Yorgos Lanthimos has become one of the most recognized global filmmakers in the past few years. However, this is surprising considering the types of films he chooses to make. They do not fit the norms of Hollywood filmmaking and feel justifiably weird. Still, his “Poor Things” and “The Favourite” were celebrated in the American award circuits. After indulging with grand set design and wider-than-usual framing choices in these films, he returns to working with his frequent screenwriter collaborator, Efthimis Filippou. With “Kinds of Kindness” (2024), we see his unhinged and sardonic side that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Besides Filippou, Lanthimos also collaborates with Jerskin Fendrix for the musical score (who also appears in a brief cameo).
Spoilers Ahead
Kinds of Kindness (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness” follows three stories loosely connected through some common narrative threads. The film’s central cast featuring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, and Mamoudou Athie play different roles in these three stories.
What happens in ‘Kinds of Kindness’?
“Kinds of Kindness” follows three different narratives: “The Death of R.M.F.,” “R.M.F. Is Flying,” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.” The character R.M.F. features in all these stories but acts mainly as a narrative device for their thematic explorations.
‘The Death of R.M.F.’ Plot Summary & Synopsis:
“The Death of ‘R.M.F.” revolves around a toxic relationship between an employee and his employer/the corporation he works for. The boss, Raymond (Willem Dafoe), controls every aspect of his employee’s life – Robert (Jesse Plemons). He schedules Robert’s daily routine, dictates his interests, and plans his overall life. In the past, Raymond made Robert pursue his now-wife, Sarah (Hong Chau), when they saw her at the hotel. However, Raymond doesn’t want Sarah & Robert to have any kids. He ensured this through medical procedures and tricked Sarah into thinking her abortions were miscarriages. Raymond continues controlling Robert’s life, even ordering what & when he should read, eat, drink, or have sex.
Eventually, Raymond orders Robert to kill a man named R.M.F. Robert makes an unsuccessful attempt that injures both him & R.M.F. Later, Robert requests Raymond not to let him commit an immoral act like killing a human being. Raymond insists Robert obey him. Presumably, for the first time, Robert refuses Raymond’s order. So, Raymond fires Robert and tells him that he is free now. The next day, Robert notices a gift from Raymond: a bent but iconic tennis racquet missing from his house.
He tells Sarah the truth about their relationship and her miscarriages. On that very day, Sarah walks away from her job and the life they had built together. Robert gets overly suspicious and starts frantically looking for her everywhere, but to no avail. Besides her, Raymond also cuts all contact with him. With his life all over the place, he fails to find a sense of control.
‘The Death of R.M.F.’ Ending Explained:
Robert keeps trying to get in touch with Raymond. He even dreams of scenarios of their meeting. Eventually, he catches Raymond in a parking lot and begs him to take him back under his wings. Raymond refuses Robert’s plea. Soon, Robert retrieves his missing racquet in Raymond’s house. Then, he learns about Rita (Emma Stone), Raymond’s other employee who is also meant to kill R.M.F. It turns out that Raymond controls her life as he had earlier controlled Robert. So, Robert gets close to her by pretending he is a wounded soul. Eventually, she gets hospitalized after her unsuccessful attempt at killing R.M.F.
To win back Raymond’s trust & approval, Robert enters the hospital R.M.F. is at. He pretends to be a nurse and sneaks R.M.F. outside the hospital. Then, he throws R.M.F. off his wheelchair and gets in his car. He repeatedly drives it over R.M.F. to kill him. Finally, after this action, Raymond accepts him back. The segment ends with Robert in an embrace with Raymond & his young partner, Vivian (Margaret Qualley). This story examines the twisted power dynamic in our capitalistic world, where employers monitor the tiniest aspect of their employees.
Employees are expected to consider even the slightest acts of kindness (the gifts, in Robert’s case, pizza slice parties or gift coupons for others) monumental acts of charity. Robert ignores the toxicity of his and Raymond’s relationship. However, the moment Robert steps out of a job, he realizes he cannot control his life. So, he seeks an illusion of power from Raymond that he presumably craved or failed to attain otherwise.
