When attempting to decode Kinds of Kindness, it becomes fashionable to cut the film apart. I remember having this in mind as Eurythmics’ breakthrough track, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” peals throughout the opening sequence. The lyrics reiterate an unforgettable notion: “Everybody’s looking for something. Some of them want to use you. Some of them want to get used by you. Some of them want to abuse you. Some of them want to be abused. Sweet dreams are made of this. Who am I to disagree?” But Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest movie contains a very similar essence in motion.
Filmed during the post-production of last year’s award season favorite, Poor Things—which delves into themes of ownership, self-discovery, and class—Kinds of Kindness marks a return to Lanthimos macabre absurdism seen in his earlier works such as Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015), and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). Yorgos’ new black comedy (co-written by Lanthimos and his erstwhile collaborator, Efthymis Filippou) revolves around a triptych fable of separate, disturbing stories which feature some quondam Yorgos players—Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Joe Alwyn, and Margaret Qualley—alongside a few newcomers like Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer, who render different characters in each of them and simultaneously enacting various forms of mistreatment. It’s strange, anamorphic, gory, humorous, and unhinged.
However, if you acquiesce in the motion picture’s uniqueness and look beyond its cinematic record, it is an exploration of the lengths people will go through not only for validation but to also prove their devotion to one another—and the people who exploit those measures. In the first segment, “The Death of R.M.F,” Plemons portrays a businessman, Robert, who is so loyal to his boss, Raymond (Dafoe), that he allows him to control every detail of his life for a decade: what time he goes to bed, what he wears, what he eats, what he’s entitled to, and whether or not he makes love to his wife, Sarah (Chau), etc. Among the tasks, Robert is goaded to crash his Jeep into an oncoming vehicle. But after doing so, Raymond informs him that he did not ram the car hard enough. When Robert protests that replicating the assault could kill the other driver, Raymond still encourages it. This causes Robert to decline and without warning, everything in his life starts to get taken away, including Sarah and the gifts he’s given by Raymond. It’s as if turning down Raymond is like defying a higher power. And even if Robert means well, he continues to aim low. Subsequently, Robert discovers that he’s slowly being replaced by Rita (Stone), a woman he embarks on pursuing and struggles to adapt to his newfound freedom. Feeling helpless, Robert occupies his time striving to win back Raymond’s heart, kidnaps the survivor of the crash R.M.F (Yorgos Stefanakos), and ultimately takes his life. Raymond then accepts this move of desperation, welcoming Robert into his embrace again.
Visually and rigorously, “The Death of R.M.F” doesn’t stand alone in mirroring themes based on real life. Because of Yorgos’ directorial choice of weaving violence and cruelty into his characters’ relationships, we, as spectators, eventually understand that certain acts of violence are not represented as the opposite of kindness but as kindness itself. In fact, the other two stories “R.M.F is Flying” and “R.M.F Eats a Sandwich,” display parallel ideas. One follows a cop, Daniel (Plemons), whose marine-biologist wife, Liz (Stone) is rescued after months of being lost at sea. When she is flown to safety by R.M.F and taken home, Daniel notices that she’s changed in trivial yet remarkable ways that only he seems to acknowledge. The more Daniel watches Liz fulfill the “unimaginable,” the stronger he’s convinced that she’s not actually his wife. And soon Daniel brings to have a feeling that Liz is doppelgänger posing as the bonafide woman he married. While his paranoia grows, he rejects Liz’ ventures of doing things she thinks he would appreciate: expressing physical intimacy, spending extra time with his partner/close friend, Neil (Athie), including his wife, Martha (Qualley), and cooking him meals. He talks to her in a very imperious manner: frigid, delivering his best “No Lion King!” caricature. Thereafter, Daniel’s actions result in him making gestures of psychosis. He is then put on leave by his department and has to eat something before taking his medication. In light of this, he urges Liz to remove her own thumb and liver so that he could reap the advantages of meat consumption. But what stands out most about his behest is how it’s genuinely an immediate exhibition of her loyalty towards him. Liz then rises to the challenge, inflicting both pernicious wounds on herself and ensuring that no matter how knavish Daniel’s requests seem to be, she’ll forever abide by them because she is truly the person who loves him.
The final yarn, which is perhaps the bleakest of the three, delves into the existence between two members of an outlandish cult, Emily and Andrew (Plemons and Stone again), who are publicly husband and wife. They spend their days looking for an individual that has the power to resurrect the dead while their routine consists of never-ending purification and venereal congress. The duo also uses tears as a substitute for drinking water. But their position within the sect comes at a cost: all representatives must sever ties with their families and declare allegiance exclusively to cult leaders. Whenever Andrew is asleep in their hotel room, Emily sneaks over to her previous home and flicks it around her daughter’s bedroom. And Joseph, who is her estranged husband, played by Alwyn, still firmly welcomes Emily back. Over time, staying for dinner with him later equals Joseph allowing himself to misuse her trust. In other words, despite coming across as ‘normal’ on the surface, Joseph turns out to be further morally reprehensible than everyone else combined. He regards it in the same way that the narrator of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” regards traditional generosity—that anyone who shows a fragment of benevolence or hospitality towards another is just doing so in a bid for personal emolument.
In Yorgos’ filmic universe, it’s terribly apparent there is no escape from harshness. But it is also clear that people will treat others brutally, regardless of the status of their association, because to them the cost of these obligations feel worth paying. Seeing the cast hit off with the Greek director’s ingenious style makes one satisfied to face its runtime of 165 minutes. Plemons whose Cannes Prix d’interprétation masculine (Best Actor Award) winning performance fills all three of his roles with exceptional deftness. Onscreen, he is Kinds of Kindness’ guiding light. Along the lines of Stone, Plemons can play every part with conviction but also insert traces of his own acting style. (A marvelous example ahead of Lanthimos’ next project, Bugonia, set to reunite Plemons and Stone.) Furthermore, as supporting actors, Dafoe, Mamoudou, Chau, and Qualley are great here, too. There’s nothing like watching them offer memorable line readings and use of physicality that leave the audience giddy with delight, as if someone has uttered something so pristine or moved in ways people have never seen before. Or, maybe, something comparable to what Tinashe favors: “matching each other’s freak” in her viral R&B song ‘Nasty,’ which also ironically describes the morbid, atmospheric vibe Lanthimos appears to be pulling back in after the newfound commercial skin he’s grown.
At the end of the day, humans will ubiquitously do whatever it takes to be seen, loved, accepted, and controlled. Together these allegories in Kinds of Kindness not only exposes that but also provides the room to think about these things and the human condition. Occasionally, these ideas can be understood in various ways. But what can be more complex than that? Who am I to disagree?
