Kinds of Kindness
Cinestudio
Hartford
August 12, 2024
Rarely has a movie left me as speechless as Kinds of Kindness, showing at Cinestudio through Aug. 15, managed to do.
It’s difficult to discuss a movie without talking about the plot, but it’s absolutely essential that the viewer go into Kinds of Kindness with as little foreknowledge as possible.
I’m still trying to make sense of what I saw on screen. Indeed, I sat on this review for a whole day as I turned over in my mind the genuinely shocking things I saw.
If you want to go in without knowing anything, here’s the tl;dr version of this review: You must see Kinds of Kindness. I don’t know if you’ll like it or not; heck, I’m still not sure if I like it or not. But I do know that for anyone who enjoys movies and can stand having their senses and ideas challenged, it’s an experience like none I’ve had in a theater in a long time.
At two hours and 45 minutes, Kinds of Kindness may seem like a daunting task to take on. However, the movie is mercifully broken into three shorter pieces, each about 50 – 60 minutes long. The three pieces are unrelated to each other, save for some thematic similarities that I’ll discuss below.
The film features terrific performances from Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau and Mamoudou Athie. The actors are repurposed as new characters in each short. I enjoyed this decision, because it takes each actor and reshuffles the relationships between them. The all-powerful in one short are meek in another. The approach allows each performer to express a range of emotions that are warped and twisted by constantly shifting power dynamics, agendas and flat-out weird plot developments.
The first short features Jesse Plemons as a man who has had his whole life planned out for him, and suddenly decides he’s had enough. The second also stars Plemons as a cop who suspects his recently returned wife, played by Emma Stone, is not being completely honest with him. The third short focuses on Stone, as she searches for a literal miracle worker.
Those descriptions barely touch the surface of what happens in less than an hour in each story, and I’m being deliberately vague because Kinds of Kindness is one of the rare films where the shock value of the film’s twists and turns serve a purpose other than titillation and surprise. There is a constant sense of unease and discomfort in each short, as the characters dance along a razor’s edge of somewhat plausible but increasingly absurd actions. When a surprising moment occurs, the viewer is pushed even further into their own discomfort, both in the immediate experience of what’s on screen and in the furious turning of the wheels in our own minds as we try to figure out what the fuck is going on. I found myself saying “Holy cow!” out loud more than once during the film. Sometimes that exclamation was followed by a laugh, and sometimes by a grimace, but it always drew me deeper into the strangeness I was watching.
There are some common themes between the shorts that don’t exactly tie them together, but give an idea of where co-writers Yorgos Lanthimos’ and Efthimis Filippou’s heads were during the creation of Kinds of Kindness (Lanthimos also directed, and plays the character R.M.F. who appears in all three stories). Dreams play a large part in each short, as characters either prophecy what will happen or use their dreams to interpret the weirdness around them. Polyamory is also a consistent theme, leading to some, again, shocking interactions between the characters across the three shorts. Finally, there are constant references to hunger and weight throughout the shorts, and while this plays a larger role in some stories than others, it is always there.
Scenes from Kinds of Kindness keep playing in my mind, and that’s perhaps the best compliment I can give to any movie. Many films leave a pleasant feeling that evaporates away like morning dew in sunlight. This one, though, has dug its nails into me, and I find myself squirming nervously as I recall one moment after another. I’m confident it will have the same effect on you.
NEXT
Kinds of Kindness continues at Cinestudio through August 15. It will premiere on Apple TV in late August.
Jamil returns to Theaterworks for the second part of its celebration of drag.
