ЛІЕРАРОЗНАВСВО. МОВОЗНАВСВО. ОЛКЛОРИСИКА. 1(33)/2023 ~ 101 ~ ISSN 2709-8494 (Online), ISSN 1728-2659 (Print) УДК 821.14'02Евріпід:791.633-051(38)Йоргос Лантимос DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2659.2023.33.17 Svitlana Pereplotchykova, PhD (Philol.), Associate Prof. ORCID: 0000-0002-8573-5027 e-mail: s.pereplotchykova@knu.ua Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine YORGOS LANTHIMOS' THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER: CONTEMPORARY RECEPTION OF EURIPIDES' IPHIGENIA IN AULIS Ancient Greek subjects preserve their relevance in our times through their timeless, profound and comprehensive consideration of the human soul and interpersonal relations, which remain unchanged throughout the centuries in accordance with human nature. Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis has not been exploited often by later writers and film makers who have focused mainly on the murder of the King of Mycenae, Agamemnon, and the destiny of the dynasty of the Atreidae in accordance with Aeschylus' trilogy. Nevertheless, one of the main reasons for the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra is his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia, the story of which is told by Euripides in his tragedies Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris. In Yorgos Lanthimos' film The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) the main character Steven, just like Agamemnon, is informed of the will of the gods who demand sacrifice to be given. The carefully considered reasons which led Agamemnon and Steven to face an inevitable choice highlight their common character features, with hubris the decisive one among them. Comparison of the texts under analysis shows that acceptance of the inevitability of the situation by the families of the main characters develops through the classical stages from denial to understanding that nothing else depends on them. And while in Euripides' tragedy the plot device of a "deus ex machina" is exploited, as the gods are satisfied with the acceptance of the inevitability of sacrifice, in the film one of the members of the family actually dies in order for order to be restored, because a murder presupposes atonement through the blood of another. This reception of Euripides' tragedy is of particular interest because Yorgos Lanthimos is Greek by origin who at a certain moment of his career decided to move away from his native Greek space and start creating films for a more general Western audience. This paper analyses how, in this post- modernist multimodal film text expressive means from Ancient Greek theatre are combined with elements of modern cinema. Keywords: reception of Greek Antiquity, Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, Yorgos Lanthimos, The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Introduction. Greek antiquity, having provided the historical foundations for much of European culture, remains a potent source of artistic inspiration, often provoking contemporary European playwrights and film makers to reflect afresh on ancient drama with its timeless visions of family, society and state. In the 20 th century Greek myths provided Hollywood with material for spectacular epics that brought aspects of Greek antiquity closer to ordinary people for the first time. And so in the modern era the questions and dilemmas posed by ancient authors have continued to prove highly relevant in so far as human nature remains as it always was and people find themselves again and again in the same situations in terms of their personal relations and social and political connections. To give just a few examples, in Kyiv in recent years there have been several theatrical performances based on Ancient Greek tragedies, namely Antigone by the Koleso Theatre (2016), MEDEA/MEDIA (2017), termed a "metatheatrical" performance by its creators and presented in a revised version in 2019 by the Molodyy Theatre, The Oresteia (2019), an épatage performance in which according to its creators "modern technologies met with modern people to create a new modern myth", and a just premiered Oedipus (2023) in the Teatr na Podoli. Similarly, elsewhere in Europe and in the US a number of writers and auteurs have addressed the story of the House of Atreus, "a profound meditation on the nature of crime and punishment, innocence and guilt, vengeance, justice, good government and the relationship between humankind, the gods and the world around them" [20, p. 1] as presented in Aeschylus' Oresteia, "the only classical Greek trilogy to survive (almost) complete" [20, p. 1]. Research methodology. The reception and exploitation of Ancient Greek myths in modern literature and cinema is also a regular object of critical consideration, and scholars often focus on the interpretation of the ancient characters in their new circumstances, investigating how similar or different they are, how a writer or director perceives and adapts an original character or work. For example, according to Kiberd [11] Joyce in his Ulysses refers to the myth of Odysseus to speculate on the origin and consequences of the First World War, while Paul [16] analyses the many faces of Penelope presented in the Italian film Ulisse (1954). A number of modern writers have made reference to the story of Agamemnon and his murder by his wife Clytemnestra, principally in relation to Aeschylus' Oresteia, though Agamemnon is also the main character of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis. The corresponding academic analyses typically reflect on "how the enduring preoccupation with one of the great tragedies of ancient Greece sheds light on the approaches to revenge and atonement in the modern world" [21, p. 161], but with a new emphasis on the reaction of a wife and mother to her husband killing their daughter. Clytemnestra's primary motivation is usually considered to be her husband's sacrifice of their daughter [20, p. 4], but in fact researchers now generally agree that the reasons why Agamemnon must die are more complex [20, p. 1]. This paper investigates the contemporary reception of Ancient Greek beliefs regarding revenge and atonement in the modern world but considers Agamemnon's killing of his daughter in terms of the revenge of the goddess Artemis. Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis has not enjoyed a great deal of artistic and critical reflection, being retold by Jean Racine in the 17 th century and then by the Greek film directors Michael Cacoyannis (Mihalis Kakogiannis) in 1977 and Yorgos Lanthimos in 2017. Cacoyannis in his film Iphigenia presents the story in a traditional Greek setting of the sea and ancient ruins, although views it "through the prism of political events in Modern Greece and his native home island of Cyprus" (a military junta in Greece of 1967–1974 and Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974) [4, p. 35]. Cacoyannis' Iphigenia turns into "a modern Greek-Cypriot heroine" [4, p. 40], "symbolises Cyprus" [4, p. 36]. Lanthimos in his film The Killing of a Sacred Deer exploits the plot of the tragedy to create a new basis for his vision of modern society's problems, combining the visual language of European and American cinema with the expressive resources of Ancient Greek theatre. This paper focuses on the perception of vengeance by Lanthimos and the way this Greek director presents it to his European and American audience. © Pereplotchykova Svitlana, 2023