Yorgos Lanthimos’s films (“The Favourite,” “Poor Things”) are anything but conventional. “Kinds of Kindness,” the Greek director’s latest, is a triptych fable exploring themes of control, love, and obsession starring Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Hong Chau, playing three different roles throughout each story. Though the film has a 165-minute runtime, the vignettes have their own distinct storytelling styles, which create a thoroughly engaging piece of art that can also be frustrating but never feels as long as it does and is consistently absurd in its visuals and humiliating for its characters while also using dark humor.
We’ll have to accept that Lanthimos’ films aren’t for everyone. However, given that “Kinds of Kindness” is divided into three vignettes, each is unpredictable and very entertaining because its stars show their range through three different kinds of performances in stories as weird as the next. Of course, this also means the stories require different kinds of patience, seeing how one isn’t like the other.
The film’s first story, “The Death of R.M.F,” follows Robert (Plemons), a mild-mannered and happily married man who has spent his entire career pulling all sorts of odd jobs for his powerful boss, Raymond (Dafoe). The two have an interesting employer and employee relationship as the former has dictated everything about the latter’s life – and I mean, everything from what he can eat, drink, and read to how much he has to weigh and that he isn’t allowed to have children with his wife (Chau).
Though the office drone owes everything he has, like his house and priceless sports memorabilia – smashed John McEnroe racquet, Ayrton Senna’s charred racing helmet, and a pair of Michael Jordan shoes – to this boss, Raymond has his limits. After failing to kill a target using a gifted Ford Bronco, Raymond asks that Robert has to do it again. Robert refuses, much to Raymond’s dismay. Still, Raymond relieves Robert of his duties, and from there, Robert’s life unravels.
The first story revolves around themes of control and love, with Raymond losing both after making a regretful decision. He tries to stay afloat by getting hired at different jobs to no avail. He tries to hawk his sports memorabilia to collectors, who then estimate the total at a measly five-figure value. Even his wife leaves him. So, as Robert’s life spirals out of control, he tries to do anything to get it back, including redoing all of Raymond’s scheduled tasks – no matter how humiliating or painful it can be. Of course, this doesn’t work, and the power Raymond has over his subjects starts to show as Robert engages in stalker behavior, following his boss and begging him to take him back. When none of that is successful, he eventually finds Rita (Stone), an ophthalmologist who falls for the broken man. But how soon will Raymond have to resort to completing his original task to regain the success that he had lost?
Plemons delivers a controlled and subdued performance, one that punches up the story and elevates the scene’s requirements. While Robert has materialistic and monetary successes, it wasn’t of his own free will. Everything he owns has been controlled and predetermined by an eccentric man who wields so much power. He’s also obsessed with being in love. Still, he doesn’t know the first thing about it, seeing how every aspect of his life has been reduced to a schedule and required readings of Leo Tolstoy’s novels on a note card. So when Robert’s life has been stripped away, he resorts to desperate measures to return to his boss’s good graces. It’s pathetic and shows how spineless the man is while also tying to the film’s central themes of love, control, and obsession.
“R.M.F. is Flying” takes a different approach to visualizing its themes. In the film’s second vignette, we see Daniel (Plemons), a cop grieving over his wife’s disappearance while on an ocean expedition. The man is wallowing in so much sadness that it affects his job performance. His chief notices the odd behavior as he sees Daniel look at a suspect the same way a man would after sleeping with a woman for the first time. His partner, Neil (Mamoudou Athie), assures the chief that it is nothing to worry about.
Of course, Daniel’s world suddenly lights up when Liz (Stone) returns home. It was a harrowing experience for the maritime explorer who describes being stranded on an island where the dogs were the humans, and the humans were the dogs. One would think trauma would play a factor in Liz’s odd behavior, which includes eating foods she dislikes, like chocolate, or making unusual requests. However, Daniel suspects that Liz is an imposter. No one believes him, which makes Daniel increasingly isolated. So much so that he is forced to take a leave of absence after he mishandles a simple traffic stop. To prove his theory is correct, he makes Liz mutilate her own body. She obliges him without question. This time, how far will Liz go to make Daniel happy?
So what could have been a straightforward and conventional imposter story turns out to be a bizarre test of love. Though it’s clear to Daniel that Liz isn’t the same person he thinks she is, their lifestyle choices and traumatic events tell us these characters are anything but ordinary. Like “The Death of R.M.F,” “R.M.F. is Flying” sees its creates obsessed with making demagogues happy. Liz will do just about anything to satisfy her “love.” She is willing to go as far as to defend her husband, whose unrequited love would typically spell doom for just about any married couple, from her disappointed father (Dafoe). The twists and turns of this story only make the mystery surrounding Liz even more perplexing. As such, it helps the story unravel organically – at least in ways that suit Lanthimos’s storytelling.
For “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” “Kinds of Kindess'” final story, Plemons and Stone play Andrew and Emily, respectively, two members of a cult who are searching for a seemingly ordinary person with the power to resurrect the dead. This person must meet key requirements set by their leaders, Omi (Dafoe) and Aka (Chau). During their travels, Andrew and Emily constantly drink from a water jug and have to return to the compound to refill it so that they can quench their thirst.
Again, “Kinds of Kindness'” story is more than it seems and far more abstract than the other two. It’s later revealed that Emily’s attention is split as she returns to the house where her estranged husband and daughter live. Emily is caught between two worlds, one where she believes she will change the world by finding one person who can perform miracles and the other where she can love her family.
The throughline for all of these is that central characters go to great lengths to honor their subjection to their boss, their lover, and their spiritual leader. Their oppressors display a kind of power beyond explanation, at least to those who don’t live within Lanthimos’s beautifully constructed worlds. The cult is obsessed with the idea of keeping its members pure, so they are barred from fornication and can only drink from a large pool of water filled with Omi and Aka’s tears. Should they be deemed contaminated, they are exiled.
Black-and-white scenes serve as flashbacks to give us a visually heightened context of our characters and how they got into certain situations. Scenes in their colorized real-time are a dull flatness to the theme, and there’s nothing extraordinary about the set pieces surrounding these characters. This isn’t to say that the production design and cinematography are boring. Far from it. Instead, it shows how seemingly these ordinary worlds are populated by people living with extraordinary circumstances that only Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou can think of
“Kinds of Kindness,” like most of Lanthimos’s films, isn’t for everyone. There’s no trick to understanding what kind of film the Greek director has crafted, nor is there a clear message. It’s one of those what you see is what you get, and what you get is an absurd triptych fable that refuses to be anything but conventional. Such a diabolical approach to the storytelling about control, love, and obsession is either brilliant or frustrating. Still, there’s something to be said about the director telling a story using his own unique style and voice. And that’s what will have us watching, even if we don’t quite get it at first.
8.5/10
