Thoroughbreds - Act Without Intention
Thoughts On: Thoroughbreds (2017)
Estranged friends come together and plot a murder.
Thoroughbreds is about as nihilistic as a film can be. Though all is masked by a patient gaze of the camera, an inactive look that presents the already desensationalised drama as stilted and inconsequential, this holds a deeply saddening, a troubling and even horrifying, story at its core. I will have to use spoilers as to speak about this, and since this is a somewhat new film, you have been warned.
There are two central characters operating at the dark core of this film; two former-friends, a self-absorbed rich girl who hates her controlling step-father (and not long ago lost her biological father), and an outcast who cannot feel any emotion. The outcast, Amanda, is on trial for animal cruelty - she messily euthanised her mother's horse. She is reunited with her old friend, Lily, through her mother. Initially, the dark, sardonic and inhumanly emotionless nature of Amanda is frightening and off-putting to the young rich girl, but a bond forms when something sable in Lily figures out it has a lot to potentially learn (or gain) from re-acquainting Amanda. Such is signified by a scene in which Lily opens up about her sociopathic techniques of 'blending in' whilst watching movies; she critiques the genuity of an actress' crying, performs a highly convincing fake cry and begins to teach Amanda how to do just so before admitting that, because she never cries - cannot cry - she was using 'the technique' with Lily at her father's funeral. As Amanda never does, Lily does not recoil at this betrayal of sorts. Instead, she is firstly accepting and then is drawn down an amoral path of logic.
This plot detail recurs at many points throughout the film. The most significant generates the following formula: Lily hates her step-father; if he were dead, her life would be better; Amanda has 'killed' before; she seems more than able to contrive or even execute a plan to satisfy Lily; Amanda does not object. Put on display here is seemingly a similar kind of logic centralised in Heathers. The films have strong points of relation. Both concern themselves with apathy-drenched, upper class suburbs, outcasts, liars, emotionless amorality, anarchism, nihilism and a highly disaffected and venomous kind of hatred. Many find Heathers comedic and incisive for this and the manner in which the core vindictiveness of the film interplays with the melodramatic, expressionist and absurd form. Thoroughbreds has been categorised, like Heathers, as a dark comedy - likely due to its use of nihilism. Maybe there is a hint of shock-comedy about Thoroughbreds, but I sense no real attempt in the film to be particularly funny. Dry it is indeed, absurd also, but funny? Such is a major point of distinction between the two films, which is why I'm hesitant to stress the connection between the two. Alas, we can certainly see that stories have used nihilistic logic as a means of plot-construction and characterisation before. Heathers is just one example, but comedies such as Deadpool use this, too; some of the best examples of an amoral gaze emerge from art cinemas, such Yorgos Lanthimos'. Lanthimos' films are not subsumed in nihilism, but there is an antiseptic, curious amorality about how the film investigates - both aesthetically and narratively. Thoroughbreds is somewhat unique due to its impressionistic form. Lars von Trier's recent The House That Jack Built is a film we can draw upon here. Like Man Bites Dog, The House That Jack Built not only follows a serial killer, but the camera engages him, for the most part, as he wants to be engaged. The cinematic language of the likes of The House That Jack Built is then indicative of how a serial killer looks (to some degree at least); we can call this impressionistic. To a more extreme degree than even The House That Jack Built or Man Bites Dog Thoroughbreds impressionistically looks like a steely serial killer.
The key difference between all of the amoral films we have so far discussed - Heathers, Man Bites Dog and The House That Jack Built in particular - is Thoroughbreds' absence of consequence, most confrontationally in the form of police. Authorities and comeuppance always play on the perimeters of the mentioned films, and almost always manage to invade the diegesis, leading to a final act in which the killers are captured or killed. There is an implicit and inevitable commentary that emerges from this: killing is amoral. Thoroughbreds manages to subvert this.
Lily, our self-consumed rich girl, is never caught. She develops a plot to kill her father through a local want-to-be drug dealer with Amanda, but this fails. Lily then decides to drug Amanda and kill her step-father herself before planting the knife on her sleeping 'friend'. This plan almost fails, too. As Amanda drinks her tainted drink, Lily can't help but tell her the truth after questioning why her 'friend' would even want to live if she has no emotions. Amanda nonetheless ambiguously agrees to being a scapegoat and Lily gets to kill her father and get away with all. It is at the very end that we see some presence of the law and consequences through Amanda's incarceration. Alas, there are two devices at play that undermine the invasion of authority. Firstly, Amanda voluntarily enters the system; Lily, the true killer, stays where she wants to be. And secondly, we do not see prison represented at the end of the film. Instead, Amanda is sent to a psychiatric hospital (for criminals we can assume). This completes a subtextual strain of the narrative which has much to say about mental health and its medication as a failing practise. As opposed to highlighting consequence - upholding the ethics of 'the system' and the law - the presentation of the psychiatric ward emphasises the holes in a governmental system. Looking at Thoroughbreds as a whole, we can then begin to see just how isolated and insular its world is. The gaze and world construction is not only amoral and emotionless, but it is solipsistic; the only people who exist and matter are our main characters. Such is displayed in some of the cinema of Lanthimos. In Dogtooth in particular, the subversion of law, the system and the complete disregard of authority is key and a defining element of the aesthetics of the film.
