Kind of Kindness: One underwhelming short sandwiched in between two compelling ones.

Rob Ryan

⭐⭐⭐

Kind of Kindness tells three bizarre, off-kilter, unpredictable and unconnected stories about people who in one way or another are driven by a devotion to a person, a cause or their way of life. It shows them going through the motions of losing the thing that makes them whole and then so desperately in psychotic ways, try to get what they lost back by any means necessary. After hitting gold with the wired, wonderful and fantastical Poor Things, writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos has gone back to his more dry and deadpan presentation which made him so peculiar to a lot of people in the first place, which is more telling considering that he has reunited with longtime writing partner Efthimis Filippou to helm this anthology film. This certainly doesn't have the wow factor of Poor Things and I seriously doubt that most people will gravitate to it, but as it is I found it compelling to digest and introspect long after it ended even if not all of it's elements come together.

The film reunites Lanthimos with Emma Stone, William Dafoe and Margaret Qualley who starred in Poor Things, it co-stars a cast who all play different characters in each new segment. They include, Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie and Joe Alwyn. The first story involves a man (Plemons) who is let go from his job due to refusing an order from his boss (Dafoe) to severely kill a man in his car in order show his commitment to their partnership. It's not until the aftermath of this exchange we see how much of his life the boss character has control over, his wife (Chau) leaves him, (after revealing to her the true reason why she's not been getting pregnant) job opportunities dry up and he's no longer got that status he once had. The second story see's a cop (also Plemons) who's wife (Stone) disappeared on an expedition and has finally come home, since then the wife starts to behave strangely, at least according to the cop character as we never knew what his wife was like before she vanished but regardless he convinces himself that his wife is an imposter and that paranoia destroys him both in work and personal life. The final story see's a member of a strange sex cult (Also Stone) accidentally break their sacred code and thus tries to win their trust back by tracking down a girl who maybe the key to their "Chosen One"

It's hard to determine what significant connection do these stories share side from reoccurring motifs and easter eggs which indicate this is all taking place in the same universe, but as I let it settle I realised that in my estimation that these are tales of how far some will go to get their lives back. Some get what they want, others aren't so lucky. The film takes that must have mentality that all of us have buried deep and takes them to their most extremes. No matter how much we try to hide it, there's a hidden urge to take back control, to take back some level of stability instead of sucking it up and moving on. It's a film that attempts to understand and show off our worst impulses. Stuff that you would never think anyone would do until they actually do it.

My biggest qualm with the film however mostly comes with the second segment sandwiched between the other two, the film has a nice book end with the first and last story being the most compelling but while the second one has genuine squirm worthy moments and an interesting set up, it's the one that feels the least cohesive with it's ideas and it's ending is very abrupt and doesn't have a satisfying conclusion to it's mystery, it's also the one that feels the most meandering and poorly paced and it's metaphors for the difference between humans and animals aren't that original nor subtle. It's not all bad, but it's the one that worked for me the least.

For me, Yorgos Lanthimos and his style of filmmaking is one that I have trouble getting on board with, when the actors and dialogue seem to be on the same frequency of dead pan monotone delivery. The Lobster and Dogtooth where certainly examples of this as the dry presentation of those films made me feel detached to the events on screen in spite of the content, The Killing of the Sacred Deer had the benefit of being a legitimately scary movie, The Favourite a lavish and quaint period piece and I've already said my piece on Poor Things. This is a movie that I found hard to get behind initially but I guess what Lanthimos is doing here is allowing the audience to engage with the film rather than just looking at what's there on the surface but it does make it hard to engage upfront as opposed to a film like Poor Things which managed to find the right balance between accessible and original.

But this isn't bad overall, it's hard to take it all in at first, but there are some occasional funny moments, there's an underlying cruelty and cynicism in all the stories that make you feel uncomfortable (in a good way) the ending has the perfect sense of irony I have ever seen in a movie in a while and the cast are all pros. This is ulitimatlay the result of an eccentric filmmaker who thanks to mainstream recognition, has now been given all the funding to make a movie that is purely in their vision and for that I recommend it for that alone but be warned, this will be hard to stomach. The audience in my showing were certainly baffled at what they had witnessed but in an age of trepid and conventional movies, that's got to count for something, right?