The Killing of a Sacred Deer Analysis

By Ravi Ahuja

“I believe the most logical thing, no matter how harsh this may sound, is to kill a child. Because we can have another child. I still can and you can. And if you can't, we can try IVF, but I'm sure we can.”

In the lore of Greek myth, King Agamemnon was preparing to sail off and conquer Troy when he unwittingly killed one of Artemis’ sacred deer. Artemis, furious at this transgression, stops the wind from blowing and prevents Agamenon and his fleet from sailing to Troy. The only thing he can do to atone for his mistake is to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia. Some versions of the myth end with Iphigenia being sacrificed to Artemis, while some end with Artemis providing a deer to replace Iphigenia at the moment of sacrifice, reminiscent of the story of Abraham on Mount Moriah.

​

Steven (Colin Farrell) and Martin (Barry Keoghan) talking at the hospital

Yorgos Lanthimos retells this story in a modern setting with Steven Murphy, a renowned heart surgeon, taking the place of Agamemnon. Steven is married to a beautiful woman, well respected in her own field of medicine. His two children are obedient and intelligent, participating in after-school activities like choir and piano practice. The one blemish in an otherwise pristine life is his secret friendship with Martin, a teenage boy who he occasionally spends time with. The nature and cause of their relationship is a mystery until we learn that Martin is the son of a patient who died on Steven’s operating table. Their friendship is stable for a while, until Martin invites Steven to his home for dinner, where his mother makes sexual advances on Steven. He quickly rebuffs these advances and leaves their home. Following this dinner, Steven stops talking to Martin, who knowingly tried to set the two up, thinking that they would be a good couple. Soon after cutting ties with Martin, Steven’s son Bob becomes paralyzed. Martin explains the situation very simply to Steven. Bob will remain paralyzed and refuse food to the point of starvation for a while, then his eyes will begin to bleed and he will die. Steven’s daughter and wife will soon follow. The only way to stop this fate is for Steven to kill one of them. 

​

Bob (Sunny Suljic) collapses at the exit of the hospital as Anna (Nicole Kidman) stands by

Despite both this movie and the myth it’s adapted from appearing on the surface to be about sacrifice, it is actually much more concerned with the idea of justice. A sacrifice made unwillingly is not a sacrifice but a punishment, a price for some mistake. In this case, a death for a death, or as Martin states, “just like you killed a member of my family, now you gotta kill a member of your family to balance things out”. This idea of balance is entirely relative, and one can see just how much it changes depending on the perspective you take. From Martin’s point of view, Steven killed his father through a surgical mistake. Justice is straightforward; Steven must kill a member of his own family to undergo the same suffering he made Martin go through. Martin tries explaining this to Steven straightforwardly through the film, but he refuses to listen. “I just want to show you an example… just one little example to show you what I mean,” Martin says, viciously biting down on Steven’s arm and leaving a bloody wound. While Steven recoils in pain and shock, Martin explains in simple terms, “Should I apologize? No… No, there’s only one way to make you and me both feel better,”. He doesn’t hesitate to chomp down just as brutally on his own arm, tearing away a chunk of flesh. To Martin, justice is punitive. The only right way to treat a culprit is to make them face the same consequences and pain that they put others through. 
Yet, from perspectives other than Martin’s, this idea of justice is completely imbalanced. Steven is a skilled surgeon who rarely makes mistakes, but he still can’t be expected to save the life of every patient put in front of him. Even if it would be right to find blame in Steven, other people are being punished for his mistake. His wife, Anna, even directly confronts Martin about this, telling him, “I don't understand why I should have to pay the price. Why my children should have to pay the price.” Punitive justice is never perfectly balanced, because no two actions have the same consequences. The context surrounding each crime, culprit, and victim will always be unique and can never be replicated. Even Martin realizes that perfect balance can’t be achieved, responding to Anna, “I don't know if what is happening is fair, but it's the only thing I can think of that's close to justice.”

​

Bob’s eyes begin to bleed, signalling that he will die soon

Aside from the theme of justice, fatherhood is also a recurring idea throughout this film. It is notable that Martin doesn’t enact his punitive justice on Steven until he rejects becoming Martin’s father. Steven does play a paternal role to Martin in the beginning of the movie, showing him around the hospital and giving him a watch as a present. In being ignored, Martin may have felt like another father figure was being taken away from him. It is also interesting to examine Steven’s parental relationship to his actual children. Although he is a very providing father, giving his children gifts and opportunities, he seems somewhat absent from their lives. He is also extremely strict and even downright cruel at points. When Bob first falls ill, before Steven knows that Martin is the cause, he treats Bob with no compassion at all, letting him drop to the floor on more than one occasion and forcing a donut into his mouth to get him to eat. It seems that Lanthimos is criticizing the idea that a good father is merely someone who provides for their children, as Steven does that to both Martin and his own children while still being detached and coldhearted with them. ​

Anna looks at Steven through a pane of glass

Of course, Steven’s characterization is also a product of Lanthimos’ directorial style, which I would be remiss to not discuss. If there is one thing Lanthimos is known for, it is his treatment of character; or more specifically, the way he wields his actors. Lines are consistently delivered with a flat and unaffected voice and emotion is avoided whenever possible. It’s a style not unlike how Wes Anderson uses his actors, but instead of the charming and whimsical worlds those characters populate, Lanthimos opts to place his characters in much darker contexts.  In his previous films The Lobster (2015) and Dogtooth (2009), which feature inherently absurd premises, this style works wonderfully to create moments of absurdist black humor. The Killing of a Sacred Deer, while far from a realistic movie, does have a much more grounded and plausible foundation, transforming the feeling of Lanthimos’ usual style from comically absurd to unsettling and even horrifying. 
    Along with the dry and unemotional acting, characters also frequently say or do things that would be considered extremely socially inappropriate or awkward, with other characters not even batting an eye. Both Anna and Kim (the Murphy’s daughter) discuss Kim’s menstruation in polite conversation with guests, Steven publicly tells Anna that he does not value her medical opinion in this case, the list goes on. This combination of stoic acting and lack of social norms features in all of Lanthimos’ films, and seems to be done at least in part as a way to explore the idea of what makes us human. There are many moments where it feels as if the characters on screen are aliens or machines rather than human beings. They aren’t totally lacking human emotions like love and anger, but they don’t seem affected by them the same way that normal people are either. With this in mind, exploring very human topics like justice and fatherhood is an interesting choice by Lanthimos. Perhaps he sees punitive justice as a rational, but inhuman solution. We often like to think of the legal system as blind and objective, abstracting from human emotion, but maybe this isn’t always for the best. An eye for an eye is rational, but we would be better off seeking restorative justice than seeking to make the whole world blind. Similarly, it could be that Lanthimos is rejecting the idea of rationality being all that is needed for fatherhood, as true fatherly love is irrational. Whether or not this is his goal, his direction is always interesting, even if its motivation is ambiguous. 
    Not everyone will love this slow psychological horror, with Lanthimos’ style being too off putting for some, but it’s still worth checking out for arthouse film fans looking for a unique movie. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is streaming now on Netflix in the United States.

​