So weird, so alive and dead at the same time, and a bit too violent

Rating: 7/10 (21 April 2017)

This movie is as weird as a camel in a forest. It has you figuring out what's really going on, whether the people get interned in the hotel by choice or by law, for a long time. The polite service and the pretty surroundings of the hotel create a stark contrast with the many rules, mandatory activities, psychological abuse and draconian measures. The matter of fact proceedings and dialogues, the ready acceptance of horrible circumstances contrast with the insanity of the system and the mental anguish the people must feel. Expressions of emotions are usually deliberately subdued, which exacerbates the surreal experience for the audience.
Figuring out the world depicted in that movie is as much fun as trying to understand why it was constructed this way. Did Yorgos Lanthimos write the whole thing as a hyperbole to actual life? Is uncovering the hypocrisy of the hotel owners relationship a central message, is the mad search for a common "defining" characteristic something he really thinks is happening in the world or is it an analogy for something else?
If you watch this movie with an open mind, it will stay with you for a long time, which is one of the most valuable characteristics available.
The acting performances are universally great, although the absence of displayed emotion creates a slightly skewed measurement of course.
Heightened spoiler alert...
I'd love to give this movie more than 7/10, but I can't do that for two reasons. First one is unnecessary graphic violence. To show the still frame of a dog (that's actually a person) who has been kicked to death, for a perceived 5 seconds, is just bad taste, nothing else. Showing the bloody shin of the women is more than enough. It makes little to no sense for Lea Seydoux to have Rachel Weisz kill the former hotel maid. Driving home the point that the heartless woman has no heart can be done less painful than having a suicidal woman scream for an eternity while she bleeds to death. The second reason is the beginning and the ending. It's just too easy to let the audience hanging, I think in most movies an inconclusive ending is just a cheap shot at extending the previously mentioned effect of it sticking in your mind. The same goes for the unexplained and deliberately enigmatic beginning.