The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ lat­est is as much about deer, sacred or oth­er­wise, as his pre­vi­ous one was about lob­sters. So, while The Lob­ster was decid­ed­ly light on crus­tacean action, sen­si­tive souls will be relieved to know that no deer are actu­al­ly harmed on-screen here. Greek view­ers and clas­si­cists how­ev­er, will prob­a­bly reg­is­ter the title’s ref­er­ence to Euripi­des’ ancient dra­ma, ​‘Iphi­ge­nia in Aulis’, where a sacred deer is indeed slain.

But before you head to Wikipedia, be advised that know­ing the whole sto­ry amounts to a major spoil­er for this movie. Bet­ter to ask what exact­ly a mytho­log­i­cal tale from 400 BC has to do with the life of a com­fort­ably-off mod­ern-day Cincin­nati car­di­ol­o­gist. That’s the ques­tion fac­ing embat­tled Col­in Far­rell as he realis­es his for­tunes are being shaped by a com­plete­ly arbi­trary set of exter­nal val­ues. It’s the anx­i­ety of dis­cov­er­ing your life is not your own.

The source of this life-chang­ing bewil­der­ment is teenag­er Bar­ry Keoghan, whose some­what unnerv­ing stare (used to very dif­fer­ent effect recent­ly as the doomed inno­cent on Mark Rylance’s small craft in Dunkirk) masks the true nature of his rela­tion­ship with Far­rell – not his son, or seem­ing­ly his lover, so why does the lad keep hang­ing around the hos­pi­tal, and why is the lat­ter buy­ing him expen­sive watch­es? Lan­thi­mos fills their scenes with pur­pose­ful­ly vac­u­ous small-talk, but we know something’s up, and when it’s revealed, it’s cer­tain­ly from out of left­field. Even creepi­er, Far­rell and tro­phy wife Nicole Kidman’s ado­les­cent son and daugh­ter soon suc­cumb to a mys­tery con­di­tion leav­ing them unable to walk.

The sight of these two haul­ing them­selves hor­i­zon­tal­ly along the floor of a hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dor is utter­ly unset­tling, and typ­i­cal of the way Lan­thi­mos’ films mess with our heads by putting a dif­fer­ent set of rules in play. Where Dog­tooth con­tained the weird­ness with­in a well-to-do house­hold, and The Lob­ster allowed it to unfold in an alter­na­tive uni­verse which only looked like the world we know, the sto­ry­telling here’s even more con­fi­dent in the way the mytho­log­i­cal over­lay acts on every­day circumstances.

It’s like some unseen, unfath­omable force which imbues every wak­ing moment with inex­plic­a­ble doom. The Michael Haneke of The Sev­enth Con­ti­nent or Code Unknown might be a ref­er­ence point, but just as rel­e­vant is that sense of mys­te­ri­ous under­tow in Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001, par­tic­u­lar­ly when Lan­thi­mos makes such adept use of the oppres­sive track­ing shots and pres­sure-tight­en­ing slow zooms which were such a key part of Kubrick’s for­mal armoury.

While deliv­er­ing his lines in an unin­flect­ed monot­o­ne seem­ing­ly giv­ing lit­tle away, Farrell’s remark­able con­tri­bu­tion exudes unease from every pore, bring­ing an emo­tion­al verac­i­ty to these aus­tere­ly point­ed envi­rons as a man daunt­ed by the enor­mi­ty of his respon­si­bil­i­ties. Kid­man makes an effec­tive foil, the hard­ness in her looks sim­ply inten­si­fy­ing the punishment.

And although Lan­thi­mos and reg­u­lar co-writer Efthymis Fil­ip­pou took the Best Screen­play award in Cannes, it’s the film’s sheer all-of-a-piece exe­cu­tion – from pac­ing and com­po­si­tion, to bril­liant use of con­tem­po­rary com­posers includ­ing (Kubrick fave) Ligeti and Gubaiduli­na, and expert­ly mod­u­lat­ed per­for­mances – which holds you in its steely grip and just nev­er lets go.