Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025) • Page 13

Discussion in 'Entertainment Forum' started by ItsAndrew, May 18, 2024.

  1. Morrissey

    Prestigious Prestigious

    Maybe the most misanthropic director other than Lars von Trier.
     
  2. Long Century

    Trusted

    She kills everyone on the planet don’t need to get hung up on killing one coma patient a day early on the way out

    the irony is that the evil ceo ignoring her complicity in destroying the planet turned out to be an evil alien who’s doing the same thing anyway.
    Either way it was time to chop them up
     
  3. Penlab

    Prestigious Supporter

    Real "it goes in the stew" energy here, LC.
     
    Long Century likes this.
  4. Importer/Exporter

    he’ll live forever in the sound of broken glass

    Idk, i think the ruling class are fundamentally alien to us, would make us feed our moms antifreeze, and that the enormity of living in a world built by that class is something that the average person cannot look in the eye. I’m not a Yorgos guy, and there’s things about this movie that i think are fairly incoherent or contradict what i took to be central themes, but this was by far my favorite movie of his and probably top 5 of the year for me. In the top half of the BP noms, at least.
     
  5. Long Century

    Trusted

    Yes I agree that this is central to the movie
     
    SpyKi likes this.
  6. OhTheWater

    Let it run Supporter

    That would work if the movie had any sort of sympathy for the average person, which it does not. It looks down on them.
     
    phaynes12 likes this.
  7. Yorgos and cruelty often go hand in hand, for better or for worse. Would not recommend Killing of a Sacred Deer if you struggled with this one, though it is very good.
     
  8. Penlab

    Prestigious Supporter

    I don't know, certainly that's the CEO's viewpoint, but I found both Teddy and Don to be extremely tragic characters. I didn't find the film itself looking down on them.
     
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  9. Long Century

    Trusted

    It’s gets lost because in our world the conspiracy kidnapper is insane and dumb but here he is right but still gets tricked and loses in gullible loser fashion. It wants to have its cake about the difficulty of modern information/media literacy and eat it with the aliens being real.

    I also don’t think It tries to portray any normal people
     
  10. Importer/Exporter

    he’ll live forever in the sound of broken glass

    I think the movie does a good job of explaining all the material conditions in his life that lead Teddy to viewing the world how it does. I don’t think it looks down on him, at least, or his coworkers in the few scenes we see them. I don’t think it looks down on his mother. I see that argument more with Donny.
     
  11. This is the biggest criticism I have as well, although I did enjoy the film more than I didn't. Just wouldn't rush to defend it or anything.l
     
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  12. Penlab

    Prestigious Supporter

    I think the fact that Teddy was right is ultimately irrelevant. Even whether he drew the wrong conclusions is irrelevant. To me the point is that here is this extremely troubled man with anger, some misplaced, some not, who clearly needed help and never got it.
     
  13. I don't think I recall Donny's neurodivergence or circumstances really being played for laughs or anything, although I'd have to watch again because maybe I'm forgetting something.
     
  14. SpyKi

    You must fix your heart Supporter

    The film has always read as very sympathetic to me. It's a tragedy about the mass suffering caused by the self importance and greed of the mega rich and powerful.

    It's always interesting how differently things can be interpreted.
     
  15. Penlab

    Prestigious Supporter

    No, I agree. If anything, Don is way more tragic than Teddy because he is just simply caught in the middle, along for the ride until he... chose to get off.
     
    Aaron Mook likes this.
  16. Importer/Exporter

    he’ll live forever in the sound of broken glass

    I wish there were a high profile example in the past year and a half or so about a politically confused young man taking out his personal vendetta against a CEO profiting off of people’s misfortunes in an act of individual terrorism. Then we could ascertain if people looked down on this person, or if most related to his pain and decision to act (and also wanted to fuck him?).
     
  17. OhTheWater

    Let it run Supporter

    You're being glib here. The question is not if the general public relates/looks down, but if the creator if this film relates/looks down.
     
  18. Importer/Exporter

    he’ll live forever in the sound of broken glass

    How can we possibly know that lol i just know i don’t look down on him, that wasn’t my takeaway.

    Personally, im of the belief that artists don’t always know what their art means or is about, so i don’t get so hung up on that.
     
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  19. SpyKi

    You must fix your heart Supporter

    The way I see this is that yeah, lots of people are kind of insane with conspiracy theories that are mostly non-true, but there is an element of truth there that like Importer/Exporter said, the ruling class are fundamentally alien to us and largely do not have the average person's best interests in mind at all. I think a lot of people can sense things aren't right without fully understanding the intricacies of what's actually happening because a lot of it is too large and too widespread to ever be as simple as one issue that can be easily solved.

    So the film's angle is that yeah, even these people that seem completely untethered from reality are still dealing with very real pain that comes from something founded in truth, and to me that's very sympathetic.
     
  20. We can tell that from the context of the film we watched. Idk what you’re on about with the last sentence. I think it’s fair to say that the viewing public can have a takeaway of the meaning of a film that differs from the filmmaker’s intent and I would agree with that. So maybe this wasn’t yorgos’ intent but that doesn’t matter anymore once the film is available for public consumption. To say that he just didn’t know what the meaning of what he was making while making it though is just baffling.
     
  21. OhTheWater

    Let it run Supporter

    You can infer an artist's position from the art? I'm all for separate art from the artist or whatever but with a film like this it is hard to not look at its faults and then look to the director's perspective for answers.
     
  22. OhTheWater

    Let it run Supporter

    There are bits and pieces of interesting ideas in here. Rich people are bad is such an obvious statement that I don't think this film is doing anything interesting with, so turning to an analysis of Plemons and the cousin makes for a better discussion. I just can't remove the cruelty with which Yorgos handles the characters from any sort of analysis. Having the molestation, the suicide of the cousin and ultimately Plemons's accidental death all played for laughs is the part that does not sit right with me. There are absolutely moments where you feel for these characters, particularly the cousin, but Lanthimos almost always undercuts it
     
  23. Importer/Exporter

    he’ll live forever in the sound of broken glass

    I’m not saying he didn’t have an idea about what the meaning of the project he was working on was. I’m sure he did. I just mean it’s not - at least not necessarily - the definitive meaning. I think that’s especially true in a collaborative medium like film, where the editing, the choices made by the actors based on their reading of the characters, and other production decisions have such a huge impact on the movie.
     
  24. Long Century

    Trusted

    In their absence there is condemnation of normal people, alien or not the right course of action here is to chop up Emma but only the misfits are deranged enough to take the necessary action and they are too bumbling to execute it. It kinda needs to be this way for the story to progress and hit its beats but it’s at the expense of thematic synergy
     
    Aaron Mook likes this.
  25. Importer/Exporter

    he’ll live forever in the sound of broken glass

    They’re also acting as isolated individuals, not as part of a larger organized apparatus with a shared goal of chopping Emma up and a way for determining the best ways to go about it.
     
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