The Killing of a Sacred Deer opens on the shot of an open chest, and the beating heart within it. Slowly and surely, the camera pulls back. The real focus of the opening shot comes into frame; the hands of the surgeon working on that heart. Those hands move quickly, adjusting and tweaking. They move with confidence and decisiveness; this life is quite literally in the surgeon’s hands.
The next few shots are just as revealing. The operation complete, cardiologist Steven Murphy strips out of his surgical attire. The mask is removed, the goggles lifted. The surgical gown is thrown in a bin at the corner of the room. The gloves are thrown on top, the camera taking a moment to slowly push on the medical waste. This is the end of Steven’s assumed responsibility. His hands are clean.
Co-written by director Yorgos Lanthimos and his frequent collaborator Efthymis Filippou, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a modern-day morality play. The Killing of a Sacred Deer inherits some of its thematic occupations from the earlier work of both Lanthimos and Filippou; in particular, the film shares Lanthimos’ fixation on the tension between an individual and the demands of familial relationships (most obvious in Dogtooth, but also present in The Lobster) and Filippo’s fascination with masculine identity (as demonstrated by his work on Chevalier).
However, The Killing of a Sacred Deer plays upon a more overtly mythic framework. The title of the film alludes to the last extant work of classical Greek playwright Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis. The tragedy of Iphigenia focuses on the general Agamemnon, who is set to lead his army to Troy. However, in his arrogance, Agamemnon finds himself beholden to a vengeful god. The goddess Artemis demands that Agamemnon sacrifice his eldest daughter, the eponymous Iphigenia.
The “sacred deer” of the title is an allusion to the end of the play. Agamemnon commits himself to the sacrifice of his eldest daughter to appease an angry god, and Iphigenia eventually yields. However, at the end of the play, Agamemnon receives word of the sacrificial ritual. Iphigenia was reportedly replaced on the altar by a deer, and that deer was sacrificed in her place. This soothed the vengeful god and allowed Agamemnon to lead his fleet to Troy.
Interestingly enough, this ending is broadly accepted by historians to have been a rewrite of Euripides’ original conclusion. It has been speculated that the ending was revised as late as the seventh century, a millennium after the play was originally ended. As such, the deer becomes a last-minute save, one that offers the audience a happy ending to a brutal tragedy. There is something wry in Lanthimos and Filippou referencing this element in the title of their own riff on the myth.
12 CinÉireann / November 2017
Myth, Masculinity, Morality:
The Killing of a Sacred deer
By Darren Mooney