Kinds of Kindness and The Boys Season Four

In the first part of Yorgos Lanthimos‘s new feature Kinds of Kindness, a young man named Robert, played by Jesse Plemons, desperately tries to win back the affection of an older control freak named Raymond, played by Willem Dafoe. This includes trying to recreate the circumstances which led to Robert meeting his wife, played by Hong Chau. Raymond had apparently orchestrated that meeting and other alarming aspects of the couple’s life in a cruel and meticulous manner. But apparently he was “kind” too, evidenced by the fact that he gifted the couple a tennis racquet smashed in anger by the legendary John McEnroe.

Robert’s unwillingness to transgress a moral boundary leads to Raymond withdrawing all affection from him and through Chau’s character, also pettily confiscating the racquet. When our protagonist comes across this cultural artefact again, the dramatic piano score by Jerson Fendrix creates a moment both tense and laugh out loud funny at the same time, which is also an apt description of this somewhat strange, somewhat disturbing addition to Lanthimos’s prolific output.

In the second part, it’s Emma Stone‘s character that’s desperate to avoid rejection, after she returns from a traumatic ordeal on an exotic island where she was controlled (here it is again) by dogs. An Isle of Dogs as it were. Here Plemons is a paranoid police officer who has doubts that his wife (Stone) is really his wife, and not some doppelgänger with malicious intent. Stone’s character faces rejection not just from her husband but from their friends who just aren’t feeling up to the usual group sex that they all seemed to engage in during the before time. Here the point of view is again very much close to Plemons even though he is now playing the rejecter rather than the rejectee. His performance as the police officer evokes the same kind of desperation that Robert suffered in the first section.

In the third and final part of the tryptych, it’s a character played by Dafoe who‘s in control again, this time with his wife played by Hong Chau. Dafoe and Chau lead a cult where their disciples drink their tears. Plemons and Stone are at first obedient cult members, searching for a woman with the power to bring back the dead, which has echoes of Lanthimos‘s Frankenstein theme from Poor Things. Again in this section, Stone faces rejection and ostracism because of a horrific trauma which leaves the water in her body “contaminated” in the eyes of her peers. It’s a sexual assault which is the hardest part of the film to watch.

Despite the title, there is not much kindness on display in this film. The film tellingly opens with the Eurythmics song “Sweet Dreams,” and the stage is set for nearly three hours of people who want to abuse and be abused. One of these is a middle-aged man named RMF who is a recurring character, who seems not just willing but keen to give up his life for the greater good - and what constitutes the greater good is decided by Dafoe’s character from the first section. Is RMF the kindest character? Maybe. In part two, he’s a helicopter pilot who rescues Stone’s character from the island. He also has no lines. Perhaps it’s better that way. The characters who do speak tend to either command or be commanded.

It’s a bleak film in parts, funny in other parts. At its heart it’s about our desire to be accepted, and what we’re willing to put up with to achieve a sense of acceptance. Lanthimos seems to be saying we’re willing to put up with quite a lot. Maybe too much.

Someone else who’s desperate for acceptance is Homelander in the fourth season of Amazon’s The Boys. And it’s a good thing too. This psychopath Superman plays by his own rules, but the supposed humanity at his core makes him vulnerable to manipulation and control. Or so he complains to his son Ryan, who has inherited his powers. Homelander tries to warn Ryan against falling prey to such manipulation, while subtly manipulating him nonetheless.

No less manipulative of Ryan is Billy Butcher, the rugged and perennially enraged Boys member who is still desperately seeking revenge against Homelander, no matter what the cost. But unlike Homelander, Billy is willing to get vulnerable with Ryan, and show him a softer side. Billy, who in a way is Homelander’s double, shows his human side again later by releasing a caged rabbit into the wild. However, not long after that, he cuts off someone’s leg to get them to help him in his vendetta. So he isn’t exactly a big old softie, and hardly the best example for Ryan, who has the potential to grow up into Homelander Junior or Billy Junior. Both prospects are terrifying especially since the boy has those deadly laser eyes.

Just as in the previous seasons, The Boys latest outing is peppered with black comedy and palpable tension. Who will Homelander laser next? Anyone who gets on his bad side it seems. Possibly anyone. Maybe everyone.

Ryan is in the unenviable position of having to choose between two bad dads, Homelander and Billy. Another character who is in that uncomfortable position is the loveable Hughie, the closest thing we get to a good guy in this show. When Hughie’s dad Hughie Senior has a stroke, Hughie has a difficult choice to make: bring him back from the dead using Compound V (the drug that creates the morally bankrupt supes in this universe) or just let go.

What happens next proves that amid all the lasering and the gore and the over the top comedy, The Boys frequently has a heart, even if it is a bit of a twisted heart at times. Hopefully it will keep beating just as strongly through the rest of Season Four and Season Five, announced as the final season. I for one am finding it difficult to let go.