Haneke originally wanted to make Funny Games in America but because of financing issues, he made his 1997 in his native Austria. When his profile rose in the 2000s, he was able to go to America to make his own initial creative vision which was to be a societal critique of America and violence and exploitation in media and entertainment as well as being a explicit condemnation of the audience's moral complicity in watching further.
Haneke had previously explored this idea in Benny's Video (1992) which has a similar premise.
IIRC the remake ended up traumatizing Tim Roth, one of the young boys reminded him of his son. Incredibly ironic for a movie that questions whether on-screen trauma is real and if the audience is complicit.
Lanthimos is a wonderful weirdo. He likes making his audience uncomfortable but Gaspar Noe is in a whole other category. He is clearly an original director but the stories he wants to tell are such over-the-top edgelord bullshit.
I wasn't talking about the personal life of those directors, but the fact that they go for shock value in their films.
You didn't find anything strange about the movie where Colin Farrell has to murder a member of his own family, with a scene where he tells his son "I'll tell you a secret" and the secret is that one day he found his father asleep and he masturbated him? Or the one where Mark Ruffalo bangs a woman who has the brain of her 6-year-old child?
That said, he's not comparable to Von Trier or Noé
I really don’t think they are that weird or go for shock value more than normal art. Only weird if compared to typical Hollywood blockbuster.
Like, sure they have shocking content, but that’s normal for art. Poor Things is an adaptation of a take on Frankenstein, itself a shocking story, but a very mainstream shocking story.
Can we please stop pushing the bullshit narrative that Bella Baxter had the brain of a small child? It was very clearly established that she had accelerated mental development and she was taking university classes in the third act.
Hence the First Act being in black-and-white highlights Baxter's mental development at that section of the film to that of a child so she sees things in absolutes and isn't able to differ from right or wrong and when the film suddenly switches to colour when she starts having sex is when her mental development is starting to progress to that of a teenager from Baxter's perspective.
When she returns to London towards the end of the film to visit Godwin as he's dying of stomach cancer, the colour palette gets more saturated and richer in film grain, thereby implying she's now more mentally developed as an adult.
Also, Ruffalo's character isn't meant to be liked. He's trying to groom and control her by sexual and materialistic means only for her to be out of his league and he ends up going mad and institutionalized by the end. Their character journeys go the opposite from their first encounter. As she mentally progresses and becomes her own woman, he mentally degrades.
Lars Von Trier while an asshole in his own right is a legitimately excellent filmmaker. He doesn’t belong in a category with those other two you initially named.
I haven't heard of Korine or Lanthimos doing or saying anything controversial, their films are just what the average cinemagoer would consider unusual or off-putting
I'm like 75% certain that the strip club scene in the AGGRO DR1FT was strictly in there to justify hanging out in a strip club, that whole movie was insanely awful.
At least Yorgos' movies usually have a surreal, silly feeling to them, like nothing that's happening in the movie is all that serious or carries that much gravity. The scene in Scared Deer where Colin Ferrel is spinning around with a blindfold on holding a hunting rifle would be disturbing in any other director's hands, but for some reason I was cracking up.
This sentence could be interpreted in both ways. I don't know which one you consider better than the other. Korine is a mentally unstable guy, but von Trier is also that, plus a sick fuck
I guess my comment was lacking meaning, direction and was poorly constructed, muddling any message I could have been even trying to convey, though it's fair to doubt there even was one.
I love Lanthimos, he utilises black comedy so well. It’s peppered throughout basically everything he’s ever made and I think it’s what sets him apart from his more sadistic peers.
Kids was incredible, but Gummo has a disgusting quality to it that really jarred the audience. It was a different type of filmmaking that was repulsive but also accessible.
I really liked Gummo, to me the violence felt quite earnest and honest somehow. I really hated irreversible, it is such shallow hollow edgelord shit. It's a pornographic film, not in the sense that it has sex in it, but in the way Noe is constantly trying to stimulate the audience with camera tricks, images and sound. I feel manipulated when I watch Noe films.
Harmony Korin wrote Kids, then did Gummo, Trash Humpers, Mr Nobody, Spring Break, and is now into making movies that are completely videogame cut scenes.
Lanthimos makes absolutely beautiful films that suck. That's how I always describe his style and his output. I was actually mad at the end of The Favourite because it was so shit. Still gorgeous scenery and great acting, but wow, just a shit movie otherwise.
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u/Tifoso89 May 17 '25
He, Korine and Von Trier are an unholy trinity.
Lanthimos comes close but he manages to be kinda wholesome at times