Kinds of Kindness director Yorgos Lanthimos explained why he chose to structure the movie as a triptych fable.
The latest movie from the Poor Things director is structured as a triptych fable where he assembles a star-studded cast, led by Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, and Margaret Qually, playing different characters in three unique stories loosely connected by similar themes.
A triptych is a word used to describe something presented in three parts or sections.
Kinds of Kindness' Triptych Fable Structure Explained by Director
Kinds of Kindness director Yorgos Lanthimos sat down with Indiewire in June 2024 to talk about the triptych fable structure of the movie, noting that he and co-writer Efthimis Filippou once tried to make the stories run parallel rather than in linear fashion, but it changed since "[it] would've been very confusing:"
"You would follow the stories in parallel, but then this idea stuck in my head that I wanted the same actors to play different roles in his story. [Parallel stories] would’ve been very confusing, so we decided to separate the three stories so that it was clear that the characters changed, but the actors were the same."
At one point, Filippou and Lanthimos considered making 10 stories, but it was eventually trimmed down to three, with the director describing it as "a creative process that is not analytical:"
"We don’t work in an analytical way, so we don’t know what the theme is. Even the stories that we selected, they felt [as if] in the same world, and we hadn’t even developed them fully when we decided, ‘These seem like the right stories to go together.’ And then you start developing them and then all these things might manifest themselves. It is just a creative process that is not analytical."
Lanthimos also said that they crafted these stories without the overarching theme in mind:
"It’s not like, 'OK, the theme of faith or the theme of control or whatever.' It never starts like that. And I think even by the time we finish, we don’t even think about that."
In a separate interview with Spectrum News in June 2024, Kinds of Kindness stars Joe Alwyn and Willem Dafoe gave their thoughts about the movie's structure.
Alwyn admitted that he likes the structure, pointing out that "it felt almost experimental:"
"I like the structure of it. It felt almost experimental … being an anthology, three different stories that are sort of tied, but not really. I liked the bits that you can relate to. It was exciting reading a script like that."
In the film, Alywn portrays three different roles, namely a collectibles appraiser, an intoxicated car passenger, and the estranged husband of Emma Stone's character in the third story.
Dafoe, meanwhile, shared his thoughts on what ties all three stories together, revealing that "it is the power dynamics of relationships:"
"I think it’s the power dynamics of relationships. How we treat each other, how we see our identity in other people ... how our relationship with people really impacts on how we drive our life."
Dafoe's comment about power dynamics is quite fitting since he played a leadership-type figure in two of the three sections in Kind of Kindness.
In the first story, Dafoe brings to life a controlling boss named Raymond while he plays a sex cult leader named OMI in the third.
Why Kinds of Kindness' Triptych Fable Is Perfect
Kinds of Kindness' triptych fable structure managed to drive the point home of the message it is trying to convey and that abusive relationships anchored by fake kindness happen in life.
Instead of using one large story, the three different narratives present should be more than enough to relay exactly what Kinds of Kindness is trying to tell.
The protagonists in Kinds of Kindness are representations of the sad reality that appears to be in the realm of normalcy in the real world, making a good majority think that it is okay that these abusive relationships exist.
Whether it is in a corporate setup, marriage, or twisted cult, there will always be followers who will blindly do anything to gain the approval of those superior to them.
Although the stories are different, they are loosely connected through a common theme that could make viewers reflect on the lessons presented by seeing the larger picture once they finish all of them.
Kinds of Kindness is now streaming on Hulu.