‘R.M.F. Is Flying’ Plot Summary & Synopsis:
“R.M.F. Is Flying” follows the marital conflicts from the life of a couple, police officer Daniel (Jesse Plemons) and his marine-biologist wife Liz (Emma Stone). Liz goes missing at sea during her work, and Daniel grows despondent. His misery begins to affect his work. So, his partner at work, Neil (Mamoudou Athie), joins him for dinner with his wife, Martha (Margaret Qualley). After the dinner, Daniel plays a video of them having group sex and makes them uncomfortable. Soon, she is discovered at sea. R.M.F. flies the helicopter that brings her back to Daniel. Since her return, Daniel starts noticing changes in Liz’s behavior.
Liz starts devouring chocolate even if she doesn’t like it. Her feet cannot fit in the shoes they once did. Later, during a dinner with Daniel, Neil & Martha, she casually suggests they have group sex right after. Besides, she doesn’t remember Daniel’s favorite song and is more aggressive in showing her sexual attraction to Daniel.
Daniel suspects she is an imposter, posing as his wife. He also keeps getting blank calls, which he believes come from the real Liz. Soon, Liz tells him that she is pregnant. Instead of being happy, he tells her to move out immediately. She doesn’t. Later, during work, Daniel stops a car with an intoxicated driver and suspects she has his missing phone. Then, he impulsively shoots the passenger and, thus, gets suspended.
‘The Sea, the Dogs & the Chocolate’ Explained:
Daniel’s erratic behavior gets him suspended from work. Back home, he starves himself to death, believing Liz, who returned, is not his real wife. As a concerned father, George (Willem Dafoe) refuses to meet Daniel for his treatment of Liz. Liz tells him about a dream she saw at the sea where dogs were in charge of the humans. They let humans only eat chocolate and kept lamb only for themselves. Liz loved lamb and hated chocolate.
Still, she decided to eat chocolate since it was abundant and available every morning. She uses this analogy to explain her relationship with Daniel. Instead of fearing something will run out every day, she relies on things that are available in plenty. So, instead of starving herself of emotional attachment, she agrees to be in a relationship even if it is harmful.
‘R.M.F. Is Flying’ Ending Explained:
After ignoring Liz and staying emotionally distant, Daniel begins to torture her. He tells her to cut one of her fingers with the meal and agrees to eat only then. So, to prove her love, she willingly cuts off her thumb and offers it on a plate. Even then, he uses it as fodder for his conspiracy theory. He tells his doctor that she punches herself in her stomach and her hand out of her volition to prove her erraticism. This abuse leads to Liz’s miscarriage. During her gynecologist’s visit, Liz claims Daniel hit her under the influence of his prescribed antipsychotics and blames herself for Daniel’s domestic abuse.
Later, Daniel makes another inane demand: he wants Liz to cut her liver to satisfy him. In the process, she mutilates and kills herself. While she lies dead on a chair with her liver on the ground, Daniel embraces another Liz who appears on the doorstep. Then, we see an alternate version of the world where dogs act like humans, similar to what Liz sees in her dream near the sea.
The end of “R.M.F Is Flying” offers a utopic solution to Daniel’s misery. He doesn’t understand that a long period of distance can change his wife, her interests, and her habits. Daniel distrusts Liz because she isn’t the known/idealized version of Liz he had in mind. Liz justifies Daniel’s domestic abuse with her chocolate analogy. She accepts a relationship she hates instead of not being in one at all.
‘R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich’ Plot Summary & Synopsis:
“R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” explores an abusive relationship between the cult founders and its members. It revolves around a sex cult led by Omi (Willem Dafoe) and his wife, Aka (Hong Chau). The members are expected not to have any sexual relationships beyond the two cult leaders. If they are accused of infidelity under these grounds, they must undergo a cleansing process where they need to sweat out their ‘toxins’ (a potential euphemism). Then, Aka will lick their navel to confirm they are cleansed. Emily (Emma Stone) and Andrew (Jesse Plemons) are members of this cult, who are paired to find a woman to revive the dead.
