KINDS OF KINDNESS
(2024)
Oscar Bait

You’re probably going to get at least one Oscar nomination out of this movie, from this cast. It’s available early in the season so we might as well be thankful for that.

It’s a triptych and I recommend watching it in three sections. Each section has a title, a beginning, middle, and end. So, it’s very easy to do.

Part One: “The Death of R.M.F.”

He upon being told how to behave decides he no longer wants to follow every rule set upon him. Despite being told to do this one thing it becomes the only thing he cannot do, and he says “no.”

The ramifications to him are unclear in the beginning but it doesn’t take long for him to begin to feel untethered.

And he doesn’t like it.

Freedom has a higher cost than he’d like to pay. In fact, it costs more than he has available to him, which is nothing.

I’m not sure if this is an expression of diet fatigue for men. Or men fatigue for women. Like a parasitic twin, both of us are hungry. Only one of us is eating.

Woe is me when Dafoe starts to talk of snatched waists and bulimic personalities who have sex before breakfast.

Too early in the day for dawn.

Private notes: If he doesn’t play Matt Damon’s long-lost brother soon I will explode into pieces of nothingness.

Part Two: “R.M.F. Is Flying”

Liz is missing and Daniel hasn’t been the same since she’s been gone.

The exact date that she went missing is hard to pinpoint. It could’ve been last week or last year. Because the last day they saw her is not the same as the date she disappeared. It’s not the same as the day they lost her.

Daniel’s affect lately is hard on everyone. Especially Daniel himself.

Daniel seems a bit off. And the ways he chooses to remember Liz is more than disconcerting to everyone including and most importantly, Daniel himself.

Parts of him started to dissolve into the seconds that pass while she is gone.

Daniel has lost the plot.

The only ones who haven’t think they know the story. But the typewriter keys are too close to the fingers that do and too far from the paper that doesn’t.

No one is saying what’s on their tongue, doing what they want to do, or feeling what they want to feel.

Everyone is beside themselves. Not really in themselves. They don’t quite fit their skin. Someone else has been sewing the seams too tight.

Private notes: Emma is a GOD and I worship her by going ahead and eating that slice of chocolate cake and passing on the matcha tea and colostrum smoothies.

Privates Notes: When dogs are feeling frisky do they do it humanstyle? How animalistic!!

Part Three: “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich”

She had a dream last night and hasn’t woken up since. Now everything and everyone she sees in her waking life resembles everyone and everything in her sleep life.

The mirages are merging. The cuts are kissing. The GODS are dying and the divers are drowning. Whoever told them they would float does not know the rules of this dreamt-up world.

There is a drain at the bottom of the pool pulling you down that you can only see when the pool is empty. And invisible currents are pulling you away from the shore. A ledge that drops that you can only feel when you walk too far out.

There is life-affirming grief at the end of someone else’s toe tag.

Life is lived at the edges of your imagination. You’re taught to believe your dreams are unattainable because to give everyone keys to their own car would be reckless. There has to be a limit somewhere.

How can I be a GOD if you’re a GOD too? It is the kindness in me that allows you to be a mere mortal.

There are no hesitation marks because even he has no forethought. It seems wild but is no wilder than you when you allow yourself to dream.

Private Notes: “Is this Midsommer that I’m watching or is this fish?” “It says it’s Oscar bait but it tastes like chicken!”

Response: “It’s the chicken of the sea.”
And we don’t eat fish and you shouldn’t either.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
If you couldn’t tell already!