Review: In Kinds of Kindness, Tales of God in a Godless World

Is there anyone that can match Yorgos Lanthimos' freak? The Greek director has become known for films that play with power, from the struggles within a depraved family in Dogtooth to the rivalries of scheming English nobles in The Favourite. Even his recent hit Poor Things dealt with sexual politics despite its fantastic premise. But in his new film Kinds of Kindness, an anthology of three stories scripted with longtime screenwriting partner Efthimis Filippou, he considers the most powerful being of all, God.

One could call this film Lanthimos' most religious-minded movie yet. All three stories in Kinds of Kindness feature characters played by the same troupe of actors in changing roles undertaking various tests of faith. Take the first vignette: Robert (Jesse Plemons) is a drab, awkward architect in thrall to his boss, Raymond (Willem Dafoe). Raymond controls Robert's life completely down to the food he eats and the times he's allowed to have sex with his wife, Sarah (Hong Chau). In return, he lives in a nice house furnished with classy midcentury modern furniture that looks like it just came off the truck from West Elm, complete with a room full of oddly specific sports memorabilia such as "a genuine smashed McEnroe racket from 1984," all gifts from Raymond.

One day, Raymond's demands become too cumbersome. He wants Robert to slam into an oncoming car and attempt to kill the driver, a man who has agreed to risk his life and does not fear death. It is Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac repeated, except Robert's trepidation at killing a total stranger, rather than a familial issue, perhaps marks him as more decent than the Biblical patriarch. Robert refuses. In response, Raymond cuts him off completely. His job is gone. His wife leaves after Raymond's invasive involvement in their relationship is revealed. In the end, he learns the hard way that for some tests of faith, the only way out is through.

Such bizarre trials are nothing new for Lanthimos and Filippou. The two wrote all of the director's films, from his 2009 breakout Dogtooth to The Killing of a Sacred Deer in 2017. Their deadpan sensibility and bizarre story situations, in which characters must confront absurd and harrowing conflicts with other people while maintaining a façade of normalcy, generated press declarations of a so-called "Greek weird wave." They took a break when Lanthimos made The Favourite and Poor Things, his two most broadly popular efforts in which he toned down the weirdness.
With this film, however, the Greek freaks are back in fine form, and they're joined by a cast that is totally game and firing on all cylinders. Emma Stone, Lanthimos' muse since The Favourite, who controversially won an Oscar for her wild leading role in Poor Things, settles perfectly in his absurdist style. She also honed her weirdness on the Nathan Fielder series The Curse, which shares a lot of thematic DNA with Lanthimos. Plemons, who won Best Actor at Cannes for his turn in the film, morphs his brand of good-natured middle-American nicety masking psychological chaos to suit the film's weird world. Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Mamoudou Athie, in a variety of roles across the three episodes, also shine.

The staid, isolating backdrop of American sprawl, a character in itself, plays a big part in upping the absurdity. Lanthimos films among bland McMansions and nondescript environs in and around New Orleans, and just as with Linklater's Hit Man from earlier this year, we don't visit the French Quarter. Kinds of Kindness could look like anywhere in America because 99 percent of America looks like everywhere and nowhere at the same time, down to the unpleasant HGTV-core home interiors some of the characters inhabit. These are contrasted with gorgeous black-and-white sequences depicting the characters' dreams, memories, and visions. Lanthimos understands that most of the world is uninteresting, and that's part of what drives people in his movies insane and animates their inner lives. He also understands that suburban Americans are very much like the kings and heroes that populated ancient Greek drama — their human perversity and frailty undoes them despite (or because of) the fact that they live better and command more wealth and power than a good chunk of the rest of the world. Like Buñuel, he understands that the bourgeoisie are crazy. But he also knows that in America, a majority of us think of ourselves as middle class — or, as Steinbeck wrote, "temporarily embarrassed capitalist(s). So, in effect, we're all crazy.

One way I know Lanthimos really gets America right is in the second vignette, in which Plemons plays a cop, Daniel. I'll give you one spoiler: Yes, he does indeed shoot an innocent civilian during a routine traffic stop. But getting there brings us through another test of faith. Daniel's wife, Liz (Stone), a marine biologist, has recently been rescued from being stranded on a desert island, and she's come home changed. Daniel begins to notice things about her. Her shoes no longer fit. She binges on chocolate cake and smokes for the first time in her life. He begins to convince himself that she is not his wife but rather some kind of body-snatcher. He takes all the money out of their joint account, fearful that she'll steal it. When he misplaces his phone, he accuses her of taking it; later, during the traffic stop, he's convinced that the phone in a teenage driver's pocket is his, planted by his not-wife, and he pulls his gun on the passenger in a fit of paranoid confusion. Then he does something even more bizarre and disgusting (and hilarious) to the wound.
This is not the end of this story, which will take even more sadistic and horrible turns before a very funny, unexpected conclusion. But we have to wonder, would someone other than a police officer, conditioned to view everything and everyone with suspicion, have responded differently in this situation? Would they have treated the changes in their spouse with compassion rather than fear? The ensuing power struggle between Daniel and Liz recalls Sacred Deer, which set a tale of psychological horror within the bleak trappings of, of all places, a nice, modern hospital in Cincinnati. Taking inspiration from a play by Euripides, it pitted a doctor (Colin Farrell) against the curse of an impish youth (Barry Keoghan) who tells him his entire family will die unless he kills one of them. Indeed, all three contract the same mysterious illness in succession, and when a sacrifice is made (I won't reveal the details), the others recover — coincidence or prophecy?

Yet if the mysteries of divine intervention are treated with anxious dread in Sacred Deer, here the story beats, though disturbing, are much more comedic in nature. This is a very funny film with lots of outrageous details, some of them admittedly quite dark. Miracles are punchlines in Kinds of Kindness, and endings are happy, depending on your point of view. That's especially true in the final story, which concerns an actual religious cult. Emily (Stone, again) has left her husband and daughter to join these weirdos, who practice free love yet are obsessed with contamination. Initiates must sweat out all toxic substances in a sauna to prove their worthiness, and all the members drink exclusively out of water blessed by their founders' tears. Emily also searches for a mysterious woman she saw in a dream, who she believes has the power to raise the dead. Again, all this takes place in suburban Louisiana, in motels and veterinary offices that are remarkable in their all-encompassing banality. It's a search for something divine in a godless landscape, and while I won't say where Emily's quest finally takes her, a final twist of the knife from Lanthimos and Filippou certainly proves their skewed perspective on faith: No matter how much you have, God doesn't always reward it.

Kinds of Kindness. Starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou. 164 minutes. Rated R. Check for showtimes at miaminewtimes.com/miami/movietimes.