Sicko Yorgos Is Back

Yorgos Lanthimos can now reclaim his throne as our reigning cinematic poet-king of serial humiliation. His new film Kinds of Kindness marks a return to the spectacles of personal, familial, societal degradation on which the director made his name. It’s not so much that last year’s (mostly wonderful) Oscar-winning hit Poor Things didn’t concern itself with such matters, but there, Lanthimos, working with writer Tony McNamara and adapting Alasdair Gray’s novel, found some quaint semblance of hope amid the surreal ruins. In Poor Things, a tale of exploitation and ruination became, in its final act, one of existential awakening, of empowerment and solidarity — and we could subtly sense the director losing interest, glossing over plot points and sincere emotions in a rush to get to his closing images. In Kinds of Kindness, which runs 165 minutes and consists of three distinct stories featuring the same cast in different roles, he happily takes his time, delighting and luxuriating in his roundelays of absurdism and abasement. It can be a bit exhausting — anthology films often are, and this one is long — but we can feel the director’s excitement. He’s fully back in his sandbox.