Quote · The Louis Theroux Podcast
S7 EP8: Yorgos Lanthimos discusses working with Emma Stone, suffering for his art, and directing a Bourne movie
Where this was said
Ambiguity and Audience Projection: The Trunk Ending
At 12:48 · chapter starts 10:20
Louis raises the film's climactic sequence in which the oldest daughter, having knocked out her own tooth to fulfil the escape condition her father set, hides in the boot of a car — and nothing happens. Lanthimos describes how viewers desperate for her to escape began insisting she had been holding a screwdriver or hammer, an object that categorically does not appear in the film. [1] — Yorgos Lanthimos "Viewers who desperately wanted Dogtooth's protagonist to escape literally fabricated a detail — a screwdriver she was supposedly holding — …" 12:20 This fabrication, Lanthimos says, was one of the most revealing things he ever learned about how audiences watch: they project their emotional needs onto ambiguous frames and then remember those projections as fact. Louis draws a parallel to the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction — another beloved unresolved mystery — and the two discuss the A.O. Scott New York Times critique that accused Lanthimos of being 'as much an exercise in perversity as an examination of it.' Lanthimos reframes provocation as a necessity rather than a flaw: how else do you move people's minds?
The word 'dogtooth' is not spoken until 55 minutes into the film, more than halfway through, when the audience finally understands the world's internal rules.
Viewers who desperately wanted Dogtooth's protagonist to escape literally fabricated a detail — a screwdriver she was supposedly holding — that is not in the film. Lanthimos sees this as one of the great revelations about how audiences watch: they project their own desires onto ambiguous endings and then remember those projections as fact.
