Kinds of Kindness is a film for those who proudly claim to have been a fan of writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos back in his Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer psychological drama era. After the commercial and critical success of his work with screenwriters Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara on The Favourite and again with McNamara on Poor Things, Lanthimos reunites with his old co-writer Efthimis Filippou on this project. There’s a distinct tonal shift from these two sets of films. The earlier could be defined by cynicism, where characters, despite being put in nightmarish situations, are unable or refuse to change while the more recent works were larger-budget period pieces that focused on women’s societal restrictions—to an arguable degree of depth and insight.
This latest project sees Lanthimos perhaps operating at his highest level of creative freedom with an ambitious three-part anthology at a runtime of 2 hours and 45 minutes. The trio of stories largely shares the same cast — Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn and Mamoudou Athie — but sees each actor play drastically different roles. The sections are unified by a man identified as R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos), who is more of a symbol rather than a character. The first story, titled “The Death of R.M.F,” starts with Plemons’ character intentionally driving into an intersection to get hit by a car, per instructions from his boss (Dafoe). The second follows Plemons as a cop who suspects his wife (Stone), who was recently rescued from being lost at sea, is an imposter, and the final entry is the most complex with Stone and Plemons searching for a young woman who can bring the dead back to life for their sex cult led by Dafoe and Chau.
This structure can be exhausting, forcing viewers to learn about a new set of character relationships just as they were beginning to become invested in the previous ones. So why tell multiple stories instead of fully fleshing out one of them? It may be futile to search for an overarching meaning in the three narratives, but one interpretation is that they all describe what people are willing to sacrifice to feel like they deserve another’s love. Many characters derive their self-worth from their value in someone else’s life. This concept creates engrossing power dynamics that are violent and grotesque, regardless of whether they evolve to something new or revert to normalcy.
There is also Lanthimos’ trademark sadistic humor, which manifests as the filmmaker pushes his characters past their limits of sanity. In one scene, a man whose wife has gone missing asks a couple they have foursomes with if the remaining three of them can watch one of their recordings, saying it would help him feel better. The couple is not into the idea, but the man pretends to break down in tears. Lanthimos cuts to the trio watching the video together, one certainly enthusiastic and the other two visibly uncomfortable.
Then comes the kindness mentioned in the film’s title. These characters are certainly not kind to themselves — Stone goes to extreme lengths to prove her commitment to her husband in the second story. They can also be cruel to one another such as when Dafoe’s character rejects Plemons in the first section when the younger man doesn’t carry out one of his commands. But notably, there are rare moments of grace where people acknowledge each other for the efforts they went to for their approval. In a twisted way, this recognition is a type of kindness, one that can exist in a world where we struggle to understand each other and make sense of who we are.
Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
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