Kinds of Kindness (2024) Review
Yorgos Lanthimos’s Anthology is Sometimes Funny, Often Uncomfortable, & Always Strange
Emma Stone as Emily. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Back in January, I wrote a review for Poor Things.For me, it was the best movie of last year, and also dethroned The Lobster as my favorite Yorgos Lanthimos film. Due to the pandemic, Lanthimos actually had another film already shot by the time PT was released, an anthology film originally titled R.M.F. before being changed to And then finally settling on Kinds of Kindess. As I said in my PT review, I generally enjoy Lanthimos’s movies. They’re a unique cocktail of absurdity, disturbia, and comedy. That being said, that melange isn’t always perfectly balanced.
Anthology films are generally a hard sell for me. There are some here and there that I enjoy (Kwaidan, Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs for example), but by default you’re always comparing the stories against each other, and some will always be better than others. Kinds of Kindness has three sections (some have called it a “triptych fable”), that center around strange occurrences connected by characters with the initials R.M.F. Actors play different roles across the three sections, with the ensemble containing Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, and a few others. This will likely be a point of confusion for anyone unaware of what they’re getting into. I knew ahead of time, but admittedly forgot to tell my girlfriend whom I dragged along with me. It also sparked audible befuddlement from the two older women a few rows in front of us, who also clearly weren’t aware of just how weird and disturbing Yorgos Lanthimos films can get (one said “Well, that was the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen” as the credits rolled). Kinds of Kindness isn’t his strangest film, but it’s still miles away from your average comedy.
In the first section - The Death of R.M.F. - we follow Jesse Plemons as Robert Fletcher. Robert’s life is excessively planned out and controlled by his boss, Raymond (Willem Dafoe), to the point where he decides what he eats and when, his sex life, and then eventually gives him the task of crashing his car into another vehicle - driven by R.M.F. - which he refuses as it might kill the other driver. His life subsequently falls apart. In the second section - R.M.F. is Flying - Plemons plays police officer Daniel, whose wife Liz (Emma Stone) had disappeared while doing research out at sea. After she’s found, Daniel becomes convinced that something about her is wrong. As he becomes increasingly paranoid, things get more than a little bizarre. In the final section - R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich - Emma Stone is Emily, a member of a water-obsessed sex cult led by Omi (Willem Dafoe in one of the most fitting roles of his career). She and Andrew (Jesse Plemons again) are searching for a specific woman to be their cult’s messianic figure, a twin that Emily saw in a dream that can bring back the dead.
I won’t sugarcoat it, this movie is aggressively strange and has discomfort down to an art form. Kindshas all the hallmarks of Lanthimos’s films (stilted and odd dialogue, strange and clinical sex, and spurts of brutal violence), but also has an oppressive misanthropy to it that will make it unpalatable to general audiences. Lanthimos co-wrote Kinds with Efthimis Filippou, who also co-wrote Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer with him, which are by far his least accessible films. Poor Things and The Favourite were written by a different screenwriter, and that’s likely why they received more critical acclaim and were more approachable for the average viewer. Even as a fan of his films, there were one or two things that put me off while watching (the third section has a brief scene involving sexual violence).
Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons, & Willem Dafoe.
There are a lot of different aspects in the movie that deserve praise, particularly the actors’ performances. I would single Jesse Plemons out as the highlight, serving up multiple kinds of crazy. The score and cinematography are also very striking, where Lanthimos seems to be taking pages from Kubrick’s book on production design, framing, and camera movement. He’s always been a technical director, which helps mitigate the weirdness of his movies. If the movie weren’t as well-acted and well-made as it is, these stories would likely be unbearable. But they aren’t. Kinds is a difficult watch, and it’s also difficult to process and digest. The bizarre setups and absurdist storylines, underlying themes, and surreal imagery are all fascinating, and I’ve been ruminating on it for the past few days. Despite its title, the stories in Kinds of Kindness are anything but. Instead, Lanthimos is deconstructing our societal and interpersonal relationships (our work, our marriages, and our religion respectively) and the harm we cause both to ourselves and to others in trying to please one another and make them work. Almost all of his movies have a sort of fantastical feel to them, like he’s blending together the weirdest and most brutal parts of Greek myth and drama into modern-day parables and tragedy.
While those elements do make Kinds interesting to think about and discuss, they don’t exactly add up to a pleasant watch. I love dark comedy - it’s one of my favorite genres in film - but the balance feels out of whack in this movie. While there are sick and twisted moments that had me laughing out loud (and for a lot of them I was the only one in the theater doing so), they weren’t nearly as frequent as I would’ve liked. Those disparate ingredients that Lanthimos mixes together that I mentioned earlier need to be more balanced in order to work well. Take The Killing of a Sacred Deer for example: it’s far more disturbing and less funny, but it’s also a psychological thriller film rather than a dark comedy. Kinds is too bitter and unpleasant to be as funny as it needs to be to carry the different stories. I think the first section was the most complete and well-paced, while the second fell a bit flat except for a few moments, and the third (which might be my favorite, though I’m still not sure) felt like it could’ve been stretched into its own feature and been explored more thoroughly. The fact that the film stretched out to nearly three hours also didn’t help.
Honestly, I have pretty mixed feelings about each of the individual parts and the film as a whole. There aren’t many people that I’d recommend Kinds of Kindness to, and even those that I would, I’d still warn them about its unevenness and heavier aspects. It really is exhausting, even if you like and appreciate all of the weirder parts, which I usually do. Also, if you do have the gumption to watch it, don’t miss out on the mid-credits scene like we did. I’m not sure if I’ll revisit it in the future, but I can confidently say there are very few films out there like it. While it isn’t Yorgos Lanthimos’s best, I’m still glad that he gets to go out there and push the limits of modern WTF moviemaking.
Score: 6/10
Your description and your cast overview makes me want to check this out. I might not have otherwise. Thank you!