Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos has returned to his provocative ways after the relatively “normal” visions of “The Favourite” and “Poor Things.” This time, he’s working more in the surreal vein of his earlier films like “The Lobster,” “Dogtooth” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” reteaming with the co-writer of those movies, Efthimis Filippou, for a study on control. How we claim to fight against it but often return to it, and how often it limits our ability to live fulfilling lives.
“Kinds of Kindness” is bursting with ideas; if anything, it feels like three separate films that Lanthimos and Filippou couldn’t quite stretch out to feature length, so they decided to combine them into an almost three hour anthology. Conversations about what binds the films together thematically may be fruitless. But what definitely unites them is Lanthimos’ mastery of tone another movie that’s riotously funny and absolutely terrifying, even when it closes itself off from interpretation. The anthology aspect does bring to mind the theory that if you try to make two (or three) movies you’re not making one cohesive one. But the audacity is hard to resist, and here again we have a cast bringing its A game for a filmmaker who knows how to work with ensembles.
The first film within the film is playful even in its title: “The Death of R.M.F.” It doesn’t take long before one realizes that at least two characters’ initials could fit those letters then wonders if maybe there’s another character whose name they could stand for (especially when someone shows up with those letters printed on his chest). Could be him! But no Lanthimos protagonist would be so obvious. So instead we have Robert Fletcher (Jesse Plemons), Raymond’s corporate lackey who dutifully follows every order. Like most Lanthimos movies, the filmmaker takes a relatable concept and pushes it to cartoonish extremes in order to illuminate its truth you think your boss is controlling? Raymond tells Robert what to do with nearly every minute of his day, including when to eat and when to fuck his wife Sarah (Hong Chau). He’s even making Robert drug her into miscarrying so they won’t have children. But Raymond’s latest command kill the man with the initials R.M.F. finally sends our hero over the edge.
When Robert starts resisting a murder charge, things get messy. He’s worried that he has been replaced by the corporate machine and is scrambling to become a cog again. Plemons is amazing here he radiates the kind of desperate energy that comes from adults who never really had any control over their own lives and don’t know how to handle drastic change but his performance also grounds Lanthimos and Filippou’s vision in an emotional spiral that feels relatable. “The Death of R.M.F.” is easily the most effective of the three chapters, and it is also the one that puts its thematic throughline control, what happens when we lose it into clear relief. It’s not for nothing that Robert and Sarah are gifted one of John McEnroe’s broken tennis rackets or Ayrton Senna’s battered helmet; they’re relics from lost moments of control.
That theme is expanded upon (and arguably muddled a bit) in the center chapter, “R.M.F. is Flying.” Plemons returns here playing Daniel, who at first seems like a man drowning in grief after his wife (Emma Stone) goes missing at sea following a helicopter crash. His obsession with finding her sends him spiraling at work as a police officer and as a friend. But he doesn’t seem happy when she comes back, quickly convincing himself that this woman on his doorstep is not actually his missing partner. So he keeps pushing her to prove her identity to him: Who are you? Why should I believe you? And so on, until things take an extreme turn (“R.M.F” takes great pleasure in extreme turns), which again requires Plemons to do some heavy lifting emotionally. This time around, though, it feels like more than even Jesse could manage.
Finally there’s the rich “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” which fans will argue ties everything together under a banner of destruction of autonomy the controlling boss in the first chapter, the imposter in the second chapter, and now a cult that is trying to reverse death in the third. Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons) work for that cult, which is run by mysterious Omi (Dafoe) and his partner Aka (Chau), who are looking for an unknown woman capable of resurrecting the dead. When Emily stumbles onto a person she’s seen in her dreams named Rebecca (Margaret Qualley), she becomes convinced that Rebecca is the one. But then she’s pulled back to a home she left behind, complete with daughter and horrifically abusive husband (Joe Alwyn). Again, cults are about control by their very nature, and it’s a playground for Lanthimos to get as weird and disturbing as he wants to be especially since this particular sect seems to prize emotional manipulation above all else.
While the text “Kinds of Kindness” might inspire a multitude of thinkpieces and coffee-shop debates, it seems less internally cohesive than some of his best films. Plemons giving not just one but at least two (maybe three) of the year’s finest performances helps to hold “Kinds of Kindness” together; even so, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there was a pre masterpiece, pre Oscar nominee version of this movie that might have been more streamlined by dint of having slightly less complete creative freedom. Few filmmakers have earned a free pass more than he has. But maybe that’s not always a good thing.
With the Oscars for his last two movies and an apparent return to prestige cinema form in the cards, “Kinds of Kindness” could become something people look back on as a digression in what I hope will be an extensive canon. Even if it does end up being that a footnote it’ll still stand as evidence that desperation is not one of Lanthimos’ many failings; he is secure enough in his voice to follow along wherever his interests may lead him, audience or no audience.
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