Kinds of Kindness

Last year Yorgos Lanthimos made quite an impact with his film, Poor Things. This year much of the Poor Things cast was brought back for his latest project, Kinds of Kindness. Lanthimos is a controversial director as his films are either loved or hated. I personally have a love/hate relationship with his work; I could not possibly hate The Killing of a Sacred Deer anymore then I already do, but I really loved Poor Things. Unfortunately on the spectrum of his work Kinds of Kindness is somewhere closer to The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Jesse Plemmons is creepy as hell, I could not hate that magenta ass turtleneck any more than I do, it's horrible.

“Skinny men are the most ridiculous thing to exist”...alright William Dafoe let’s calm down it's not like you're beefed out.

His boss is dictating his life. There is some sort of weird control thing happening here. The car accident was even orchestrated by his boss. He wants him to intentionally crash again, faster this time. We have creepy piano music again…

Everyone Robert interacts with also seems to be under his boss's control.

That classic Yorgos, straight, flat acting style is very present. It’s not inherently bad but it's very much a signature part of his style.

Raymond is very used to being in control, when asked to do things over again his wife seems entirely unphased. Is this a cult movie? Is Raymond a cult leader?

So Robert has been under Raymond’s control for a really long time, he's controlled his whole life, including meeting his wife and her not being able to have kids. The physiological torture this poor woman has gone through is insane. Robert sells off the sports memorabilia that Raymond gave him.

Creepy music is happening when Robert is in some specific emotional turmoil. Robert cons another woman into helping him and when he asks her on a thank you date, she stands him up and turns out it's cause she was hospitalized. She was hospitalized because she is also under Raymond’s control. Him stealing the racquet back is hilarious. Robert kills car crash guy because that's what Raymond wants. Killing to prove loyalty is very cult like.

Okay now we're in a completely different story. I kind of hate anthology features. I don't think you can actually put them up against normal features; the narrative and structural elements are completely different. Yorgos can submit 1 or all of them as short films, but nothing more.These last two are really slow, and kind of poorly written.

Absurdism is also fascinating to study and sometimes it gives us some groundbreaking film elements but it is just not my genre. I get it, I do. I understand the appeal from a filmmaking perspective but for all the time? Terrible, pretentious, bleh. Absurdism is also supposed to be a great format for social commentary but these short films aren’t saying anything. They are just narrative nonsense. These shorts have nothing to say, there is nothing profound, or insightful happening here. It’s just absurdism for the sake of absurdism and I think that's a waste of everyone’s time.

This movie is really a demonstration in overindulgent creatives. Visually, it was distinct and was clearly a Lanthimos film. The directorial style fit the stories he was telling and perfectly matched the visuals and music. The acting and casting was impeccable. The failure came in with the actual writing. All of the objective technical elements were well executed but the actual storytelling was extremely lacking. None of these shorts actually felt like complete stories and we have established that there was no actual narrative involved. 3/10, I think the first short will get nominated for it's Oscar but it doesn’t deserve it.