Looking back on 2023, one of the year’s best films remains Poor Things – Yorgos Lanthimos’ contemplative black comedy about gender, sex, and intellect. The movie transcended its Oscar season trappings to crossover as a genuine word-of-mouth hit, inspiring think pieces and lots of memes. The film fits well into Lanthimos’ usual signatures – dreadfully dark premises, brought to life by a unique and biting sense of humor. Not one to stay idle for long, Lanthimos’ latest, Kinds of Kindness, comes almost nearly on the heels of Poor Things, but sure to hit a different tenor from its predecessor.
Kinds of Kindness is the type of movie you make when you cash in your chips to tackle a passion project, for better or worse. You could even consider it to be the Beau is Afraid of 2024. It is a bizarre, melancholic look at a litany of disturbed and deranged individuals, varying from ambitious family men, murderous suits, mild-mannered death seekers, and enigmas returning from the brink of an early grave. But unlike Poor Things, I don’t believe Lanthimos’ latest will enjoy the same level of crossover appeal. Kinds of Kindness is a more solemn and certainly more cryptic piece of entertainment, firing several riddles and bits of symbolism at the audience to be figured out later. While Poor Things packs on more of the laughs, Kinds of Kindness has more in common with The Lobster (2016), it’s comedy used as a backdrop for the film’s pensive questions about control, the thin line between love and power, and societal norms.
The film is broken up into 3 distinct stories, which showcase the marquee cast members portraying 3 separate characters. One of these stories peers at a do-gooder company man, Robert (Jesse Plemons), who repeatedly fails to satisfy the demands between his psychotic boss (Willem Dafoe) and his caring wife (Hong Chau). As we learn more about the depravity at play in this weird relationship, it is unclear what motivates Robert’s boss to have such intrusive demands. But that appears to be by design, as to not so easily define the metaphor, the focus is more on the inappropriate power dynamic. Robert is brought to pathetic lows because he lacks backbone and self-respect, but it also becomes clear that he can’t live without the approval of some bloke in a suit. The relationship between the two gentlemen eventually crosses over into the deranged, and with it, the movie is able to satirize the extremes of employer-employee relationships.
For a filmmaker who’s openly challenged the societal pressures to get married, a narrative that critiques the weird parasocial relationships that employers tend to encourage seems right at home. Plemons, who is always excellent, inhabitants this world like a man stuck between his morality and his supposed societal obligations. But the character is so straight-laced, perhaps a Ned Flanders brought to live action, that he’s a perfect target for corporate enslavement and the need to slowly turn individuals into robots. It is not a coincidence that the film positions Robert’s inappropriate workplace relationship as a major threat to his family and sense of self. However, how coherent the movie is able to keep its thematic elements is up for debate. As the movie gradually advances toward the abstract, it becomes difficult to discern the film’s message from its satiric eccentricity.
The movie’s fractured storytelling, splitting the narrative into multiple parts, will probably remain the most polarizing aspect of the film’s execution. The decision to tell the story in this matter is a difficult task, one that asks you to invest in three different characters/performances from the principal actors. Consider Emma Stone, who must portray an aloof femme fatale, a cult member, and a housewife suffering from psychosis. While these are all colorful depictions, the impressions these characters can leave are stunted by having to split the runtime in three.
As a result, despite sporting an A-list cast, you have the dilemma of the actors here having their best performance by way of one specific character, but the film devoting equal screen time to two less dynamic characters. Margaret Qualley steals a few scenes through a comedic interpretation of a pampered housewife, but her additional roles don’t leave as big of an impression. Despite Qualley going on to have greater importance to the plot, each new character must start from scratch with the audience, and that goes for everyone else here. It’s a movie that begins so character-focused, but the film also mortgages just how memorable the characters can be.
So what, ultimately, is this amalgamation of a movie, and does it form to become something worthwhile? If there’s a consistent descriptor for Lanthimos’ filmography, it’s that his movies are not really set in our world. They’re set in an eccentric, alternate reality but one that allows the filmmaker to take ideas from our world to absurdist extremes. Here, the film is primarily about relationships, their transactional nature, and how different relationships fuel different actions. Each major character is haunted by the potential loss of their source of love and self-esteem. Those sources vary from paternal control freaks, multiple wives, and the safe space of a cult. In each situation, Lanthimos examines the dynamics of these relationships by testing what the characters will do to maintain their affection, and almost none of them are willing to stop at murder.
Now, is this experimental exploration into the transfer of affection the best way to tackle this topic? I’m not sure it is, as the story’s fragmented nature becomes a journey of comparing the arcs of several disparate characters, as opposed to growing a bond with a finite group of people for an extended period of time. But I can’t deny that the film’s episodic nature has produced an eclectic blend of far-out-there stories, each one leaving you to question human logic as the characters seem to be motivated more by passion than common sense.
Apropos, as the film’s title implies the showing of love in multitudes, in different shades, from easy-to-explain social bonds to illogical stubbornness by way of insane devotion. Kinds of Kindness is a study of the sort of bizarre affection that can only be explained by the randomness inspired in intricate societal situations – we’re capable of doing unspeakable things in the name of the communities we keep, and largely for selfish reasons. It’s a funny, well-acted, grotesque ride – but at two hours and forty-five minutes, it is not one I’m likely to traverse more than once. I’m all for an artistic vision and stories that are outside of the box, but the movie is perhaps too secluded and conceptual for repeat viewings, and I can only be so kind.
