Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Written by Efthimis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos
Three “short” films that together form a spiraling circle, Kinds of Kindness shows us many ways we are not kind to one another, and with a repeating cast anchored by Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, Lanthimos introduces us to an existentially enthralled man, a delusional cop, and cult members. They all serve somebody in terrible ways, and common to all of their dilemmas is they’re of the Lanthimos kind: idiosyncratic, erratic, gruesome, comedic, and altogether surreal.
In one story, Jesse Plemons is Raymond, a man who lives a sweet material life, but who has every move of his life assigned to him by a wealthy eccentric. When he fucks, what he eats, who he loves, it all comes on a little note card for Raymond to follow, but one day a task proves too onerous and Raymond wants out. But how do you live your life when someone’s been living it for you all this time?
In another story, Plemons is Daniel, a cop whose wife’s been missing at sea, but is miraculously found. Yet, is this person, who walks, talks, and looks like his wife, really his wife? Daniel drives himself crazy trying to figure it out. Finally, Emma Stone and Plemons play cult members tasked with finding a messiah-like woman who can raise the dead, and while Plemons stays in his lane watches from the sidelines, Stone shows us the true cost of zealotry.
As out there these stories seem, they siphon their juice from the familiar. Raymond’s predicament is a roided-up allegory for any worker’s experience in late stage capitalism, Daniel’s paranoia about his wife is a vicious rendition of a small man’s inability to accept his spouse as a changing person, and Emily’s a person who loses herself in the structure of oppression. Turn on the news, their stories are told on repeat. Power structures, from macro to micro form.
But Kinds of Kindness is fun because of the hall of mirrors that Lanthimos builds around these thematic centerpieces, and Kinds of Kindness’ closest kin is Lanthimos’ The Lobster, a similarly surreal take on a cultural ritual, serving the same dark tragicomic sense of humor, stilted mannerisms and hard edge to its worldview.
Unfortunately, I’m making the comparison because Kinds of Kindness feels like a regression for Lanthimos. His latest, Poor Things and The Favourite, were undeniable Lanthimos movies branded with his trademark ability to put things on a knife’s edge, but they both offered a new visual expression, as well as sustained and comprehensive explorations of both ideas and their characters. That’s not quite the case here, with stories often turning heel on themselves, opting for a nullifying twist or a fizzling return to the status quo.
Kinds of Kindness is entertaining in its own shocking, wicked way, and the self-contained nature of its stories recall Roald Dahl’s short stories that were also filled with small people suffering under their self-inflicted wounds. Lanthimos adds his bloodthirst and voilá, you have three stories about power dynamics, petty and aggravated, that make you wince, chuckle, and lose a little faith in the world we live in.
Mikkel Frederiksen 