­tographs and fash­ion stuff that either influ­enced us, or were a mod­ern thing that it made sense to pull back into the old­er peri­od set­ting. There were lots of films too. I looked at a lot of Fass­binder with Rob­bie, in order to show him some of the cam­era moves and zooms, and then Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Drac­u­la and how they use the old school tech­niques in a more con­tem­po­rary film. There was Roy Ander­s­son too, because he uses so many minia­tures, so we would think about how we could make things our­selves, but also how we could use tech­nol­o­gy. Then there was clas­sic stuff – Pow­ell and Press­burg­er, of course, and [Fed­eri­co] Fellini’s And the Ship Sails On, which was a very par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence for the boat. Even the exte­ri­or scene, where Bel­la comes out to give mon­ey to the poor in Alexan­dria – there’s a very sim­i­lar shot in Fellini’s film. And I would dis­cuss Buñuel and Belle de Jour with Tony for the scenes in the broth­el. [laughs] It’s all over the place.

One cru­cial aspect of the book is Alas­dair Gray’s beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions. There’s a moment in the film where Bel­la curls up on a sofa with Bax­ter and Max, which felt like a homage to the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tion for book’s cover.

Yes, you know Shona was the one that remind­ed me of that. It wasn’t in the script. And she said, ​‘I’d love to see that image some­where in the film.’ It occurred to me when we were shoot­ing towards the end that it would be a beau­ti­ful way of see­ing them all together.

You and Emma have col­lab­o­rat­ed a num­ber of times now, and she was a pro­duc­er on Poor Things. What did her involve­ment mean to you?

Very ear­ly on mak­ing The Favourite, we realised that we get along real­ly well and we love work­ing togeth­er. We trust each oth­er and that was impor­tant in this process because it took a long time to get the film made. It was impor­tant to have Emma there and to share every­thing with her. Tony was already involved, and we had start­ed writ­ing the screen­play when I men­tioned it to her, but obvi­ous­ly she knew Tony from The Favourite and already loved him, so she read an ear­ly draft. Emma’s very pre­cise – usu­al­ly it’s some­thing minoror very spe­cif­ic that she says works or doesn’t. Oth­er than that, it’s very sub­tle, but how she receives all the infor­ma­tion that I’m giv­ing her – how she reacts – is what I under­stand. She nev­er tries to impose, but I can tell by how excit­ed she gets about things, or how not so excit­ed she gets, what direc­tion we should take. She’s like a mir­ror – I’m throw­ing all this stuff that I’m mak­ing, and watch­ing her face. And then going back and reworking.

When you’re cre­at­ing a film like this, which is essen­tial­ly the real­i­sa­tion of an entire­ly orig­i­nal world, that immer­sion for the cast and crew must be essen­tial. It’s not just a hap­py acci­dent, it’s the result of a true cre­ative partnership.

Yes. For instance, when I dis­cov­ered Jer­skin [Fendrix], who did the music for the film, I lis­tened to his album, and I sent it to Emma and said, ​‘I think this guy, who has noth­ing to do with film scor­ing or any­thing, would do some­thing real­ly incred­i­ble.’ And then she lis­tened to it, and she said, ​‘Yeah, it’s like this guy just got into your mind and threw every­thing out in the form of music.’ And that kind of told me, I think this could work.

Anoth­er return­ing fig­ure from The Favourite, besides Emma and Tony is Rob­bie Ryan, your cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er. You have the return­ing fish-eye lenses.

We went even fur­ther on this one. Even rounder!

It remind­ed me of being a kid, peer­ing into an aquar­i­um. There’s also the tran­si­tions from black-and-white to colour in this film. I know you’ve used black-and-white for Bleat now too, but what was the ratio­nale here?

In the begin­ning, we just want­ed some flash­back scenes in black-and-white. But then we start­ed test­ing and we just thought it was so beau­ti­ful. I was like, ​‘It’s a shame we’re only gonna do these two scenes in black and white,’ and then I start­ed think­ing, there’s this whole jour­ney that she takes, so maybe there should be a very clear change, almost like The Wiz­ard of Oz. And there’s an added bonus of when she comes back home, you see that world in colour for the first time. Then we start­ed to exper­i­ment with oth­er film stocks – we shot some of the colour stuff in Ektachrome, which is a film that is not very wide­ly used, because it is very dif­fi­cult to use. We were try­ing to incor­po­rate these dif­fer­ent tex­tures and colours in var­i­ous parts of the film and have it make sense for the sto­ry as well as being inter­est­ing to look at.

