Critics Have Seen Kinds Of Kindness, And Yorgos Lanthimos’ Latest Collab With Emma Stone Promises To Be Polarizing With Its ‘Pitch-Black Humor’

For a near-3-hour feature riding on the momentum of offbeat humor punctuated by Jerskin Fendrix’s ridiculous yet appropriate score, I found the pacing to never miss a step as far as keeping me involved. Ultimately, while I have no doubts mileage will vary on how much some appreciate what Kinds of Kindness has to offer, there is a sense of discovery with something so deliberately out there as this that I was happy and willing to go along this journey, and was met with a weird sense of elation throughout, even when the movie angled toward its darkest of ideas. I guess I can just agree with how Lanthimos pulls the strings.

As these things go, two out of three ain’t bad, and it’s nice to see Lanthimos back in the saddle as one of our foremost mainstream explorers of abuse and malaise. Sure, his works with Tony McNamara feel acerbic enough, but there’s a rush to seeing Yorgos peer into the abyss of human cruelty and forcing our heads down to peek too. It loses its luster after a little while, but Kinds of Kindness commits itself to unveiling our pathetic human need for connection, and the ways we’ll destroy ourselves (and others) to grasp it.

A triptych whose title provides merely a vague clue as to its overriding purpose, Lanthimos’ latest is a study of compassion, love, sacrifice, and belonging that doesn’t embrace oddness so much as sloppily tongue-kiss it. Attuning itself to its own wacko wavelength and then riding it through three distinct tales—which are populated by the same actors in different roles—it’s about as unconventional as marquee releases get, frustrating easy readings and thwarting dramatic and comedic expectations at every careening turn. Alternately electric and maddening, it’s likely to polarize audiences more than any multiplex offering this year.

All the set-ups are intriguing, and wouldn’t look out of place in the twist-driven series The Twilight Zone, which may or may not be an inspiration, along with the works of Franz Kafka. But the tone is so bleak, the dialogue so off-kilter (even for Lanthimos), that it’s hard to enjoy the film in between its comical moments. You might care to see this as an allegory about power, sex and control, but it doesn’t feel like it’s saying anything particularly profound.

Because [Lanthimos'] inclination is toward suppression, smothering banality, and cerebral detachment, his lack of focus on this film renders a more crudely over-determined and unyielding product than he’s made in some years. The abstraction is presented with even more cloying cuteness, the sadism is more juvenile and purposeless, and the humor is stomach-turningly glib.