Three stories about people who seek the truth in their distorted realities.
Arthouse cinema is still alive. It’s been some time, but I remember before entering the screening, someone turned to me and asked, “Really? That’s almost three hours.” My answer simply was: “If the narrative is strong and engaging, time disappears.” So… does it?
From the outset, the deliberately wooden, emotionally flattened performances signal a clear return to the early sensibilities of co-writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos. Characters repeat each other’s names with clinical precision, responding in ways that feel performative, awkward, and humanly detached. Which is not bad acting; this is an A-list cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Yorgos Stefanakos. So, I would argue it is highly controlled stylisation. The awkwardness is the point.
What unfolds across the film’s three distinct (or perhaps not entirely distinct?) worlds is a reality that looks like ours but never quite behaves as ours does. Actions feel off-beat. Reactions arrive half a second too late. Dialogue sounds as if it has been filtered through an unseen puppeteer (Lanthimos). The effect is dreamlike – or perhaps nightmare-adjacent – as though we are watching human behaviour rewritten.
There is a clear creative kinship with the work of David Lynch – or tribute, if you may. Alongside writer Efthimis Filippou and editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis (lifelong collaborators), Lanthimos constructs multilayered narrative spaces filled with recurring motifs: food rituals, obedience, dreams/nightmares, impostor anxieties, sexual compulsions, chanting music, and those wonderfully dissonant and unsettling piano notes that seem to arrive from nowhere.
So, do the three hours fly by? No. They do not. If mainstream narrative and pacing are your comfort zone, the film will feel long and intentionally abrasive. But for viewers attuned to Lynchian frequencies, such as Twin Peaks (1990), the experience is intellectually and aesthetically rewarding – even if time remains very present.
Kinds of Kindness is not built for universal appeal, which is why there are mixed reactions. It is built as a controlled experiment in tone, rhythm, and behavioural distortion. For some, it will feel alienating. For others, it will feel like a loving, carefully constructed homage that keeps a certain cinematic legacy very much alive.
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