Kinds of Kindness
The follow up film from Yorgos Lanthimos, if someone is expecting a film akin to Poor Things, they should dampen their expectations. Kinds of Kindness is an anthology movie made up of three different stories, each one getting progressively darker in its portrayal of humanity. Paired with Efthimis Filippou, who last worked with Lanthimos on the Killing of a Sacred Deer, some of the anthologies work better than others.
It seems almost indisputable that the very first section of the film is the fan favorite, starring Jesse Plemons as a white collar worker who has a strange relationship with his boss played by Willem Dafoe. It’s strange and odd and ends in a spectacular explosion of violence. The second section Jesse Plemons plays a man who has lost his wife at sea, played by Emma Stone, when she returns from her harrowing adventure turned accident, he is convinced she is not his wife and drama and tension ensues. It’s hard not to enjoy this segment because of the acting between Plemons and Stone, but is my personally least favorite of the three considering how bleak it degrades to. It plays with audience expectations, and maybe has the strongest thread of the kindness theme Lanthimos is going for in this film. The third section, starring Stone and Plemons again, takes place in a cult where they are looking for a messiah like figure in a woman who was born a twin. The darkest of the three segments, it ends in a spectacular finale that is steeped in the irony of the situation. It is to be noted that there is a sexual assault portrayed in this section. There’s a lot of debate over the purpose of this, as it effects the storyline, but none of the characters really seem to tackle it in a way that feels genuine and realistic. I still personally like what other things are offered in this final chapter of the film, but the darkness of the assault is hard to defend.
What works for this film is all of the performances. Plemons plays a lead character in most of them, but between him, Dafoe, Stone, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie and the other actors that make brief cameos in the different sequences of the film the performances speak wonders. Having to portray three different sets of characters in entirely different settings and environments and playing with audience expectation between each of these segments is fascinating to watch. Everyone involved in the film is at their best.
The film left me thinking a lot about it. If the connection between all three sequences is not just the mysterious, R.M.F., it does seem to be about kindness. The kindness we give to people, the kindness we accept, the kindness we desire. It’s a movie that has deeply unkind people in it. It seems to look deeply into the soul of humanity and investigate it’s damaged heart.
While this film might not be remembered as one of Lanthimos’s best, he is working incredibly hard to provide different types of thought provoking films as he continues his career past his Oscar award season of 2023’s Poor Things.