Kinetta

One rarely gets a chance to see a Greek film in Greece, never mind the United States! So, when I found out that the Harvard Film Archive was showing "Kinetta" as part of a new European film series, I ran to see it. The fact that it was in the International Competition section of the 2005 Thessaloniki Film Festival gave me some assurance that it would it be a good film.

Was I wrong! The film opened with a silent montage of scenes that was bewildering. The few of us that were in the audience wondered whether there was a problem with the sound system. There was no problem with the sound system, but it was emblematic of what was wrong with the film. From the soundtrack to the jerky hand-held camera work, there seemed to be no justification for Giorgos Lanthimo's choices. It all seemed to be part of an intellectual exercise that repelled the viewer, rather than draw him in to the drama that was unfolding in front of him. Well, if repelling the viewer was Lanthimo's purpose, he was certainly successful! After 10 minutes, I wanted to walk out, but my masochism kept me in my seat for another 30 minutes. Finally, I gave up on the film and left. Another 50 minutes of watching it would have been unbearable. I was sorry not to have been the first to walk out; several others of the dozen or so in the audience preceded me.

While I was trying to give the film a chance to draw me in, I was thinking that in some way it was quite accurate in its depiction of how drab and meaningless life in Greece can be these days. But, it made that point within the first 20 minutes or so. The rest of the film lacked any artistic merit.

Michelangelo Antonioni said in an interview some years ago, that a filmmaker should not be concerned for the entertainment value of his films or be concerned of what the audience will think. I agree with Antonioni, but Lanthimos is definitely not an Antonioni!

at last, something new is going on Greek cinema. i was disappointed by reading the summary in Thessaloníki film festival. it is not a film that tells a history, thus it is not worth searching for academic forms just to try to fit in a category. i was excited that a Greek film can touch me without listening thousands words by the actors with the dictionary of hard meanings on my legs. the film is using, simply, the language of body, helping it with an excellent camera work and if you are not afraid of leaving yourself free, watching the minimum cinema "effects", you 'll get the sentiment. i saw three kind of people in the film, i saw different kind of people's loneliness and people's imposition of power. risky but very efficient the direction-editing throws to the recycle bin whatever isn't really essential. brilliant music replaces lost people's senses without been overused. imaging there was a lot of improvisation on shooting i am curious of how a choice was taken because the film is running consecutively and nothing seems kicked out. after all, it's a hope that some guys load some 16mm magazines don't wait the big production budgets and do some new cinema.

99% percent of 21st century Greek filmmakers would not be able to direct a good film even if their life depended on it. It's no coincidence that the crowning achievement of modern Greek cinema-Dogtooth-borrows its plot and visual style from other films. Left alone to his own devices, the best someone like Lanthimos can come up with is rubbish like Kineta and Alps.

Despite an impressive visual style, Kineta is one of the worst films ever made. No story, awful acting, terrible pace. What's even worse is that every Greek filmmaker is trying to imitate the Lanthimos style, hoping to get some exposure at a European film festival.

It's been a long established fact that none of these films get their money back. The only reason they keep on getting made is because of state funding. This is one more of the failures of European socialism. Funneling taxpayers money to support art of dubious quality. It wouldn't surprise me if the directors made the film with a fraction of the allocated budget, pocketing the best. There was once a time when commercial films made in Greece were able to fill the cinemas. Quite naturally those films were considered low level because they were made strictly for entertainment purposes. Unfortunately this system has been destroyed and replaced by organizations with a political agenda. This is a general problem that occurs all over the European Union. Just take a look at the type of films that are promoted in European festivals. Filmmakers hoping to become the next Lanthimos don't dare to experiment. It would be equal to suicide.

Bear in mind that there is no such thing as an European art film. None of the films getting the main prizes in European festivals are "art". They are just a product created by people who follow established guidelines. It doesn't matter if nobody goes to the theater to see it as long as funding for the next project has been secured. This is how the system works.

The main fascination of "Kinetta" is imagining you have a time machine and you go back to 2005 and you show this film to someone and you tell him that, beginning right from his next film, director Yorgos Lanthimos will win Oscars and nominations and Cannes awards and become the most internationally recognizable Greek director since Theo Angelopoulos; they'd never believe you. The one similar case of meteoric rise to fame may be James Cameron with "Terminator"right after...."Piranha II: The Spawning". "Kinetta" is an extraordinarily dreadful movie: there is literally not a single scene in it that a) makes sense, b) has a point, or c) leads somewhere. The most mundane shots are held for an eternity (and a day). The only saving grace is that the female lead, Evangelia Randou, has a beautiful face, and hair, and total package really. Most meaningful dialogue exchange: "Do you want mayonnaise in your sandwich?" - "Just a little". 0.5 out of 4.

I met Lanthimos in 2016 with Dogtooth, but what really made me love his filmmaking was The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I loved the ambiguity, the unsettling feeling, and, of course, the deadpan delivery of the characters. In Kinetta I found very little of that Lanthimos. The movie has little dialogue, and I see it more as an experience than a story. We don't get to know too much about the characters. Hell, we don't even know their names. The plot is nowhere to be found. A lot of times it seems that nothing is happening at all: people walking, cleaning the hotel rooms, eating ice cream, and so on. The pacing is extremely slow, and many scenes drag on for too long. The camera is handheld, sometimes too shaky, and far away from the pristine visuals in Lanthimos latest films. However, I do believe that there's something here. The constant discovery of who the filmmaker is that many years later will develop all of those idyosincrasies and end up making some of the best movies ever.