At TIFF there’s an intro ad of sorts, it’s folks around the wonderful town of Toronto discussing film in a high brow way in every day settings. It’s a great spot, and I love it every time it comes up. One of the people in the spot is a bus driver who is talking to a bemused commuter. The driver says “It’s just Hamlet, in Laos.” He seems unimpressed by such a trivial spin and I have to say I have similar feelings towards Dimitris Nakos first film ‘Meat’.

Set in Greece the story is that of a family, Takis, a father running a butcher shop with his son Pavlos, and a boy he’s raised up as a child Christos. During a feud with another man, Giorgos, in town, his son shoots and kills Giorgos. What transpires is a plot to pin the blame on Christos as opposed let his son serve the prison sentence. It’s a tight script and doesn’t veer off the path very much. It honestly doesn’t veer off the path at all. Going back to the TIFF spot, Meat is just a Greek tragedy, set in a butcher shop. That’s not to say it’s bad, just a little straight down the middle.

It could’ve made up for the simplicity of the story with stylistic camera work or stunning performances. I did actually really like the performances, I think everyone’s pretty locked in. Pavlos Iordanopoulos, the actor portaying Pavlo portrays slightly dense spoiled brat in a really compelling way. At one point Takis speaking with Christos asking him to take the blame explains that his son could not endure through prison. The camera pans over to Pavlos and the look on his face is one of terror, but also not comprehending how bad prison would be. Like Lenny in ‘Of Mice and Men’ Pavlos has to be protected because he’s incapable of doing anything by himself.

So let’s talk about the camera work then! The first hour of this movie is an exercise in motion sickness. The camera is so shaky and so constantly zoomed in it’s difficult to make out what’s going on. The tight frames work in the moments later in the film where there’s less going on and it’s people sitting quietly thinking about their next move. But it takes awhile for the movie to find its tripod in a sense, and it left me feeling a little queasy by the time they figured it out.

It felt like the butcher shop setting was just that, a setting. It would’ve been nice to bake it into the concept of the film a little more. Espcially as it feels like it’s not too far of a stretch to write some lines about how sending Christos to prison is like sending a pig to slaughter? It’s right there, that example is probably a little too heavy handed but I think I would have preferred out over simply having it be a Greek tragedy that happened to be set in a butcher shop.

The shop does get it’s time to shine at the very least. The best scene in the movie is before Pavlos and Christos have come clean about what happened with Girogos, and the two of them and Takis are silently working in unison. For probably about three minutes we hear the rhythm of the shop, and the trust that they all have in one another, a trust that will come crashing down before the film is over.

I did like the movie, just in the end it felt a little simple even for the concept that it had at the heart of it. I think it wouldn’t be too hard to get it a little further down the road that “just a Greek tragedy, set in a butcher shop”.

2.5/5