Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a vengeance, delivering a film that feels closer to his earlier cinematic endeavors. "Kinds of Kindness" is a challenging film in the sense that you have to experience it emotionally. Trying to intellectualize it will only lead to frustration. It's the kind of film that provides you with a very unique experience. When the credits roll and you leave the movie theater, you don't leave the film behind, you take it with you at home. It affects you, it lingers in your mind, and it makes you think about it all the time. That is, at least, the effect the film had on me.
Many things have been said about Lanthimos and his potential cinematic influences. From the cold, cynical minimalism of Michael Haneke, to Lars Von Trier's provocative, violent, and disturbing cinema, and finally, to Stanley Kubrick's ambitious, cinematically rich Odysseys. With this film in particular Lanthimos reaffirms what I always felt about him. There's a surreal, dream-like, psyche penetrating effect that he achieves with many of his films and "Kinds of Kindness" is definitely the most surreal, dream-like, and psyche penetrating cinematic experience that he has ever provided us with. I feel like he is much closer to David Lynch than most people think.
Watching "Poor Things" I felt like he was doing something like "The Elephant Man"-an adaptation of somebody else's work that people felt maintained his identity but was quite different and much more accessible compered to his earlier films-and now, "Kinds of Kindness" feels like he automatically jumped to making something along the lines of "Lost Highway" or "Inland Empire", an original film that is very experiential and hard to intellectualize, denying conventional interpretation and instead, aiming for the senses.
Three different stories, different characters played by the same actors, themes varying from power and control to love and death, "Kinds of Kindness" is certainly a unique kind of film that really grows on you the more you're thinking about it.
Lanthimos reunites with his fellow screenwriter and partner in crime, Efthimis Filippou and the result is exactly what I was expecting. I feel like this is a very personal film for both Lanthimos and Filippou with the second story in particular being a very devastating exploration of how we desperately want our significant other to be exactly the same way they were when we first met them. Or, at least, that's what I got from it, having watched the film once, so far. The final scene from the second story, strongly reminded me of the ending of Lynch's "Eraserhead" when Henry is finally reunited with the woman from the radiator after having exterminated the source of his problems aka his unwanted child.
The first story I felt was by far the most disturbing one, considering the state most people from younger generations find themselves into; sacrificing the prospects of leading a normal life and having a family, all for the sake of maintaining a prestigious job and achieving financial wealth, as they completely submit to those pursuits. This is something that is very evident in Greece and most countries of the Western world as well.
The third story is probably the most difficult to interpret, both in and of itself and in terms of how it creates the bigger picture that is this triptych of a movie.
From a technical standpoint, the film is meticulously crafted which is not particularly surprising considering that Lanthimos has proven time and time again that he is a remarkable filmmaker. The fact he is one of the last few remaining filmmakers who still shoot on film is very inspiring for younger, aspiring filmmakers who unfortunately grew up in an era in which cinema was transitioning from film to digital. The film looks gorgeous and the visual aesthetic of the celluloid elevates the film's atmosphere and otherworldliness.
After I watched the film, I was trying to understand whether Lanthimos and Filippou intended for us to see all these different characters played by the same actors as the same characters reincarnated in different lives-an interpretation that isn't exactly off the table, considering the film's surreal and occasionally supernatural logic-but eventually, I came down to the conclusion that they were trying to communicate something else.
We are all completely different in many respects, but in the end of the day, we are all struggling with the same things and we have very similar problems and existential anxieties which essentially make us all different versions of the same individual. It doesn't matter whether you're a slave of your boss, your husband, or your pastor. There's only one constant in life, and that's death.
We're all just trying to survive and find some kind of meaning. Some kind of kindness that might ease the pain of the inevitable ending that will come for as all.
-B. V.
