Yorgos Lanthimos , the Greek director of Poor Things , The Lobster , and this week’s new supersize anthology Kinds of Kindness , has to be one of the most unlikely success stories of 21st-century cinema: an oddball visionary whose cracked comedies and antagonistic allegories of power and madness have been widely embraced by American moviegoers and awards voters alike. Seriously, what magic spell did this man cast to become one of the world’s most popular filmmakers? You can love his work and still be perplexed by the way that mainstream tastes seem to have bent in the direction of his singularly strange, brutal, and unsparing studies of the human condition. A veteran of experimental theater who rode to prominence on the so-called Greek Weird Wave , Lanthimos made a splash in global cinephile circles with his unnerving and darkly funny third feature, Dogtooth .
In its violence, transgressive sex, and general portrait of abominable parental cruelty, the film seemed like the very definition of an acquired taste. And yet it was promptly nominated for an Oscar. More awards attention followed as Lanthimos began making movies in English, on bigger budgets and with international stars like Colin Farrell and Emma Stone.
While some of these films are more accessible than his earlier homegrown curiosities, none of them feel like sellout moves. Quite to the contrary, they seem to have created an appetite for the peculiar particulars of his style: lobotomy-patient dialogue, coldly rem.