Whilst we may understand Thoroughbreds through its nihilism, there are limitations. To truly understand and 'see' this film, we can reflect on something spoken about as we looked at The House That Jack Built. Art is inherently moral and moralising. Such is made obvious via Thoroughbreds' theme of solipsism. This is certainly a film that looks impressionistically; the cinematic language and general dramaturgy (what is shown/not shown, what is done/not done) seems to imitate the way a serial killer may look, think and act. Alas, we do not see the world as our 'sociopath', Amanda, does. As we first experience the film, this may seem to be the case, but, any consideration of Amanda's role in the narrative - her psychology and emotions - will reveal how unexplored and fundamentally used she is. Impressionistic this film is, but it is Lily's not Amanda's, psyche that is impressed upon us.
We have already outlined the general logic of this film - Lily hates her step-father; if he were dead, her life would be better; Amanda has 'killed' before; she seems more than able to contrive or even execute a plan to satisfy Lily; Amanda does not object. This is how the murder fuelling all drama occurs. Whilst we can begin to see how Amanda is used by Lily by making obvious the thinking that pushes forth action in our story, we must question Amanda's identity as a sociopathic 'killer' as to reveal the depths of her exploitation.
One can very easily argue that Amanda never exhibits malice and certainly never kills anything either within the narrative of Thoroughbreds or beyond it. As established, she definitely does not kill Lily's step-father. And, as is made passingly apparent, Amanda does not just 'kill' her mother's horse. Emotionless as she is, the horse was injured and suffering. She tries herself to end the creature's pain - she does so without being affected by the gruesome and harrowing nature of her act (which signifies something very off about her), but the morality underlying her logic is rather sound despite the actual euthanisation of the horse being messy. This act is, to some degree, compassionate. Not only does she do something for the horse, but maybe this is also for her mother. Importantly, the euthanisation is also for herself; it provides her a sense of closure and peace knowing that someone close to the horse ended its life. This element of--self-satisfaction is not the right word, but it translates roughly to what I mean to say--this element of self-satisfying compassion reveals that Amanda is not an uncomplicated character. She feels. She feels responsibility, she can sense morality, she feels a need to act and requires, not just being close to others, but serving them. This translates directly to Lily. Amanda and Lily were once good friends. There is an absurd degree of loyalty at the base of their relationship - which is precisely why Amanda is not only willing to kill for Lily, but will sacrifice herself for her (some may even point to this relationship as homoerotic). There is then a certain purity about the amorality of Amanda that is corrupted by Lily. Amanda acts on impulses. All the impulses that she is shown to act upon are compassionate and truth-seeking. For instance, there is a scene in which Lily initially asks Amanda to kill her father. A knife is put in her hand and she is made to wait whilst Lily confronts him. The step-father argues with Lily. He has caught her smoking, but will not tell her mother; he does not like her selfish attitude and believes that she cannot see the world as others can (solipsism); he has arranged for her to go to a new school, but will not help her anymore. Amanda hears this, she hears the truth, and so she does not kill the step-father despite Lily wanting her to (especially in her heated and emotional state). Lily resents Amanda for not killing him there and then. Amanda, too logical, too compassionate, does not care. She would rather allow Lily to act out her fantasies and dark, selfish impulses and take onto her shoulders all the blame.
We see now the melancholia that undermines Thoroughbreds' dark comedy. A young woman who cannot register emotion like others finds a friend, and for some unknown reason - likely to do with her mental complex - she becomes so attached that she is willing to not only kill for her friend, but give up her life for her. Into this unwanting, unintending, amoral entity is imbued the nihilism of an anarchistic solipsist wrought with evil - beyond amoral - intent. And so Thoroughbreds becomes a film about the passivity of nature never being allowed to prevail. Amanda is humanity without masses of complication; she has basic virtues that, unfortunately, are not controlled by principals. She is a passive incarnation of human nature we may argue. Lily on the other hand is a construct of intent without basic virtue. Yang finds yin and tries to swallow it. This leaves Amanda passively nihilistic. Her last words emerge from a letter she sends to Lilly from prison. She has a dreams about being a horse, and of upper-class society killing itself, leaving thoroughbred horses to roam about suburbia, unaware of their own value. How transparent and poetic this is - how sad. Amanda is rather indefatigably human in all of its passive goodness. She is used and abused and only her unconscious mind can whisper to her a nihilistic wish for the meaningless active elements of humanity to burn off under the flame of its own invidious passion.
