YORGOS LANTHIMOS’ THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER: CONTEMPORARY RECEPTION OF EURIPIDES’ IPHIGENIA IN AULIS

Abstract

Ancient Greek subjects preserve their relevance in our times through their timeless, profound and comprehensive consideration of the human soul and interpersonal relations, which remain unchanged throughout the centuries in accordance with human nature. Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis has not been exploited often by later writers and film makers who have focused mainly on the murder of the King of Mycenae, Agamemnon, and the destiny of the dynasty of the Atreidae in accordance with Aeschylus’ trilogy. Nevertheless, one of the main reasons for the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra is his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia, the story of which is told by Euripides in his tragedies Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris. In Yorgos Lanthimos’ film The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) the main character Steven, just like Agamemnon, is informed of the will of the gods who demand sacrifice to be given. The carefully considered reasons which led Agamemnon and Steven to face an inevitable choice highlight their common character features, with hubris the decisive one among them. Comparison of the texts under analysis shows that acceptance of the inevitability of the situation by the families of the main characters develops through the classical stages from denial to understanding that nothing else depends on them. And while in Euripides’ tragedy the plot device of a “deus ex machina” is exploited, as the gods are satisfied with the acceptance of the inevitability of sacrifice, in the film one of the members of the family actually dies in order for order to be restored, because a murder presupposes atonement through the blood of another. This reception of Euripides’ tragedy is of particular interest because Yorgos Lanthimos is Greek by origin who at a certain moment of his career decided to move away from his native Greek space and start creating films for a more general Western audience. This paper analyses how, in this post-modernist multimodal film text expressive means from Ancient Greek theatre are combined with elements of modern cinema.