Kinds of Kindness: Irish cinematographer Robbie Ryan on his next film after Poor Things
Robbie Ryan at the Cork International Film Festival in Cork Opera House last year. Picture: David Creedon
It’s four months since the cast and crew of Poor Things rounded off a busy awards season that included a second Oscar nomination for cinematographer Robbie Ryan. With the tuxedoes barely tucked away, the Poor Things team have another film, Kinds of Kindness, in cinemas already.
Dublin-born Ryan believes his latest creation with director Yorgos Lanthimos and Irish production company Element Pictures snuck under the radar during production. "We filmed Poor Things in 2021. It had such a long VFX [visual effects] post-production schedule that we could simultaneously shoot Kinds of Kindness without people realising," says the graduate of Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
Kinds of Kindness, which stars Lanthimos regulars Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, as well as Jesse Plemons and Margaret Qualley, is a tryptic drama with the actors playing different roles.
Control plays a big part in the three stories. In the first, a boss exerts sinister control over an employee. In part two, a husband thinks a doppelgänger has replaced his wife, and in three, a woman is so attached to a sex cult that she gave up her family to be with them.
While Poor Things brimmed with elaborate sets, Kinds of Kindness is set in modern-day America and is much more stripped back. What did the more natural visuals mean for Ryan?
"The big difference for me is that Poor Things was made in the studio, and we had thousands of lights, whereas Kinds of Kindness was filmed on location. It was much more natural and more like the work I was used to doing. It was much quicker, too; we only had about two and half weeks to shoot each story in the film."
Ryan says Lanthimos is a natural cinematographer and that, at times, he is following his lead rather than the other way around. "Yorgos really knows what he wants. I follow his cue because he is such a good cinematographer. I facilitate as much as I can, but I am always catching up with that guy. He sets the pace."
This is Ryan's third time working with Lanthimos. He was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the 2018 hit The Favourite. The Dubliner says he is becoming more attuned to how Lanthimos works and knowing what he wants from a scene.
"Yorgos is very much the orchestrator of the visual, and he drives it. I'm sort of tuned into what he's trying to get, which is, I guess, why he hires me."
It is difficult not to get the sense that Ryan is doing that Irish thing of not fully recognising his contribution to Lanthimos's work. Perhaps it's Ryan's humility, plus his undeniable talent, that makes such top-name directors want to work with him again and again.
The 54-year-old has worked with director Andrea Arnold six times, including on the eagerly anticipated Bird, starring Barry Keoghan. He has six Ken Loach films under his belt. Bugonia, his fourth outing with Lanthimos, is set to be released next year.
Lanthimos's films give the word bizarre a run for its money. Ryan jokingly admits that it can be hard to visualise the Greek director's concepts and translate them into his own head.
"Don't try. That is the key. He'll tell you what he's trying to do; he has a great, collaborative sense about him. Yorgos knows what he might get, but he likes to try and get more than he thinks he can get. That's where improvisation comes in. That is why his cinema is so fresh; he pushes it."
Push it; he does. The fisheye lens in The Favourite, hyper-reality in Poor Things, and close-ups in Kinds of Kindness where skin pores are in focus. How does he handle the sorts of intimate scenes in Kinds of Kindness?
"I don't think too much about it. It's a bizarre world, but you focus on the technical aspects, on getting the framing right, and getting it done because you have another shot to do afterwards. I'm always thinking two shots ahead. You don't have time to think about how mad it is."
Most films shoot out of sequence, but Ryan says the one time he does feel more connected to what he is shooting is working on an Andrea Arnold film (Red Road, Fish Tank, etc).
"Andrea shoots in sequence, so you are drawn into the story and the characters differently. By the end of that film, you feel close to the characters and more emotional than if you shoot out of sequence."
It is easy to imagine that spending your life shooting stories through lenses might skew how you see the world in your downtime. