The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub discusses
Kinds of Kindness
with director Yorgos Lanthimos and Joe Alwyn.
Lanthimos and Alwyn talk about the rehearsal process, what it’s like behind-the-scenes, and how Lanthimos nails his unique style.
The two of them also reveal which Lanthimos film is getting the 4K treatment and tease their upcoming projects,
The Brutalist
and
Bugonia
.

With Kinds of Kindness now playing in select theaters and expanding this weekend, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to chat with filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and Joe Alwyn, who previously worked with the director on 2018’s The Favourite opposite his Kindness costar, Emma Stone. While discussing the sets of Lanthimos’ visionary films, we learn a lot about how the filmmaker collaborates with his cast during his rehearsal process and throughout production, all the way to how the Safdie Brothers have inspired him to alter his editing process.

In Kinds of Kindness, Alwyn and Stone are joined by Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Margaret Qualley in an anthology of dark-humored tales of human connection, power, and control. Like his previous movies (Dogtooth, Poor Things, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, to name a few), Kindness depicts humans congregating together, having conversations, and, of course, dancing, but always with an element of absurdity to keep audiences slightly off-balance.

We were curious how working on films like these looks on set and how it might affect its cast, who must go to some dark places. During this conversation with Lanthimos and Alwyn, they talk about the director’s methods to ensure his cast feels comfortable while filming, no matter what they have to do on the day of, and what they do during rehearsal to guarantee each actor will be able to try new things on set. Alwyn discusses why he likes being a part of Lanthimos’ universe, what he does between takes, and why he doesn’t take his characters home with him.

You can watch the full interview in the video above or read the transcript below.

Kinds of Kindness (2024) A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife’s demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning and a woman’s quest to locate an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.Release Date June 21, 2024 Main Genre Comedy Writers Yorgos Lanthimos Efthimis Filippou Studio(s) Film4 , Element Pictures , TSG Entertainment Distributor(s) Searchlight Pictures Expand

‘Dogtooth’ Is Getting the 4K Treatment

COLLIDER: Joe, if someone has never seen a Yorgos Lanthimos film, what’s the one you suggest they start with and why?

YORGOS LANTHIMOS: Assuming you’ve seen every film that I’ve made.

JOE ALWYN: I’m gonna say the one that I saw first, which is Dogtooth. I would say Dogtooth for no real rhyme or reason, because I think there’s no harm in jumping in anywhere. I think it’s a brilliant film.

LANTHIMOS: We also just remastered it.

ALWYN: [Laughs] He’s telling me to say this. This is all a plug, basically.

LANTHIMOS: This is all rigged. New digital copies, great sound, all supervised by the author. Sorry, go on.

ALWYN: Dogtooth is full of some of the themes or tropes that you might find across his other work. There are themes of control or a reality, but a slightly skewed reality, that’s both recognizable but also some things are off-kilter. I don’t know. I wouldn’t say it has to be Dogtooth. I’m just rambling now — Dogtooth, the new version.

Actually, I didn’t know that you remastered it. So there’s a 4K version coming?

LANTHIMOS: Yes! That’s what I’m telling you.

I had no idea. That’s awesome.

LANTHIMOS: It’s coming out now.

ALWYN: Today.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Unique Style Isn’t as Meticulously Planned as You Might Think

One of the things that I love about your work is you can take any scene that you’ve seen a thousand times in any other movie and it feels completely unique and straight out of your brain the way you deal with certain situations. Can you talk about the way you figure out how you want to film a scene when you’re on set, or before you get on set? Joe, can you talk about working with someone who is an auteur like this, who can really bring scenes to life in a new way?

ALWYN: I like working with Yorgos for many reasons, but in terms of bringing scenes to life in a new way, he breaks the mold of many other films we’re used to seeing or filmmakers. His work is very — all the words that have been used before — singular and unique and thought-provoking and challenging. So, the idea of being a part of that universe or that landscape he’s creating is very appealing because it’s probably not going to be what you expect, and I like that.

LANTHIMOS: For my part, I don’t know if I ever think about it that way, like, “I have to make the scenes this way.” I guess there is a cautious tendency to try to do certain things differently or with, as you say, things you’ve seen a million times before, is there anything you can do to make it feel your own? There’s a lot that goes into it, and a lot of it is unconscious. There are so many choices that you have to make and decisions that lead to creating each scene, but it’s hard to pinpoint what it is and how you arrive there. After all these decisions that you’re making, some of them you might not even realize why. Sometimes it has to be so fast that it’s up to chance, you might think, but maybe not. It’s really hard to explain how that works if it works.

Well, you do a great job. Yorgos, what do you think would surprise fans of Joe to learn about the way he likes to work on set, and Joe, what do you think would surprise Yorgos fans to learn about the way he works on set?

LANTHIMOS: You’d like to know that Joe brings a history book on every set, no matter if the film is historical or contemporary.

ALWYN: Doesn’t even matter what kind.

LANTHIMOS: He finds something that has some history to it, he brings it on set, and he studies it all day long.

ALWYN: It’s true. At the beginning of every rehearsal process, Yorgos actually dances briefly for the cast. Only for about 30 seconds. He picks a song and he dances.