How has hav­ing increased resources influ­enced your filmmaking?

It makes you want to exper­i­ment, and dis­cov­er things cre­ative­ly, and visu­al­ly, and son­i­cal­ly. There’s a feel­ing that you’re pro­gress­ing and under­stand­ing more about how you use all these tools as a film­mak­er. For exam­ple, I had a lot of trou­ble using music in my ear­li­er films, and then I slow­ly man­aged to find a way of doing it which wasn’t lim­it­ing to me. But also, Poor Things espe­cial­ly need­ed that sort of world build­ing in var­i­ous aspects – lit­er­al­ly build­ing the sets in the world. And also how you film, and the atmos­phere you create.

This is the first time you’ve real­ly used VFX in a film. How much were you able to do in-cam­era and practically?

We were most­ly able to build every­thing, and we only need­ed to enhance the world upwards because we built mas­sive sets, but because of the way we filmed with very wide angle lens­es and low angles we would always see the ceil­ing of the stu­dios. We had paint­ed back­grounds, and when we want­ed to make things a lit­tle more ani­mat­ed, like in the case of the ship we would use an LED screen. Actu­al­ly, there’s a lot of minia­tures in the chap­ter dividers – the one with the fish is a minia­ture. A minia­ture fish, we shrank Emma down. In the wide shots of the ship, that’s a minia­ture too, and Alfie’s house, when we see Bel­la arrive, is a minia­ture. We were very tac­tile, and want­ed to use old school film­mak­ing tech­niques, but com­bine them with new technology.

The Favourite and Poor Things deal with themes of social mobil­i­sa­tion and fem­i­nism, and women mak­ing their way in the world. Do you notice this con­nec­tive tis­sue in your work?

You’re prob­a­bly in a bet­ter posi­tion to draw those par­al­lels and com­par­isons as I’m so close to the films, but I guess there’s two things that I always like to try and raise ques­tions about: rules in soci­ety, and also human inter­ac­tion, rela­tion­ships and behav­iour. I cre­ate these char­ac­ters that are ask­ing these ques­tions, and are try­ing to break free from the con­fines of soci­etal struc­tures. I was always inter­est­ed in female char­ac­ters and their inter­ac­tion with male char­ac­ters, but I’m not sure what the rea­son is… maybe I wasn’t see­ing a lot of them. There’s prob­a­bly per­son­al cir­cum­stances in my life as well.

There has been this almost puri­tan­i­cal shift where main­stream audi­ences are increas­ing­ly out­raged by sex on screen. Have you noticed this from a film­mak­ing perspective?

In dif­fer­ent places around the world, you get dif­fer­ent reac­tions. With every­thing by the way, not just sex. But I always find it very strange the con­ser­vatism with which sex was viewed in cin­e­ma or art in gen­er­al, when you see how accept­able vio­lence is. Why that is, I have no answer. I always felt that it should be equal. Any­thing goes in terms of human expe­ri­ence. Why is sex such a taboo? I real­ly don’t under­stand. So I nev­er thought about it too much. Start­ing out, I used it the way I thought it was appro­pri­ate for each film I made, like any oth­er ele­ment in the film. But I do sense this kind of puri­tanism and con­ser­vatism– more so in cer­tain cul­tures than oth­ers – but then every indi­vid­ual has their own moral compass.

You men­tion chang­ing the per­spec­tive of Poor Things to cen­tre Bel­la – the nov­el ends with Bel­la essen­tial­ly refut­ing every­thing that’s hap­pened in Max’s account. Your ver­sion ends on a much hap­pi­er note.

Yes, the found man­u­script for­mat and Bel­la refut­ing it all works in the nov­el, but in a film, it just didn’t make much sense. And you know… we all loved Bel­la so much. It felt like this time, this char­ac­ter deserves a hap­py ending.