It’s not that Yorgos Lanthimos is a marmite director for me because often it is within each film itself that I love things and hate things, there has been no film thus far in his oeuvre that I can fully dismiss and although I do enjoy The Favourite and The Killing of a Sacred Deer an awful lot, they are neither films that I have returned to and I fear could end up in a situation where unfortunately my overall disliking of both Poor Things and his new film Kinds of Kindness may lead to a retroactive souring. But again there is a lot I enjoyed within Kindness – but overall I have to be frank with myself and state that just like Poor Things this felt like an over bloated marathon with so little satisfaction.
Kindness is of course a different beast to Things, this time returning to working with his previous writing collaborator Efthimis Fillippou and penning the film himself aswell, this time with a triptych of what is being called fables, but are really just a trio of sardonic, aimless fanciful tales that are all underpinned by the trademark dry comedy of Lanthimos. Now when the comedy works for me and when the performances click and when the writing is intriguing and satisfying, then yes Kindness does hit the heights of some of Lanthimos previous best work. However we are in a world of short stories and so immediately the statistics of all three being this successful are flagged, however it’s not for me that the first story or the second or the third stand above the rest, it is more so that within each unsatisfying tale one finds ebbs and zeniths – the zeniths being few and far between of course. Overall the film is a major slog and the trisection of the film only leads the marathon to feel more egregious, each hour we are faced with a hump to get over as we will ourselves into another tale. The issue is of course that by the time we get to the end of the first and view its terribly unsatisfying end, the second is entirely overshadowed by the possibility and probability of another unsatisfying conclusion. Then by the time the second story reaches its intentionally nonsensical and fantastical revelation, we realise indeed that the third one will most likely be unsatisfying too. The third ending however was probably my favourite, however the film has built up such bad will with me up until that final point that I just could not get behind it. Again, however this is not a terrible film, just a very specific one with a variety of failings that I would never recommend to a living soul. The general public would be aghast and even hardcore Lanthimos lovers must find this in part more unsatisfactory compared the streamlined terror and comedy of Sacred Deer or The Lobster, or even as far back as Dogtooth.
The film does
like all Lanthimos projects however boast a sublime cast who are for the most
part given three performances to deliver – however this is of course stunted by
all Lanthimos characters having the same monotone delivery and so each
character very swiftly beyond costuming elements blend into the same person.
Emma Stone as Lanthimos muse I think here is given the least she’s ever been
given in a project with him and felt terribly average to say of what we know
she can achieve normally. Much the same can be said for the rest of the
supporting cast, even Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qually, who again, all do
wonderful work within the Lanthimos sandbox, but don’t actually offer anything
beyond their baseline best. Jesse Plemmons is the one perhaps who rises above
this most, or is this simply because this our first time viewing of him in the
Lanthimos mould? Either way his Cannes win for Best Actor is deserved I would
say, however I don’t think it will with regret stay in the top five of my
personal actor rankings for the year for very long at all.
A deeply withering 5/10 that does indeed have the highs you’d expect, but is swamped for me personally by just far too much annoyance and far too much unsatisfaction. A film that feels its length to no bounds and feels almost punishing. The performances are all solid and the majority of the writing is intriguing if not exciting and Lanthimos knows how to direct a film with craft. But one can’t help but feel terribly, terribly aggrieved by the tirade that is Kinds of Kindness in all the worst ways. It was such a film that legitimately made me unexcited to sit through another film that day. If nothing else is to be said on it, the film did indeed make a sometime three a day cinema goer not wish to view another film. Kinds of Kindness for that day at least made me dislike movie watching.
P.S. Never has a film started on such a kinetic pulsing adrenaline kick only to leave me completely deflated. Then again, I cannot give that credit to anybody other than Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart really. Yes, immediately opening with Sweet Dreams is on a level of Pulp Fiction and their use of Misirlou, but what follows after that opening song is, well, Pulp Fiction which this certainly is not.
-
Thomas Carruthers
0 Comments