The Favourite
This Mud Stinks.
Yorgos Lanthimos clearly enjoyed Barry Lyndon.
But let’s talk about The Favourite. This off-kilter, half-true look at a tumultuous time in English history is absolutely captivating. The cinematography is gorgeous, echoing Stanley Kubrick constantly, and highlighting wonderful production, set, and wardrobe design. Seriously, this is a pretty movie. The use of wide angle lenses (for which I have a soft spot) is at once beautiful and unsettling, and the world of the film never once feels quaint or trite — instead, the sprawling estate of Queen Anne is a gorgeous prison, a lovely place to never leave. With its vast grounds and sumptuous gardens, comparisons to the Overlook Hotel are impossible to ignore — and with those thoughts, come subconscious feelings of anxiety. Yorgos Lanthimos likes to use that feeling.
The script, too — sharp, funny, odd, and ultimately a little bit creepy — it’s consistently witty and disarmingly funny, but also sinister and unsettling. It’s performed spectacularly, with the central trio of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz alternating between wacky and disturbing, often multiple times in the same scene. Colman’s Queen Anne is needy, insecure, and unsure of herself — and an absolute joy to watch. Her relationship with Weisz is complicated, and the deeply conflicting emotions at play are compelling. Adding Emma Stone’s Abigail to the mix allows Lanthimos to strike what has become his signature balance of black comedy and unsettling, potentially even horrifying character development. Stone’s journey from an innocent outsider to a force to be reckoned with is harrowing, and her interplay with Weisz and Colman allows for some memorable scenes. Other players, particularly Nicholas Hoult, help the world feel authentic (as authentic as a movie like this could feel) and lived-in.
Themes of ambition, loneliness, claustrophobia, and inevitability weave themselves throughout nearly every scene, as do complicated emotional and sexual dynamics. The central trio of female leads are also unique for the time period, and the generally inconsequential nature of most male characters is an interesting angle. People betray others, laugh in the face of destruction, and plot to use the fate of entire armies as leverage in interpersonal arguments. This might sound outlandish, but it’s not that far from things that have happened, and potentially are happening around the world. A character achieves all they ever wanted, only to realize they have gone in a circle and are more or less a prostitute, existing only to be exploited by others. People argue and fight endlessly, only to reveal to us in the audience that they’re not all that different from each other. Maybe we’re all not that different from each other.
Lanthimos builds on those Kubrickian influences and continues to hone his craft of mixing the absurd and silly with the macabre and sinister. Moments border on Wes Anderson-level comedy, while others linger on the inner turmoil of characters for so long that we may as well be watching something akin to The Last Temptation of Christ.
I have so much to learn from a director like Yorgos Lanthimos. I am excited by everything he does. This movie will likely not appeal to everyone — I can recognize how it may seem unsatisfying or cold. But I was enthralled by The Favourite. I don’t know where I’d rank it, compared to the other Lanthimos movies I’ve seen. They’re all fairly distinct, and so I find them equally easy to learn from. So if you can read all of this and find the story of a queen and the squabbles between her and others on her estate interesting, then please check it out.
