Down the Rabbit Hole

Rating: 9/10 (17 March 2019)

Director Yorgos Lanthimos has gone mainstream, which is not to say that "The Favourite" is still not a weird and even perverse experience, as is the case with his prior oeuvre. Having recently seen two of his Greek movies, "Dogtooth" (2009) and "Alps" (2011), along with his two former English-language ventures, "The Lobster" (2015) and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" (2017), he's quickly become one of my favorite filmmakers of today. Unlike those earlier pictures, however, "The Favourite" wasn't written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou, which may be why it also doesn't feature his trademark stilted acting, which I admit was becoming stale by "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," undermining what was a promising modern interpretation of a historical myth (in that case, an ancient-to-classical Greek narrative most famously written down as "Iphigenia in Aulis" by Euripides). Here, Lanthimos and his new screenwriters take on a rather mythologized British history of the court of Queen Anne. The three leads of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz deservedly were honored on the awards circuit, including each receiving Oscar nominations, as well as an Oscar win for Colman as Queen Anne. Meanwhile, "The Favourite" is a visual delight, and although it's the most traditional and mainstream--and, in a way, simplistic--production of Lanthimos's career, it's strange enough that its ending and rabbit metaphor seems to have baffled or upset some audiences.
Allowing or directing the three leads to perform in a more traditional style of acting is of utmost importance here. And, despite the suspect award stratagem of listing two of them in supporting categories, they're all leads, especially Stone, who is the main protagonist for whose perspective most of the narrative is told, with the story of Queen Anne and, indeed, Lady Sarah being mostly a sidelong look from Abigail's viewpoint. Moreover, according to the only screentime count I could find, from Erick Anderson of AwardsWatch, Stone has over 56 minutes on screen compared to Colman's 47 minutes and about 45 minutes for Weisz. Anyways, the sexual politics of the court intrigue would've fallen flat without allowing for character identification--much as one was unable to connect with the family of "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" because of the abnormal line readings of the performers. On the other hand, the deadpan style worked in Lanthimos's Greek pictures because they were self-reflexive works about cinematic performance, and it worked in "The Lobster" because it was a dystopian burlesque. Yet, "The Favourite" deals with a historical subject--even though the filmmakers play very loose with the factual record and are almost obtusely anachronistic at times. Regardless, Colman, Stone and Weisz are terrific in their exaggerated characterizations of these real historical women--all three monstrous and vulnerable, tragic and villainous. Personally, I find it difficult to pick a favorite among them, which is the reasoning behind the studio's divvying the three performances between leading and supporting awards categories to begin with. In other narratives, the characters featured in the sidelong glance are often the more attractive spectacle, but here Stone's Abigail may undergo the most character development and be the most hideous character among them, and the supporting and background male characters tend to be the more flamboyant in costume and make-up.
Which brings me to the allegedly strange ending, although I think it's an entirely appropriate piece of irony. The main thrust of "The Favourite" is the vying between Abigail and Sarah to act in the stead of the head of state, Queen Anne, including by being her lover. The irony is that Sarah may not be entirely upset in relinquishing her role as the favorite, whereas Abigail may come to regret her new role. Abigail has become like the Queen's rabbits: surrogates for the love missing in the Queen's life. And, as Abigail holds a rabbit under her heel, as a disquieting power trip, just because she can, so to does the Queen hold down Abigail in a subservient position to her sadistic power--thus, the superimposed image of Abigail and the bunnies, who are now one in the same.
For a splendidly strange picture, I also love the rabbit metaphor because of its allusion to to the "Alice in Wonderland" books. It also helps that the cinematography is offsetting, including the use of extreme wide-angle lenses (even fisheye views) and natural lighting. And the Hatfield House, where the majority of the picture was shot, is lovely, with doors receding into murals, and the wide-angle lenses accentuating the corridors and candlelight lending authenticity to the costume picture. "The Favourite" is a fascinating visual piece of art just to view figures moving down hallways or even the camera moving through the spaces--through the resplendent oddities of the rabbit hole.