Together, they test Anna (Hunter Schafer) to see if she can reanimate dead R.M.F., but to no avail. Soon, Emily recounts a dream of finding herself stuck at the bottom of a swimming pool. There, she notices two near-identical swimmers. One of them comes to rescue her. Later, in real life, Liz & Andrew meet Rebecca (Margaret Qualley), who looks exactly like the woman who saved Liz in her dream. Rebecca claims that her identical twin sister, Ruth, is the person they seek. Andrew refutes Rebecca’s claim since the cult’s prophecy requires them to find one of the twins dead. Since Rebecca and Ruth are both alive, she doesn’t fulfill their requirements.
Kinds of Kindness (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Despite being in the cult, Emily secretly meets her estranged husband, Joseph (Joe Alwyn), and their daughter (Merah Benoit). Since Emily is distant, Joseph tricks her into spending more time with him by lying about their daughter’s leg injury. Later, he drugs Emily and rapes her when she is unconscious. Andrew reveals this to the cult, who expect Emily to undergo the cleansing process. After sweating her, Aka declares Emily is unfit due to being ‘contaminated’ (having sex with someone not Aka or Omi). So, Emily gets thrown out of the cult.
Soon, Emily crosses paths with Rebecca, who reveals a surprising truth about Ruth and her past. Once, Rebecca invited her friends to their house. Suddenly, she decided to jump into their swimming pool. Ruth tried to stop her, knowing the pool was empty. Rebecca still jumped and hit the floor but did not die. This leads Emily to believe that Ruth is perfect for reviving a dead person. So, she injures a dog as an excuse to meet Ruth, who is a vet. After Ruth’s treatment, Emily notices the dog has no visible scar, almost as if it had never been hurt. Soon, Rebecca invites Emily to her house and kills herself to fulfill the prophecy. Right after, Emily meets Ruth and drugs her.
Does Emily return to the cult with Rebecca’s help?
At the end of the third segment, titled “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” Emily drugs Ruth and drags her to the hospital. There, she uses Ruth to successfully revive the dead R.M.F. Afterwards, Emily drives Ruth away to the cult’s office, hoping Ruth will be the ticket to her return to the cult. However, she crashes her car, which takes Ruth’s life. The third story explores one’s relationship with a belief system in any form of organized faith, whether a cult or a religion. People go to any lengths to prove their faith due to their excessive need to belong to a group.
Kinds of Kindness (2024) Movie Themes Analysed:
Institutions of Control
Through its three stories, “Kinds of Kindness” analyzes abusive relationships at work, a marriage, and a cult – three institutions of control. In the first story, we see Robert being under the spell of his boss, who controls every aspect of his life. It highlights the encroaching workplace environment, which was earlier explored in shows like “Severance.” The second story shows a wife gaslighted for not being exactly like what her husband expects her to be. So, he asserts his dominance and control that strips her of her agency. He also poses himself as the victim to seek sympathy while abusing his wife.
The third story shows the inner workings of a cult. But it acts as any faith-based institution that exerts power out of people’s willingness to do anything and everything to prove their faith. Simultaneously, in Emily’s case, it acts as an antithesis to a solution to her toxic marriage with a history of marital rape. It doesn’t free her but only shifts her into another system of control.
Kindness or Cruelty
The three stories in “Kinds of Kindness,” a triptych fable, explore the thin line between kindness and cruelty and highlight how inherently cruel some acts of kindness can end up being. In the first story, the employee considers his boss’ actions kind even though they strip him of his agency and autonomy. Through the second tale, the film explores a wife trying to prove her love to her abusive partner instead of being without him (evident from her argument about the scarcity mindset). She justifies her sacrifices and considers them steps to win him with kindness to his inhuman demands.
In the third narrative, the female protagonist escapes her abusive marriage and looks at a belief system as a source of comfort. So, she justifies even their wildest demands as acts of kindness. Besides these instances, the film depicts how kindness is also used as a manipulative device at times. In the first segment, we see Robert seeking sympathy for his injury at a hotel. Sarah shows sympathy as an act of kindness, only to realize how her compassion is weaponized against her. In the third tale, Joseph uses Emily’s kindness as a weapon to abuse her. Later, Emily takes advantage of Ruth’s kind nature.
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