Theater of Cruelty
Yorgos Lanthamos Regresses
By Cole Smithey
Since going mainstream with the shockingly delightful "Poor Things," the heir-apparent to such Cinema heavyweights as Michael Haneke, Peter Greenaway, David Cronenberg, and David Lynch, serves up a half-baked mess.
Unintelligible.
Greek avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthamos re-teams with regular co-writer Efthimis Filippou to create a triptych of stories, each one more morose than the last.
It's the same poorly articulated breed of satire that hobbled other Lanthamos/Filippou projects — see, or rather don't see: "Dogtooth," "Alps," "The Lobster," and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer."
Here is feel-bad Cinema for the masses.
Pointless misery.
Eat up babies.
In "Kinds of Kindness," the viewer is left to their own devices to extrapolate on narcissist bosses, trigger-happy cops, group sex with friends, health cults, and, well yes, cannibalism. Rape and incest also get the Lanthamos spotlight.
If you are going to punish your audience, there ought to be a good reason for it. You will find no such purpose in "Kinds of Kindness" unless you are willing to put yourself through days of mental gymnastics.
The concept for the movie seems to spring from the Annie Lennox/Dave Stewart song "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," that introduces the movie.
BDS&M misery.
It is telling that Lanthamos's most successful film "Poor Things" was written by other writers, namely Tony McNamara and Alasdair Gray.
Telling too, is Filippou's explanation of "Kinds of Kindness."
"Our main concern is to observe people, behaviors, clothes, and reactions and create a story that relates to something almost real and relatively believable."
How vague can you get?
I dare say that this particular approach will never lead to the narrative heights that David Lynch reached with "Blue Velvet" or "Mulholland Drive," much less Lars von Trier's challenging high-wire act.
Lanthamos flagrantly disregards one of Cinema's strongest precepts, namely that the filmmaker is responsible for sustaining an audience's trust. One reason that Alfred Hitchcock's movies are so good is due to the way Hitch treats his audience. You know that you are in capable hands.
If he were a doctor, Yorgos Lanthamos might, for example, want to amputate your thumb just to see your reaction. Fun for him perhaps, but not for you.
Rated R. 164 mins.
