Perversions of Kindness and Ab*sive Relationships | Kinds of Kindness Explained

Kinds of Kindness is Yorgos back in his weird bag,  it’s like he said oh y’all thought Poor Things was   freaky just you wait. I kind of love the fact  that he’s roped more people into his films,   with slightly more palatable ventures  in Poor Things and The Favourite,   and a cast of actors so likeable they’re likely  to draw in an audience on name alone. I think   it’s exposing more people to experimental  cinema and I really love him for that,   it’s what mainstream movies are  missing. Stuff that actively   wants you to be critically thinking both  during and after the film finishes.   Yorgos is so successful at this as he is able to  balance entertainment and captivating stories with   just wild scenarios. The fables he concocts here  are just truly bizarre but not without purpose,   there’s meaning behind his madness. I will be  attempting to unpack the meanings behind all of   this craziness and I think a fitting place  to start is simply the title of the film,   it’s so incredibly smart as it doesn’t really  give away what the film will be tackling but   by the second story you’re starting to grasp  what the connective tissue is between these   vignettes. In this we are exploring kindness  in our society in various ways but I think   more so the perversions of kindness. In Kinds of Kindness, Yorgos uses an   anthology to portray his weirdness  in a multitude of different ways.   Throughout each of the stories we are  brought into worlds which have varying   degrees of magical realism to them but  what stays consistent is characters who   are perceived to be kind or characters who  are viewing other characters as kind.   In the first story Raymond, played by Willem  Dafoe, is perceived to be kind by Robert,   played by Jesse Plemons, but control is a form  of kindness to those being controlled. It’s   this dizzying, disarming kindness that once  you’ve escaped it you crave it, it becomes   part of you. Yorgos is interested with the idea of  capturing how comforting control can be for some,   the elevation of all your own choices, the  idea that someone will make decisions for you,   out of interest for you, out of kindness. It’s sad that it takes being asked to severely   injure someone for Robert to even realise that  perhaps Raymond doesn’t have his best interests   in mind, and what’s even sadder is once he’s  able to get out he has lived for so long under   control he is unable to live without him that  he crawls right back to the warm oppressive   grip of being controlled by someone. To a fresh  eye this is clearly an abusive relationship,   and in part I think Yorgos wanted to explore  the intoxicating and enchanting kindness that   is felt from those in abusive relationships. It’s a thread that appears throughout all three   stories. Raymond in the first is controlling,  Daniel, played by Jesse, is mistrust and paranoia,   and both the cult and Joseph, played by  Joe Alwyn, in the third are sexual. It’s   deeply ingrained in the roots of the film and  it’s something wholly unique to this film,   the disarming allure of abusive relationships is  rarely explored and Yorgos does so here with a   tenderness which is perhaps a strange word  to describe this film but it’s kind to the   characters in the film who have lost themselves  to these abusive relationships and shows how   easily any of us could find ourselves in one. The second story is extremely powerful in showing   both sides of these relationships. Daniel we  find at a low but clearly he has this devotion   to his wife, Liz played by Emma Stone, as he’s  desperate to find her. Once she’s returned to him,   she’s different in his eyes and he believes her  to be a person pretending to be his wife. His wife   has went through an extremely hard situation  and it perhaps has changed her slightly but   since she no longer fits the mould in which  Daniel has laid out for her he has resorted   into believing she’s not his wife. It’s quite the allegory for controlling   relationships once again, Daniel is seeking  to control his wife to fit his narrative,   Liz is not granted the autonomy in her  life to explore who she really is under   the oppressive foot of her husband. This  oppression is clearly comforting however,   much like Robert in the first film, control  has become a expression of love for Liz, you   see this more clearly in this story that she has  an affinity for Daniel, she’s become enamoured by   her captor. She would figuratively and literally  cut pieces of herself out just to please him.   As this pertains to the ending of this story  I think it’s more metaphorical than literal,   Liz perhaps has killed herself in the end but  to Daniel that means his wife is completely   devoted to him and fits the mould he made  for his wife. Or alternatively it is just a   metaphor for Liz being willing to cut pieces  of herself out for her husband, for love.   The third story follows the same thematic  through line of kindness being a form of   power and control being the root of this kindness  but once again in a strangely disarming story.   