He has just received his second Oscar nomination as best director, among an avalanche of nominations for Pobres criaturas, eleven in total, which also includes the one for best film. Beyond whether or not Iorgos Lanthimos succeeds in defeating the favorite Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) on March 10, the recognition is a reward for the insistence of this director born in Athens and trained in London who had been trying for years to adapt to the film Alasdair Gray’s novel. He achieved this after becoming the spoiled child of Hollywood thanks to amazing proposals such as The Favorite, Llagosta and The Sacrifice of a Sacred Deer.
How was the process of transferring Alasdair Gray’s novel to the screen?
I read it for the first time in 2010 or 2011. I was very impressed, I did some research and saw that it had never been adapted into a film, which I was quite surprised by. I looked for a way to contact him and traveled to Glasgow to meet him. I thought he was a wonderful man, very particular and with many talents. He is a great painter, he is also an illustrator and of course a wonderful novelist. Fortunately he gave me his blessing. But since I was so busy doing other things, I kept the project on the back burner, waiting for the right time to shoot. I made other films and finally, after filming The Favorite, I felt that we had the opportunity to make the film. I proposed it and fortunately they gave me the go-ahead. I gave the novel to Tony McNamara, with whom we had worked together on The Favorite and we got along, we wanted to continue working together. I also explained the project to Emma Stone and she was immediately excited about the role. And a few years later we managed to make the project a reality.
Are you surprised it couldn’t be done sooner?
I often wonder if a decade ago would have been as good a time as it has been. I think it would not have had the same reception. I also don’t think I could have made the same movie. Who knows? Everything happens for a reason.
Why does he say that?
The world has changed a bit, and in these ten years, at least in the bubble that is our Western world, we’ve been seeing films that have a similar style, that talk about the perception we have about the position of women in the society. We have slowly realized how it has been built. Now we see it more clearly. Most people are trying to better understand this situation in order to change it. And this has helped the reception of the film. Ten years ago they rejected the project because I had not yet made a film in the English language and it was a risky project of considerable dimensions. But it also influenced that at the time he didn’t understand why it was important to tell the story of this woman who is trying to build her own path and wants to know the world on her own terms, and not the ones given to her society imposes. Now the reasons why it needs to be explained are clearer. The good reception has been due to the open-mindedness of people, who can look back and wonder how we could behave in this way in those times. How is it that the world then seemed normal to us? I’m sure that ten years from now we’ll be saying the same thing about something else.
The film asks existential questions. To what extent did your perception of the world change?
I don’t feel like my perception of things has changed. I think one makes these films or any kind of artistic work in order to shed light on complex subjects, ask questions and generate feelings and reactions. And I hope that everyone can react to the film according to their personality, their experiences, their culture and their social environment. I make my films to see how the people I introduce them to react. This does not change my perception of the world. I’m very comfortable being uncomfortable and being a little weird. I simply hope that what I do has some impact on others.
Do you think there is an influence from The Bride of Frankenstein in your story?
Not particularly. Obviously in the resuscitation scenes we use a small reference, but this influence was already immersed in the novel.
What was Emma Stone’s contribution to the character of Bella Baxter?
I gave him all the freedom to do whatever he wanted. It’s all about creating a friendly atmosphere and a safe space for all actors to try things out. We did some rehearsals before filming, but not so that they could find out what they had to do, which they already knew, but so that they could get to know each other and feel comfortable, so that they felt safe and confident that they could try anything they could think of . They could look like idiots if needed or try different things, knowing that others would be there for them. It was a creative atmosphere in which they could learn the text and participate in games, instead of sitting down to analyze, or create theories about the characters or things like that. For me, everything always depends on the actors, what they do.
How did he imagine the very particular appearance of Dr. Godwin Baxter?
It was the result of a long process. We started thinking about him when we were designing the world. We took a lot of references to develop the characters. From very realistic things about soldiers who had been wounded in ancient wars and how they had been after surgery, which were not so advanced then. But we didn’t want it to look like Baxter had an accident, it had to be something more abstract. And so it was that we started looking at other abstract images and paintings. One image that stuck in my mind was a self-portrait by Francis Bacon. Then we started fitting it all together, using Photoshop and also sculpting a bust, experimenting to try and keep it recognizable. The truth is that when we did physical tests on Willem it wasn’t very pleasant for him, but he held on like a gentleman.
What was the most enjoyable part of building a world?
Walk through the sevens. We did a lot of drawings, and 3D visualizations of all the sets that were very ambitious. And many times I had doubts about how they would look when we built them. But seeing up close all these things we dreamed about while drawing them was very inspiring. It may sound a bit strange, but there were difficulties because beyond how big they were, they had a limit, and many times we hit the wall where they ended up. It wasn’t a world, it was just part of a world, but in the film we were trying to show a complete world. I tried to let the actors inhabit them and that the space was not limiting. That was a very creative thing, to go to the sets and imagine how we would develop the scenes, and then see how they came out, without trying to fit into something that I had imagined in advance.
