Kinds of Kindness (2024)
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
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3 films that influenced Kinds of Kindness
What critics say influenced Kinds of Kindness
This is no surprise to longtime Lanthimos-heads (there are heavy Dogtooth and Killing of a Sacred Deer vibes here), but folks who got on board with his Oscar-winning (dare we say "crossover" material) Poor Things and The Favourite might want to step gingerly.
The overarching tone is what unifies the trilogy, too: the surreally dark humour, the careful sense of quiet and the stately pacing is more akin to Lanthimos’ earlier work —particularly Dogtooth and The Lobster (like those, Kinds is co-written with Lanthimos by Efthimis Filippou).
Yorgos Lanthimos’s follow-up to Poor Things contains three grotesque short stories about domination and submission, returning to the themes so clearly articulated in his debut about family madness, Dogtooth, 15 years ago.
I still have yet to see a couple of Lanthimos' older works (Dogtooth, Alps), however I am a big fan of The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, of which Kinds of Kindness is more so in the vein of than The Favourite and Poor Things.
Working more in the vein of his earlier, more surreal flicks like “The Lobster,” “Dogtooth” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” the filmmaker’s latest reunites him with Efthimis Filippou, the co-writer of those movies, to deliver a study on the many facets of control: How we claim to fight against but often return to it, and how often it limits our ability to live satisfying lives.
It also feels like pure uncut Yorgos, working in tandem with Efthimis Filippou, with whom he also wrote Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, both of which have a lot in common with Kinds of Kindness given their interest in social experiments and moral quandaries.
Kindness,” you see, is not the kind of friendly-surreal outing that “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” were. Those films defaulted to fun and extravagance, especially when compared with the rigorous absurdities of Lanthimos’ early movies like “Dogtooth” and “The Lobster.
…the careful sense of quiet and the stately pacing is more akin to Lanthimos’ earlier work —particularly Dogtooth and The Lobster (like those, Kinds is co-written with Lanthimos by Efthimis Filippou).
Given the punishing length of Kinds of Kindness, I might have preferred to see a slightly extended version of “The Death of R.M.F.” as its own feature film, because it reminded me so much of Lanthimos favorites such as The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Those movies thrived on human absurdity, yet their characters spoke in a bored monotone, regarding the strange circumstances of their lives with resigned terror.
The anthology Kinds of Kindness reunites Lanthimos with his longtime screenwriter Efthymis Filippou, and the two echo back to the days of The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, creating an off-kilter, uncomfortable, yet profoundly engaging parables about servitude and how nice is too nice.
Kindness takes him closer to his roots, combining the mundane setting and blunt dialogue of The Lobster with the visceral face-slapping that has somehow become his comedy trademark.
After the comparatively “normal” visions of “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos is back in provocateur mode. Working more in the vein of his earlier, more surreal flicks like “The Lobster,” “Dogtooth” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” the filmmaker’s latest reunites him with Efthimis Filippou, the co-writer of those movies, to deliver a study on the many facets of control: How we claim to fight against but often return to it, and how often it limits our ability to live satisfying lives.
…while these qualities are endemic to Lanthimos’s work, it was Filippou who channeled and greatly intensified them.
Given the punishing length of Kinds of Kindness, I might have preferred to see a slightly extended version of “The Death of R.M.F.” as its own feature film, because it reminded me so much of Lanthimos favorites such as The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Those movies thrived on human absurdity, yet their characters spoke in a bored monotone, regarding the strange circumstances of their lives with resigned terror.
I still have yet to see a couple of Lanthimos' older works (Dogtooth, Alps), however I am a big fan of The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, of which Kinds of Kindness is more so in the vein of than The Favourite and Poor Things.
Working more in the vein of his earlier, more surreal flicks like “The Lobster,” “Dogtooth” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” the filmmaker’s latest reunites him with Efthimis Filippou, the co-writer of those movies, to deliver a study on the many facets of control: How we claim to fight against but often return to it, and how often it limits our ability to live satisfying lives.
The anthology Kinds of Kindness reunites Lanthimos with his longtime screenwriter Efthymis Filippou, and the two echo back to the days of The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, creating an off-kilter, uncomfortable, yet profoundly engaging parables about servitude and how nice is too nice.
In this outing he harks back to the cold, clinical, sterile style of his 2017 horror The Killing of a Sacred Deer with each protagonist either being manipulated or being the manipulator of their unorthodox situations.