We follow Andrew and Emily who are on the hunt  for a young woman who has the ability to bring   people back from the dead. We find out that the  pair of them are a part of this cultish group   of people who have been codified to believe  that Omi, played by Willem Dafoe, and Aka,   played by Hong Chau, are these pure being who’s  tears are purifying and have immense knowledge.   We find out that Emily has left her husband  and daughter in order to join this group but   still visits their home every so often  to leave her daughter stuff. It’s not   hard to draw parallels between the previous  stories and this one with regard to control,   this comes in the form of Omi and Aka who have put  all these people in a daze believing all of their   peculiarities but I think more interestingly  is the ways in which, specifically sex,   is contrasted with Emily’s husband. It’s very clear in the film that Joseph rapes   Emily, he lures her in with kindness and acts on  these impulses as a means to have ownership over   Emily. However, earlier in the film when Emily  and Andrew are preparing to have sex with Omi,   I think this equally could be viewed as a form  of rape. Specifically Emily doesn’t seem to be   thrilled with the idea of having sex with Omi and  yet she does as she’s been essentially forced to,   Omi has ownership over all of these people  due to his power within the group. It’s   less explicit but both of these scenarios are  using sex as a form of control and power.   It’s fascinating each of the vignettes deals  with control but with different modes of control,   the first being power dynamics, the second  being love and the last being sex. In a way   Yorgos is exploring the same idea of how  easily kindness is perverted into cruelty   and often kindness is used as a way to nullify  and control people. He explores this idea though   through these different ideas of control  to show how bleak kindness can become as   so much of kindness is able to be corrupted and  weaponised as a form of control over people.   In each of these stories we find the people stuck  in these abuses of power using a fixation as a   way to obscure control and dull the conscious  knowledge that what they’re experiencing is an   abusive relationship. We find Robert fixated on  routine in the first story, and when he actually   chooses to stop Raymond having a control over  his life, he’s paralysed with choice. We see   him at the bar unable to order a drink, and the  resulting drink sounds familiar to the bartender.   Proceeding this he begins to play out how Raymond  helped him meet his wife. From this I think it’s   clear that the drink he ordered was the drink he  ordered on the night he met his wife and he became   so reliant on Raymond informing him on how to go  about his life, even when he is granted authority   over his own life to do whatever he wants he  still falls back into the comfort of routine.   The second story Liz’s fixation appears to simply  be her husband, she is so enamoured by him and his   love that it’s enough to nullify the hurt he’s  enacting on her. We’re only privy to after the   time Liz went away but it’s easy to infer that  this was not a healthy relationship prior and   Liz was simply doing what her husband wanted  to appease him. She really loved her husband,   even if that meant changing who really is to  fit his idea of her, she wanted to do so as   she had this complete and utter adoration for her  husband and believed in there love so much despite   this love being so easily destructible  when she didn’t fit his idea of her.   The third story Emily’s fixation is this woman  with abilities to bring people back from the dead   which is quite dark as the fixation she has is  something concocted from her captors. She’s under   the impression that finding this woman will fix  all of her problems and as such goes to extreme   lengths to get this woman. When she does she’s so  far gone that she simply wants this woman to get   back into the group and appease her leaders. What’s so incredibly fun about Yorgos’ work is   that all of this heaviness and tackling of  dark and shied away from themes is packaged   in such strange and wonderful stories  which are simultaneously entertaining,   it’s thought provoking cinema and it’s pushing  the boundaries on what gets into cinemas.   It’s fun to analyse whether or not Yorgos feels  this way just generally about kindness. The film   is called kinds of kindness but really explores  the ways kindness is perverted and manipulative,   the film itself is kind to characters who  fall for this fallacy but really are we all   just characters falling for this kindness and is  kindness simply a way of controlling each other   I’d love to know what your opinions were  on kinds of kindness and iof you agree with   this read of the film or if you have your  own, if you liked this video give it like,   subscribe, and for more movie opinions follow me   on insta. And before you go don’t forget  to let me know what you found in frames