silent movie
Emma Stone: “The weirdest thing I’ve ever done”
Emma Stone waits for questions after the screening of her new film in Athens. Photo: Aristidis Vafeiadakis/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
It’s about life and death, sex, resurrection and the relationship between humans and animals. The American actress is presenting a film in Greece in which she took part – without speaking.
Actress Emma Stone (33) presented an unusual film project in Athens. “It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever done,” she said on Thursday after the premiere of the black-and-white short film by director Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favorite”).
As with the silent films of yesteryear, a symphony orchestra and a choir will perform live works by Johann Sebastian Bach (“Come, Sweet Death”), Knut Nystedt and Toshio Hosokawa parallel to the film. The speechless plot brought to the screen by Emma Stone and her fellow actor Damien Bonnard is weird and often bizarre: It’s about life and death, sex, resurrection and the relationship between humans and animals, sometimes in borderline ways , because disturbingly explicit scenes.
Back to your own roots
Lanthimos placed all these themes in the austere beauty of the Greek island of Tinos. The film was shot there during the Corona pandemic, and residents acted as amateur actors. “I wanted to go back to my roots,” said Lanthimos after the premiere. With “Bleat” he wants to bring to the screen the numerous stories, sagas, mythologies and fairy tales that he heard in his youth. He sometimes understood these stories as a child, but sometimes interpreted them in his own way.
According to a spokesman for the Greek National Opera (GNO), the production cost “only two percent” of a normal film. Stone reportedly took part in the project without a fee, out of friendship with Lanthimos. The work can only be performed with the participation of a symphony orchestra. Numerous operas have already expressed interest, it said. A concrete date for a performance in Germany is not yet available.