Kinds of Kindness (2024)

 

Genre: Comedy/ Drama

Time: 2h 45mins

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Quick Summary: A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife's demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searches for an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide

Where is the context for anything?

I'll be straight up honest. I think I was too stupid to understand this film. My poor monkey brain was working hard trying to follow everything. There is a lot that goes on, as it's three stories after each other. They don't relate either. At least I don't think they do. As a whole, it's extremely disjointed and really bizarre. It's like the director had ideas for three short stories, chose not to flesh them out, and chucked them into an almost three hour film. We watch credits for one of the stories for maybe thirty seconds before we immediately cut to the next story which usually just thew us in randomly with absolutely no set up. 

I think that was also my main issue. Nothing got explained. I feel like we were just supposed to know who these people were and why they were doing things. Yeah sure, I completely understand why Willem Dafoe is some sort of cult leader whose followers will only drink his body fluids and search for this random twin they want. It cuts in the most strange places, sometimes halfway through a conversation or a scene playing out. 

Acting wise I have zero complaints. Everyone is extremely well known and brilliant at acting. As soon as I saw the line up, I knew I would have no issues. I think, if their acting hadn't been so good and they all hadn't of been such goofy weirdos anyway, I would have hated this. I got more enjoyment out of seeing these weirdos just being what felt like themselves in a project for fun, than the actual story part of this. Everyone is really blunt and sort of speaks in a sort of strange, sharp way. The dialogue doesn't feel quite right, imagine what broken english sounds like but the sentences and what they are saying is correct. It's not how normal people speak or respond to people.

As for the stories themselves, I'll talk about them individually as they all have their own strengths and flaws. But first I do want to mention I was interested in all three of them entirely. I just needed more from them. We never really got conclusions to any of them, or (as I keep repeating) context. I also thought it was pretty fun this one guy kept popping up randomly in these stories under the name of R.M.F (Turns out he's an old Friend of the director)

The death of R.M.F:

This definitely had the most interesting premise if i'm honest. People live their life under the absolutely control of this one guy who is really particular about things. You are given a card to tell you what to wear, what to eat, what time to get up, what to do in your spare time for the next day. He controls every decision he makes and makes people do things just because he's curious to see what will happen, and these people just let him. No clue why, and you're never really sure how many people are doing this. I would have been happy to watch this as the entire film, I didn't mind this didn't have set up as I assumed it would be explained later on and I actually was intrigued to learn more about this whole thing. Jesse Plemons did pretty well, considering he was just kissing Willem Dafoe's ass the entire way, but he did a really good job at showing how desperate people can be just for attention. Shame this cut way too early and in such a strange scene too.

R.M.F is flying:

The worst of the three and the most confusing too. Emma Stone and Jesse share both the leads though I don't think either of them were particularly good in it, both giving us a completely different perspective each time. It sort of suggests either are cannibals, then the other is not who they say they are, the other is a fake, the other is abusive, the other asks really strange requests or the other does really strange things. It's like they're both pointing the finger at each other, without any of the drama or excitement. We see little snippets of these bits, but from both eyes so it gets really confusing. Don't even get me started on the ending of this one as just as I felt like I was starting to understand it just blew itself up with obscurity.

R.M.F eats a sandwich:  

Honestly this is the most weird of the three and I wanted so much more out of it. Answers and explanation. A bizarre cult who only drink and accept the bodily fluids of this one guy and are looking for this one twin woman. That's all the explanation we get. Emma Stone thrives in being a little weirdo once again driving around in a super decked out car. Aside from the creepy orgy clan, I wanted to know what the fuck was going on the entire way through this segment because the more and more things happened, the more answers I needed. If it wasn't for Emma, this would have been hell to watch.

This is unfocused, strange, and honestly a bit mentally draining. It looks good, from a production standpoint it's flawless. There are a lot of funky angles and shots, but that is not even close to saving this mess. Maybe I am too stupid to understand this. I left feeling irritated and disappointed because I sat through the entire thing hoping it would get better or something would happen so that everything falls together, or something to make sense.

3/10