Film Review: Kinds of Kindness (2024)
Vice-President Rhea Chalak reviews the upcoming Lanthimos triptych, Kinds of Kindness (2024).
I always question myself when I end up in the unfortunate situation of being stuck in a cinema watching a Yorgos Lanthimos film. I say cinema more specifically because you feel truly trapped in one, unlike with your laptop or TV screen; just you confronting the film (or vice versa), and the possible awkwardness of having to crawl around someone and prove that you did not have the guts to take what Lanthimos has placed before you. But then when you walk out of the cinema—into the bright, reassuring lights of the mall—and you’re forced to interact with society normally (as if you didn’t have something traumatic blaze right into your eyeballs moments prior), you realise that perhaps the film was onto something, but you struggle to find the words for it. It felt all the more intense because the preview I attended was slated for 10 a.m., and I felt that I should’ve gotten some mental preparation and maybe skipped breakfast. This was (a more elaborate version of) what I’d told my friend when she asked me how I found the film.
Lanthimos has not rested after the success of absurdist Victorian-adjacent Poor Things (2023), with Kinds of Kindness (2024) premiering less than a year after. While retaining some of the original team of the former, Kinds of Kindness sees Lanthimos reuniting with Efthimis Filippou, his co-writing partner on his other notable projects like Dogtooth (2009), A Killing of A Sacred Deer (2017), The Lobster (2015). In that vein, Kinds of Kindness marks a similar return to something truly chilling and unsettling, reminiscent of his earlier films; yet at the same time stretches it further into a different direction.
What makes the film the most unsettling is its setting. It appears very normal: it is set in the vague present, with your average American suburbs and middle-class lifestyles and contemporary outfits. It is the normalcy that makes it bitingly uncomfortable; what starts off as something comfortingly familiar begins to feel nauseating as the unfamiliar creeps into it. Its familiarity is what makes it so successfully disturbing; unlike Poor Things (2023) or The Lobster (2015), for example, the drastically unfamiliar setting makes an absurd behaviour appear somewhat acceptable. In Kinds of Kindness, when watching a character do something that contradicts our opinion of societal normalcy within that very normal setting, there is a sort of intrinsic repulsion or aversion that emerges from your skin (no thanks to all our social conditioning). In fact, it is this social conditioning—rather, what we consider to be normal or “kind”—that is dissected (sometimes quite literally) and critiqued in the film.
Like any writer with undying self-confidence I went to poke my nose around in other reviews of the film. I was surprised by the amount of criticism it had gotten. On Letterboxd, someone had written how it felt like “an exercise in acting” (I’m rephrasing from memory). Stephanie Zacharek wrote of how it felt like “a movie full of flashcard words masquerading as ideas", and how it was “our job to sort them out”. I began to wonder if this was less about the film, and more about the presentation of said-narrative. Kinds of Kindness is a triptych, which makes it stand out from other films in Lanthimos’ oeuvre. Without going too much into details, the film presents three seemingly unrelated short stories, all reusing the same few actors in varying capacities. Each short explores different types of human relationships, the “kinds of kindnesses” (or lack thereof) that drive or motivate their sustenance, as well as an attempt to regain something lost.
I’d argue that it is greatly unfair to compare Kinds of Kindness with previous works of Lanthimos; or anthologies of shorts with large feature films as a whole. This brings me to the question of the Short Story. Whether in literature or in film, the Short Story is often overlooked, perceived as a stepping-stone to make way for a bigger feature. It passes by too quickly, it is less impactful. It is, more often than not, considered an “exercise” in writing, acting, film-making. Does that reduce it to being insignificant? Would this deem it unworthy of being considered real cinema?
“With a feature film that only has one story, the audience can engage more actively because there is room to think about what is happening and apply your own logic… With an anthology, you bring whatever you’ve been thinking about from the first story into the next. It is more complex and more engaging. Different people identify different themes, which is a hugely interesting structure.”
This intention is very visible in the viewing experience of the film—and also, of the short story in general. When consuming an anthology, you often are left with an abrupt ending, something that feels unfinished. With written word, you have the privilege of re-reading the short before moving on to the next. Within film, the viewer is left unable to properly process what they’ve just watched before being thrust with the next, shocking (in the case of Kinds of Kindness) story that leaves a similar reaction of bewilderment. It is this strange purgatory of understanding and confusion that makes the film all the more excruciating. There is a state of discomfort created that then increases exponentially as the film continues, culminating in an ending that (to me) feels both immensely cathartic and exasperating.
Beyond the narrative structure, the film does well in other aspects as well. The signature crashes and absurd sound signifiers are at times too on-the-nose, but the strange song choices at certain junctures remind us that it really is a comedy (the scene where Emma Stone goes crazy to the COBRAH song Brand New Bitch is a personal favourite). It is not just the music; at times the absurdism gets so intense that you’d find yourself laughing at something so horrifying that you wonder if the film has desensitised you to morbidity. The cinematography and colours of the film are very beautiful: vivid, bold and saturated, which in a way also constructs the tension between the normal and abnormal, the real and surreal. The actors all do brilliantly in their drastically different roles and characters—it seems the “exercise in acting” was rather successful after all—and their stilted, awkward mannerisms add to the uncanniness. It is the pacing of the film that is its real flaw. Perhaps it is deliberate: at times it is painfully slow and drawn out, making the film a more unbearable watch. This is all the more evident in the second short, which could have benefitted from more concise cuts for a narrative that is not as action-heavy when compared to the other two. A pacing and editing that is as ruthless and cold as some of the characters of the film would have tied all the elements into a film that is more compelling and authoritative.
When looking at the film retrospectively, Zacharek’s vicious description of it as “flashcard words” that need “sorting” feels comical. I’d argue that this is not a weakness but rather a strength, underlining the nuances within and between each story that require a deeper level of cognisance and critical thinking. What is art if it does not challenge you and your perceptions or ideologies? I’d further argue that the film is actually not that complicated, but maybe this differs from individual to individual. After Poor Things—which disappointed me—Kinds of Kindness has redeemed Lanthimos, reminding his viewership of his brazenness (and shamelessness) in exploring the most intense depravities. Do yourself a kindness and watch it.
Kinds of Kindness (2024) is releasing at the projector on 29th august, 2024. click here to book your tickets today.