Image via Searchlight Pictures

Is that true?

LANTHIMOS: Yeah. All of it.

I have no idea if you guys are messing with me or not. I did read about your rehearsal process, and a lot of people talk about it like it’s going to theater school. It’s just different than what you’re expecting. Yorgos, can you explain to people what you are looking for with the cast when you bring them in in the rehearsal process? Joe, can you talk about what’s unique about it or not unique?

LANTHIMOS: I guess with every person that does it, then it becomes unique. We just play games that are based on theater games, but I improvise what those games end up being each time. It’s just playing and trying not to get into a serious way of recreating scenes and going into analyzing characters and motivation and how certain things need to be done or said when we’re on set. It’s more about just being playful and creating an atmosphere between the actors that they feel they can trust each other, they feel comfortable with each other, have fun, laugh, be able to make a fool of yourself in front of the others and know that it’s going to be okay and they’re gonna take care of you. That’s why I do the little dance at the beginning, to show that nobody has anything to be embarrassed about. So, it’s just creating an atmosphere.

Then, more practically, it’s also the actors learning the text and getting into the text in a kind of indirect way instead of, again, making it too cerebral and analyzing how certain things need to be said or what the character’s thinking. While doing other silly things and playing games and dancing and hopping around, just trying to remember the lines, say the lines so that they get into them in an unconscious way so that they have them. When the time comes, they can just try different things with the dialogue and the text being comfortably settled in them.

ALWYN: That’s all true. It’s not unique, but it’s unique for film. You don’t normally do that for film.

LANTHIMOS: Yeah, you don’t get to do that much when you’re making films. It comes more from theater. It depends on what each person comes up with as a game, I guess.

Joe, I’m fascinated by the way actors get ready for a role and how quickly they can let go of a role. What is it like for you when you are playing a role? Can you let it go as soon as filming wraps at the end of the day or the shoot, or is there a residual that sticks with you for a little while?

ALWYN: I think I’m okay with letting it go. I guess it depends on the duration you’ve been doing it for. If it’s in your body for months and months, even if you don’t know it’s still there, there may be little bits and pieces still there. But no, it’s never been wailing in my room months later, unable to shake off something.

How The Safdie Brothers Inspired the Production of ‘Kinds of Kindness’
Image by Jefferson Chacon

Yorgos, you told me when we last spoke that you decided to edit this film uniquely by not watching an assembly cut but by going scene by scene. Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes because this process was different for you than your previous films?

LANTHIMOS: It’s certainly not unique, it’s just different from what I’ve done before in the past. I saw my friends, Josh and Ben Safdie, doing it that way in one of their films, and I kind of went, “Oh, maybe I should try that because they feel good about these three scenes that they’ve edited. They’re showing them to me, and they’re excited about them, so why don’t I just try to do the same — try to make every scene the best that it can be, at least at this point in the process, and then move on to the next ones instead of seeing this very large slack? A vastly unfiltered film that makes you depressed or want to go back to the editing room again?” [Laughs] So I tried that and it kind of worked for me.

But in the end, you have to go through the other process, as well. After you’ve done the scene-by-scene thing, it still changes when you’ve seen the whole thing. The decisions that you’ve made for each particular scene, although they seemed maybe the best when you were just editing those scenes, now, when you see the whole film, it just becomes a different thing. You still have to go into it seeing it as a whole again and again in order to fine-tune what you’ve done before. But I enjoyed it, and I think I’m gonna keep working at it like that, at least for a while.

Do you end up with a lot of deleted scenes in your movies or not?

LANTHIMOS: No, not really. Certainly not on this one. It was like two or three scenes, four maybe, out of all the stories. We spend a lot of time on the scripts. For all of the scripts for all of the films that I’ve made the scripts were being worked on for years, and usually with some breaks in between because I was making other things or the writers were making other things. It gives you the chance to revisit and iron out a lot of things that might not be necessary. Working over the years, I think you end up with a pretty solid, structured script. Then, if things go well when you’re filming, that enhances that. So in the end, there aren’t a lot of things that we cut. Sometimes we come up with stuff that we film during the shoot that might not have even been in the script, and then some others we need to cut out. It varies according to the project.

Joe Alwyn Says ‘The Brutalist’ Is Fantastic
Image via Pathé Distribution

Joe, I’m really looking forward to The Brutalist. When do you think people will see it? What can you tease about it?

ALWYN: I actually don’t know when it’s coming out. I saw it a while ago now, and it’s really fantastic. I’m really excited for people to see it. Brady [Corbet] is a brilliant director. I’m excited for that, but I don’t know when it will come out. I’ll keep you posted.

Yorgos, I know you’re getting ready to film [Bugonia] soon with Jesse [Plemons] and Emma [Stone]. When do you start filming and can you tell me any of the other cast that’s in it?

LANTHIMOS: We start in a couple of weeks. It’s imminent. There’s nobody else you would know. It’s a very contained, short cast. A lot of it is unknown professional actors. There’s not that many big parts in that film.

Looking for more Lanthimos? Check out what the filmmaker had to say about that Safdie Brothers’ technique in the interview below:

Kinds of Kindness is in theaters now. Check below for showtimes.

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