Powerful Thoroughbreds appears to be if seen as more than a dark comedy. I'll then end here and leave things with you. Have you seen this film yet? What are your thoughts?
Previous post:
How It Ends - Limitations & False Cutesyness
Next post:
End Of The Week Shorts #96
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
Estranged friends come together and plot a murder.
Thoroughbreds is about as nihilistic as a film can be. Though all is masked by a patient gaze of the camera, an inactive look that presents the already desensationalised drama as stilted and inconsequential, this holds a deeply saddening, a troubling and even horrifying, story at its core. I will have to use spoilers as to speak about this, and since this is a somewhat new film, you have been warned.
This plot detail recurs at many points throughout the film. The most significant generates the following formula: Lily hates her step-father; if he were dead, her life would be better; Amanda has 'killed' before; she seems more than able to contrive or even execute a plan to satisfy Lily; Amanda does not object. Put on display here is seemingly a similar kind of logic centralised in Heathers. The films have strong points of relation. Both concern themselves with apathy-drenched, upper class suburbs, outcasts, liars, emotionless amorality, anarchism, nihilism and a highly disaffected and venomous kind of hatred. Many find Heathers comedic and incisive for this and the manner in which the core vindictiveness of the film interplays with the melodramatic, expressionist and absurd form. Thoroughbreds has been categorised, like Heathers, as a dark comedy - likely due to its use of nihilism. Maybe there is a hint of shock-comedy about Thoroughbreds, but I sense no real attempt in the film to be particularly funny. Dry it is indeed, absurd also, but funny? Such is a major point of distinction between the two films, which is why I'm hesitant to stress the connection between the two. Alas, we can certainly see that stories have used nihilistic logic as a means of plot-construction and characterisation before. Heathers is just one example, but comedies such as Deadpool use this, too; some of the best examples of an amoral gaze emerge from art cinemas, such Yorgos Lanthimos'. Lanthimos' films are not subsumed in nihilism, but there is an antiseptic, curious amorality about how the film investigates - both aesthetically and narratively. Thoroughbreds is somewhat unique due to its impressionistic form. Lars von Trier's recent The House That Jack Built is a film we can draw upon here. Like Man Bites Dog, The House That Jack Built not only follows a serial killer, but the camera engages him, for the most part, as he wants to be engaged. The cinematic language of the likes of The House That Jack Built is then indicative of how a serial killer looks (to some degree at least); we can call this impressionistic. To a more extreme degree than even The House That Jack Built or Man Bites Dog Thoroughbreds impressionistically looks like a steely serial killer.
The key difference between all of the amoral films we have so far discussed - Heathers, Man Bites Dog and The House That Jack Built in particular - is Thoroughbreds' absence of consequence, most confrontationally in the form of police. Authorities and comeuppance always play on the perimeters of the mentioned films, and almost always manage to invade the diegesis, leading to a final act in which the killers are captured or killed. There is an implicit and inevitable commentary that emerges from this: killing is amoral. Thoroughbreds manages to subvert this.
Lily, our self-consumed rich girl, is never caught. She develops a plot to kill her father through a local want-to-be drug dealer with Amanda, but this fails. Lily then decides to drug Amanda and kill her step-father herself before planting the knife on her sleeping 'friend'. This plan almost fails, too. As Amanda drinks her tainted drink, Lily can't help but tell her the truth after questioning why her 'friend' would even want to live if she has no emotions. Amanda nonetheless ambiguously agrees to being a scapegoat and Lily gets to kill her father and get away with all. It is at the very end that we see some presence of the law and consequences through Amanda's incarceration. Alas, there are two devices at play that undermine the invasion of authority. Firstly, Amanda voluntarily enters the system; Lily, the true killer, stays where she wants to be. And secondly, we do not see prison represented at the end of the film. Instead, Amanda is sent to a psychiatric hospital (for criminals we can assume). This completes a subtextual strain of the narrative which has much to say about mental health and its medication as a failing practise. As opposed to highlighting consequence - upholding the ethics of 'the system' and the law - the presentation of the psychiatric ward emphasises the holes in a governmental system. Looking at Thoroughbreds as a whole, we can then begin to see just how isolated and insular its world is. The gaze and world construction is not only amoral and emotionless, but it is solipsistic; the only people who exist and matter are our main characters. Such is displayed in some of the cinema of Lanthimos. In Dogtooth in particular, the subversion of law, the system and the complete disregard of authority is key and a defining element of the aesthetics of the film.
