Kinds of Kindness
They say that death comes in threes, how appropriate...
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
USA, 2024
It may be our end of season break, but while everybody was either pondering which box to tick in their neighbourhood polling booth, or throwing cans of lager at the TV screen as England put on yet another frustrating display at Euro 2024, ReidsonFilm assigned one of our number to grapple with a preview of the latest offering from Yorgos Lanthimos.
Sometimes you just need to be ridiculous in order to achieve what we’re trying to achieve – Yorgos Lanthimos
Kinds of Kindness is a film by cinema’s newly instated enfant terrible, Yorgos Lanthimos. Fresh off the success of Academy Award-winning Poor Things (reviewed in a recent ReidsonFilm podcast), Lanthimos brings us a film which is arguably just as vibrant and unique in its own peculiar way. Made while Poor Things was going through its lengthy post-production, Kinds of Kindness feels like Lanthimos and his team letting off steam: it’s fun, sketchy and spontaneous, but despite the playful tone – heavily accentuated by the marketing – the film is still very polished. Beneath that pristine surface, however, we find Lanthimos gleefully wielding his trademark enigmatic, yet provocative, style to interrogate our assumptions about human behaviour and relationships.
The film presents us with three seemingly unrelated stories and even for a Yorgos Lanthimos feature this approach is certainly unconventional. Each film has varying degrees of absurdity, cruelty, and in the very loosest sense of the word, kindness.
The first follows a man who lives according to the specific directions of his boss: what time he eats, sleeps, has sex with his wife and so on, but who eventually tries to take back control. The second features a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems to be a different person, perhaps even an imposter. The final story follows a woman who joins a wellness cult in search of its prophesied spiritual leader, a leader who will somehow have the power to raise the dead.
While clearly very different, already one can begin to draw themes across these narratives: the faith we place in hierarchies, power dynamics, and the freedom both to control and to be controlled. The stories are titled as i) The Death of R.M.F., ii) R.M.F. is Flying, and iii) R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich respectively, but the meaning of these titles and the acronyms are unexplained. That is, beyond the fact that R.M.F. appears to refer to a specific character, played by Yorgos Stefanakos, the only character appearing in all of the stories despite having very little involvement in the events that unfold – a passive, omniscient observer – a director perhaps, as the actor’s name might suggest.Â
Kinds of Kindness displays Lanthimos’ typical sense of dark humour in each of its stories, weaving together exaggerations, caricatures, and careful studies of human interaction. At various points in each narrative we see characters going to extremes in order to fulfil the desires of one another: rigorous cleaning rituals, self-harm, covert kidnapping – activities that at once seem ridiculous but equally feel very natural in the world of Kinds of Kindness, which makes for both a hilarious and an unsettling viewing experience.Â
The film prominently features animals, particularly dogs, something of a motif across Lanthimos’ work (Dogtooth, The Lobster, and most recently in Poor Things). At one moment in the second story, Emma Stone’s character recalls a dream she had, in which:
dogs were in charge. People were animals, and animals were people.
Here Lanthimos seems intent on blurring the lines, parallelling human and animal behaviour such that they become indistinguishable. Do we not all vie for affection, beg for forgiveness and lick sweat off our bodies, just like dogs would? Fundamentally this brings us back to the film's central question of power and control. Are we ever in control or simply following our whims, our animal instincts?
The disorienting style of Kinds of Kindness, a cast playing multiple characters across three films, really plays into this sense of control or lack thereof. As a viewer, just as you begin to get a hold of time, place and character these elements are stripped away and the process starts again. The actors do an excellent job of distinguishing themselves in each film, which is where Lanthimos’ focus on physicality, movement and acting with the body come into play. Emma Stone in particular has a wealth of experience working with Lanthimos in this way, and her ability to carry herself differently as each of the three characters she plays in Kinds of Kindness is testament to that.
In contrast to the acting performances, the very sterile, liminal spaces that make up the setting of all three narratives inevitably blend into one another - they feel uncanny, amorphous and lack specificity. The absence of locational signifiers makes it impossible to be clear about where any of these stories play out, and for ReidsonFilm, this made Kinds of Kindness a fiendishly exciting watch, as the result felt like entering a world where the works of Raymond Carver and David Lynch converge, where the mundane and the profound are locked in some absurd eternal struggle.
Jerskin Fendrix returns to produce the score for Kinds of Kindness. Having previously struggled when collaborating with composers, Lanthimos has clearly found someone he works well with, even giving Fendrix a small cameo as a piano player. Fendrix uses a sparing combination of dissonant piano chords and choral pieces for the most part, adding to the tension and unease which permeates Kinds of Kindness and harking back to some of those dramatic, atonal climaxes in Poor Things.
In addition to the original compositions of Fendrix, Lanthimos also takes the opportunity to leave thematic breadcrumbs in the musical accompaniments that reinforce the ideas at play. Featuring prominently in the trailers and the film itself, COBRAH’s electropop track, Brand New Bitch, opens with the line: Doggy with no leash, I am free and I am yummy; then the classic refrain from the Eurythmics Sweet Dreams: Some of them want to abuse you… some of them want to be abused. Both songs reflect that central dichotomy of freedom and control that emerges in each story. There are other examples too, a rendition of the BeeGees How Deep is Your Love? from Margaret Qualley. How far are we willing to go in service of approval or acceptance?
Even the Hymnals written by Fendrix have rather enigmatic titles when translated from Greek to English that allude to questions of bodily autonomy: Matia Vlemma Stoma Psema/Eyes Look Mouth Lie, Matia Ponos Stoma Fthonos/Eyes Pain Mouth Envy. What is clear in the music of Kinds of Kindness, as with the rest of the film and indeed what ReidsonFilm appreciate about the work of Yorgos Lanthimos, is that everything has its place and purpose. No stone is left unturned in his creative exploration and no expense spared in achieving a vision.
Kinds of Kindness has had nowhere near the airtime that Poor Things did, and I can only speculate as to why. It's not Awards season, people are watching the football, there are elections going on all over the place… fair enough. But this film really does deserve more attention than it’s getting, not simply because of its refreshing triptych structure, but it also stands out as a well-executed masterpiece by a director in his prime. It lacks the bells and whistles of its Oscar-winning predecessor, sure, but the originality, the complexity and its role as a vehicle for some terrific acting performances really does put Kinds of Kindness head and shoulders above anything else currently showing in the cinema.
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C - 86
Kinds of Kindness is out now on general release. Thanks again for reading Reids on Film and if you enjoy our writing do share this review with a friend.
This month last year ReidsonFilm were watching a lesser known film by one of cinema’s most celebrated film directors, Akira Kurosawa:
Dersu Uzala
Thanks for the review! I was debating if I should go because the three hour time was spooking me a bit haha. But I think I'll give it a go!