A departure from his previous film, Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos fans will no doubt revel in the absurdity of the stories. Strong performances by the main cast make the film worth checking out if nothing else to see if you are able to process the meanings of the three stories despite the minutiae coming at you from every direction. This one is available to purchase digitally now, and physically on October 8th.
“Kinds of Kindness is a triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life, a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person, and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader. Starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer, the film is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou.”
Director Yorgos Lanthimos isn’t your traditional filmmaker. His films are unique to say the least, and his method and writing style are unlike anything I’ve seen recently. With his previous film, Poor Things, sweeping multiple categories last award season, Lanthimos is as popular as ever, gaining notoriety in the industry for his style and imaginative filmmaking.
I’ll start out by saying if you have only been exposed to Poor Things and are looking for something along the same lines, with its wonderful thematic elements, intriguing storytelling, and stellar performances, then you may be in for a bit of a wake-up call with his most recent film. If you’ve followed the director throughout his career and are familiar with some of his previous films, Kinds of Kindness may not be a surprise to you, as this film is more akin to his more cerebral and overtly odd stories he’s told in the past.
Kinds of Kindness is hard to define. Even watching the trailer, it is hard to get a sense of what the film is about, and even after seeing it I am having the same trouble. It tells three separate stories, with the actors playing different roles in each. The themes in each story are buried so deeply in purposefully odd and jarring instances that I struggled to find meaning in any of them. Lanthimos stacks an incredibly powerful cast, but then surrounds them with people who have literally never acted a day in their lives. I can only imagine the intention is purposeful for some strange reason that you have professional actors speaking to other people who and sound as though they are nervously reading off a cue card. It is moments like these that make this film incredibly frustrating to watch, and for me, severely limited my enjoyment of any type thematic elements that I was supposed to be absorbing. There are moments I truly did find fascinating, but the journey was filled with such disjointed and nonsensical things that I felt purposely challenged to keep up with the story and accept the majority of things that didn’t make sense and feel grateful for it. The film didn’t make me want to take that journey.
Despite these feelings, the undeniable fact is that the performances of the main set of actors are fantastic. Jesse Plemons especially gives probably the best performance I’ve seen of his, and though it may be strange, it’s visceral, emotional, and moving.
For those fans of Lanthimos, this type of non-linear and non-sensical storytelling seems to be what he excels at and truly enjoys, and they will surely enjoy the film. As much as I usually enjoy the non-traditional film, especially in this day and age of filmmaking, I was just not able to get on board with Kinds of Kindness. But, as I mentioned, if you’re a fan of Lanthimos and are eager for such a strange journey, this is one you’ll definitely want to check out.
We were given a digital code to review this film, which is out now to purchase digitally. The physical release is set for October 8th on Blu-ray.