on Kinds of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024

Would you like 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐬 𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐬𝐰𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐮𝐢𝐭 𝐲ou should wear?

Would you like to eat a sandwich with cutout liver? 

Would you like to be cleansed in a 100-degree sauna and then thrown out from a cult centered on sex and water? 

These are the questions Yorgos Lanthimos asks us in an almost psychotically direct tone in this film that thankfully goes back to his less glamorous and more experimental absurdist dramas. A subtle line between a dark comedy and theater of the absurd is delicately drawn; a return to the psychological games of The Lobster, 2015 and The Killing of the Sacred Deer, 2017. 

Aesthetically, the most important statement here is that every instance of kindness is inverted and connected to psychological, emotional, or physical cruelty. Pain and domination bring joy to at least one or several characters at a time. It used to be humanity that was supposed to save us, but alas it did not. At least it did not in Lanthimos' universe where power verticals rule supreme.

by Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani