Review by Jan Mangion
Yorgos Lanthimos is a movie-making machine at the moment. His last one was not only a major success with audiences but also scored big at the Oscars with four wins. Before the release of his newest movie, he announced Bugonia, his upcoming project starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. The two actors are the main stars of Kinds of Kindness, Yorgos’s newest movie arriving less than a year after Poor Things.
Clocking in just 15 minutes short of three hours, this is the Greek director’s longest movie to date describing itself as a “triptych fable”, by presenting three separate stories. The first one focuses on a man who attempts to break the repetitive and controlled cycle of his life, the second sees a cop concerned about his wife whilst the third follows a woman who must find someone with an ability that no one can obtain.
Around ten hours before the 21:30 screening at Valletta’s outdoor cinema, I had the chance to attend an editing masterclass led by Yorgos Mavropsaridis as part of the Meditterane Film Festival. Mavropsaridis edited every single Lanthimos movie including this one and I was lucky enough to have a chat with him afterwards. Before I left, I told him that I was going to watch this movie later in the day but warned me that it was very dark and he was absolutely spot on.
If you have disliked or never watched a Lanthimos movie, you might as well give this one an immediate pass. Not only is this a Yorgos movie from opening to end but it’s a return to his early bleak work. It’s crazy, nasty, twisted, and cold, and it knows it is that. It’s certainly not for everyone, I saw people struggling to watch the screen at times and even some who walked out halfway through.
It is a lot and Yorgos still finds new ways to make the audience feel uneased in the presented stories. However, it is not even close to being dull despite being a tad overlong. Only a handful of directors like Lanthimos can make something so dark yet so engaging with its absurd premise, dry humor, and robotic-like dialogue and he does it three times here.
Each story whilst loosely connected in the same world is different from the other featuring a new set of characters played by the main cast and exploring different humanistic themes. Toxicity, devotion, and dedication towards one another, and, the obsession or crazy lengths they go to be accepted in a community whether as a group or individually are all explored in a complex yet freakish manner. This is shown to the full extent of the actions and decisions the characters make.
Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Mamadou Athie, Joe Alwyn, and, Hunter Schafer are all great in their roles, making their characters fascinating to watch, but it’s Jesse Plemons who tears up every single minute of the screen in all three stories, he is truly outstanding here. I also love how music is incorporated in such a sinister manner alongside its camera placements with a particular focus on close-ups and its modern visual look of lens flares.
Kinds of Kindness lives up to every single word of its definition. It’s not a crowd pleaser by any means, it can be challenging for some, and it may stretch itself on its runtime towards the end but this is a return to peculiar Lanthimos and I am eager to see what his next project is going to be like.
Final Score: ✰✰✰✰