There’s a lot of loud in movies right now. Big explosions, big sets, big sandworms, and just…more of everything. I’ll never argue against a maximalist mindset, and being honest, that’s often what it takes to hold a modern audience’s dwindling attention. But music video director Joseph Mault’s new film Strange Kindness bravely takes a different, more meditative approach, though, even as it addresses the subjects of violence, empathy, and pain.
In an understated community in Cape Cod, a long-suffering brother, James, returns to his childhood home after escaping addiction and other hardships in the city. He’s welcomed by his sister Rose, but still feels like a visitor. But Strange Kindness isn’t a redemption story.
In an understated community in Cape Cod, a horrible atrocity has been committed. The too-often-told American story of gun violence and multiple deaths has played out once again, and the killer is at large. But Strange Kindness isn’t a story about revenge or even justice.
In an understated community in Cape Cod, a wounded and desperate man carrying a gun breaks into a home. The owner is Chris, a cancer patient with fierce will and independence, and a furious anger toward her disease and the limitations it puts on her body and her life. Showing barely any fear or hesitation, she helps him as best she can while suffering immeasurable pain herself. Strange Kindness is, above all else, a film about humanity, resilience, and empathy.
Rose acts as a caregiver to Chris, battling cancer but is forthrightly independent, and refuses to undergo chemotherapy treatments in a hospital. Instead, Rose visits Chris in her stripped-down home to administer the treatments in private. Chris’ relationship with Rose is loving but not clearly defined. Chris is a kind of aunt to Rose and her brother James, and both feel a duty to her. Soon, their lives and that of the young man who’s committed an unspeakable crime will intersect.
Empathy and care are central to Strange Kindness but both concepts are approached in such an unconventional way that it jars you into considering and perhaps confronting what empathy means to you, and what it’s limitations are. Would you, unquestioningly and without fear, take in a person that feels monstrous? Would you sit with them, binding their wounds, listening to their story? Mault makes you wonder, as well, if care for someone else means to make things easy for them, or to do the harder thing and bring them to grips with their life and circumstance. Maybe it’s both of those things.
Mault’s direction in Strange Kindness is patient and most often beautiful, when it’s not being punctuated by the young man’s grisly and disturbing flashbacks to the violence he’s caused. The dissonant score amplifies the dreamlike vibes of the story. Mault carefully sets his scenes to mirror the inner feelings of his characters – a disassembled gun against Chris’s sobs, or a burned piece of film to show a past whose significance is fading.
The four key players, Leanne McLaughlin’s Rose, Kristofor Giordano’s James, Deirdre Madigan’s Chris, and Michal Vondel’s Young Man are so integral to Strange Kindness that it’s hard to imagine anyone else in these roles. Their performances are so authentic and visceral that they, at times, seem to reach through the screen. Quiet as they might be, there’s power behind each of them as they move through their shattered community and engage with each other. Their presence makes the entire world of Strange Kindness feel richer. As much as the film is about isolation, the characters all feel as though their drawn together with a kind of magnetism, which draws me in as a viewer as well.
With Strange Kindness placed in the middle of a festival and a cinematic landscape that feels, often, like world of loud, it’s worthwhile to remember that true empathy, true kindness, is quiet. If you exhibit it, you don’t brag about it or broadcast it to the world. You give it freely, even to those that deserve it the least. In that way, the most authentic kindness is always a little strange.
Joseph Mault’s Strange Kindness has it’s world premiere as part of the Boston Underground Film Festival lineup for 2023. For schedule and ticket information, head to the Festival’s official website.
