Dogtooth is a 2009 film from original Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. His other films – “The Lobster”, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “The Favorite” – divided the audience into two camps. Part of the audience does not understand at all what is happening in these films, and considers the director to be pretentious and filming some kind of vague surrealistic nonsense. Others find a lot of hidden meanings in Lanthimos’ art-house films, pointing out good shots, unusual ideas and multi-layered subtext.
And although the work of Lanthimos is not for everyone, let’s try to figure out what the meaning of the film Dogtooth is.
The meaning of the film Dogtooth
The Meaning of the 2009 film Dogtooth directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Consider the plot of the picture. The film begins with a training scene for three young people: two girls and a guy. Under the guise of listening, they are given false information about the most ordinary things. The scene seems ridiculous and ridiculous.
Later we learn that these young people are children living with their parents in a house on the outskirts of the city. The house is surrounded by a high fence, and the children themselves never left the site, because they were taught that they could enter the big world only after maturity, namely, after the root canine fell out and replaced with a new one. Children don’t know that this will never happen.
All ways of obtaining information from the outside for young people are blocked. There is no internet, radio or TV in the house. The mother has a phone, but there is no access to it either, because she hides it in her room.
Naturally, in such an environment, children grow up with obvious deviations. They are cruel in some moments, they consider the planes in the sky to be toys, and the sea as a comfortable chair.
The only person leaving the site is the father. He travels to the city for groceries. He brings food from without packaging or with cut price tags and tags.
change
Changes in the home begin when the parents decide that their son has reached puberty and he needs a woman to satisfy his sexual needs. The big question is that they do not even think about the fact that their daughters are also sexually mature, and they also have sexual needs. If they see sex as a way to maintain health, why do they not care about the health of their daughters in this regard at all?
The father agrees with the girl Christina from his work that she will satisfy his son for money. The girl is blindfolded so that she does not see where she is being taken. For some time everything goes fine, but later the girl offers sex to her eldest daughter. For oral sex, Christina gives her two cassettes on which films are recorded: “Rocky”, “They Call Me Bruce” and “Jaws”.
The eldest daughter is shocked by the content of the films. Her moral compass has been shattered. She cannot hide such information for a long time, her behavior changes, and all relatives notice this. The father finds out about the cassettes and beats up his daughter.
Parents decide that the violation of the tightness of the dwelling was erroneous. Christina is forbidden from visiting their house, and new visitors are planned never to be allowed in again.
The question arises, what to do with sex for the son. Without thinking twice, the parents decide that now the son will sleep with one of the daughters. The son is asked to choose who exactly he will have sex with, and he chooses the older sister, in fact raping her.
Symbols
One of the interesting symbols of the picture are a dog and a cat. The dog handler working with the family dog informs the parents that each dog is waiting to be brought up. Parents treat their children the same way. They believe that by protecting the child from the entire external environment, they will be able to completely control him and raise him exactly the way they want. A dog is a docile and loyal creature, and this is exactly how parents want their children to be.
The cat, on the contrary, is too independent. Cats are always on their minds. Therefore, parents say that cats are very dangerous.
The meaning of the film’s ending
At the end of the film, the eldest daughter decides to run away from home. Knocking out Dogtooth of a dumbbell, she hides in the trunk of her father’s car. The father finds a tooth in a bloody bathroom and realizes that his daughter has escaped. He searches the entire yard and, finding nothing, gets into the car, preparing to go to work.
The ending of the film is open and its message is that it is impossible to withhold information forever, and isolation is the worst possible way of education. This can be shifted from family relations and state structure.
The director says that parents cannot train their offspring like dogs, and children must leave home sooner or later.