Whilst we may understand Thoroughbreds through its nihilism, there are limitations. To truly understand and 'see' this film, we can reflect on something spoken about as we looked at The House That Jack Built. Art is inherently moral and moralising. Such is made obvious via Thoroughbreds' theme of solipsism. This is certainly a film that looks impressionistically; the cinematic language and general dramaturgy (what is shown/not shown, what is done/not done) seems to imitate the way a serial killer may look, think and act. Alas, we do not see the world as our 'sociopath', Amanda, does. As we first experience the film, this may seem to be the case, but, any consideration of Amanda's role in the narrative - her psychology and emotions - will reveal how unexplored and fundamentally used she is. Impressionistic this film is, but it is Lily's not Amanda's, psyche that is impressed upon us.
We have already outlined the general logic of this film - Lily hates her step-father; if he were dead, her life would be better; Amanda has 'killed' before; she seems more than able to contrive or even execute a plan to satisfy Lily; Amanda does not object. This is how the murder fuelling all drama occurs. Whilst we can begin to see how Amanda is used by Lily by making obvious the thinking that pushes forth action in our story, we must question Amanda's identity as a sociopathic 'killer' as to reveal the depths of her exploitation.
One can very easily argue that Amanda never exhibits malice and certainly never kills anything either within the narrative of Thoroughbreds or beyond it. As established, she definitely does not kill Lily's step-father. And, as is made passingly apparent, Amanda does not just 'kill' her mother's horse. Emotionless as she is, the horse was injured and suffering. She tries herself to end the creature's pain - she does so without being affected by the gruesome and harrowing nature of her act (which signifies something very off about her), but the morality underlying her logic is rather sound despite the actual euthanisation of the horse being messy. This act is, to some degree, compassionate. Not only does she do something for the horse, but maybe this is also for her mother. Importantly, the euthanisation is also for herself; it provides her a sense of closure and peace knowing that someone close to the horse ended its life. This element of--self-satisfaction is not the right word, but it translates roughly to what I mean to say--this element of self-satisfying compassion reveals that Amanda is not an uncomplicated character. She feels. She feels responsibility, she can sense morality, she feels a need to act and requires, not just being close to others, but serving them. This translates directly to Lily. Amanda and Lily were once good friends. There is an absurd degree of loyalty at the base of their relationship - which is precisely why Amanda is not only willing to kill for Lily, but will sacrifice herself for her (some may even point to this relationship as homoerotic). There is then a certain purity about the amorality of Amanda that is corrupted by Lily. Amanda acts on impulses. All the impulses that she is shown to act upon are compassionate and truth-seeking. For instance, there is a scene in which Lily initially asks Amanda to kill her father. A knife is put in her hand and she is made to wait whilst Lily confronts him. The step-father argues with Lily. He has caught her smoking, but will not tell her mother; he does not like her selfish attitude and believes that she cannot see the world as others can (solipsism); he has arranged for her to go to a new school, but will not help her anymore. Amanda hears this, she hears the truth, and so she does not kill the step-father despite Lily wanting her to (especially in her heated and emotional state). Lily resents Amanda for not killing him there and then. Amanda, too logical, too compassionate, does not care. She would rather allow Lily to act out her fantasies and dark, selfish impulses and take onto her shoulders all the blame.
We see now the melancholia that undermines Thoroughbreds' dark comedy. A young woman who cannot register emotion like others finds a friend, and for some unknown reason - likely to do with her mental complex - she becomes so attached that she is willing to not only kill for her friend, but give up her life for her. Into this unwanting, unintending, amoral entity is imbued the nihilism of an anarchistic solipsist wrought with evil - beyond amoral - intent. And so Thoroughbreds becomes a film about the passivity of nature never being allowed to prevail. Amanda is humanity without masses of complication; she has basic virtues that, unfortunately, are not controlled by principals. She is a passive incarnation of human nature we may argue. Lily on the other hand is a construct of intent without basic virtue. Yang finds yin and tries to swallow it. This leaves Amanda passively nihilistic. Her last words emerge from a letter she sends to Lilly from prison. She has a dreams about being a horse, and of upper-class society killing itself, leaving thoroughbred horses to roam about suburbia, unaware of their own value. How transparent and poetic this is - how sad. Amanda is rather indefatigably human in all of its passive goodness. She is used and abused and only her unconscious mind can whisper to her a nihilistic wish for the meaningless active elements of humanity to burn off under the flame of its own invidious passion.
Powerful Thoroughbreds appears to be if seen as more than a dark comedy. I'll then end here and leave things with you. Have you seen this film yet? What are your thoughts?
Previous post:
How It Ends - Limitations & False Cutesyness
Next post:
End Of The Week Shorts #96
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
