9. Kinds of Kindness, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
At the end of my screening of Kinds of Kindness, a gentleman stood up and yelled "WHAT???". This is the kind of reaction I want out of an audience. If a movie does not disgust and confound, why even make it? I do not know what this guy expected to see before the end credits considering the long 166 minutes of movie that had come before. Perhaps he believed there would be some sort of explanation, some clear message and point to it all.
He must not have been paying attention.
To be honest, I'm not sure what Kinds of Kindness is about either. I'm less lost than that poor fellow, but I'm still pretty lost. The difference is that I was laughing glee, and that guy had his night ruined. Kinds of Kindness is not a movie about "kindness", as in any form of altruism. It is not about "kinds" either, if you consider the title as meaning similar types or sets of things. The title seems to be random. It was the third name Yorogs Lanthimos considered for this project, probably chosen because it had the best SEO. This movie is a three-part anthology film with all three stories named after a character with named 'R.M.F.' That character is played by Yorgos Stefanakos, who is not an actor, does not get a speaking role, and in real life is simply the director's friend. Those letters "R.M.F." do not stand for anything according to Lanthimos. In two of the tales, R.M.F. is killed. In the third, he is brought back to life. None of the stories connect with each other besides the fact they star the same core cast of Emma Stone, Jesse Plemmons, Willem Dafoe, and Margaret Qualley. Why any of this? Why not?
The one thing these stories have in common, what makes them a "kind" if you will, is that they're really weird. There's a recurring dynamic of control. That is control to the point of absurdity, and the pleasure gained in existing under extreme masochism, extreme surrender. Our first tale is about an employee, Robert (Plemmons) who lives his entire life and entire existence according to the orders of his boss, Raymond (Dafoe). This is down to his food, his sexual habits, his dress, even his weight. His life unravels when he fails to kill R.M.F. in a planned car crash - this murder being planned for no particular reason -forcing Robert to try to either find his own independent life, or to win back Raymond's favor. The second story is about a wife (Stone) who is so subservient and incomplete that she cooks herself to feed her husband (Plemmons). The final act is about a sex cult of hydrophobics in Florida searching for the Chosen One, living under the leadership of a horny guru named Omi (Dafoe). They must keep their fluids safe and unpolluted from the outside world, be that fluid water or semen.
Lanthimos is as Lanthimos-y as he's ever been with this trilogy of Kinds. There are blunt matter-of-fact requests for a sex orgy. People have dreams about dogs being the dominant species feeding their human pets chocolate. Margaret Qualley plays very bad piano while singing from her heart as two men embrace on the couch. A normal world exists out in the corners beyond this stage, but what we see is surreal, but completely unabashed in its weirdness. These characters are fully liberated from the normal, be that chopping off fingers or kidnapping young women or murdering a stranger. You simply follow the rules of whatever micro-social structure and you find liberation, there is true love, there is even the hope of salvation.
Or maybe not. This all just be pure comedy. Kinds of Kindness three set pieces that all building brilliantly to a punchline. Every story ends on the most hilarious possible musical note. To nail a short story so perfectly that's craft, and Lanthimos and his team do it three times. Lanthimos carries us through these ideas, these characters and their world and its rules, then fires a shotgun blast of complete absurdity right at the end. You're not quite sure what has happened, why it happened, and you have more questions than answers. But something incredible has occurred. One story leaves us with Emma Stone throwing it back to a song called "Brand New Bitch" while a comatose woman is slumped over in a wheelchair.
Is that a good ending? A bad ending? I don't know. I do know that it is damn good cinema, baby.
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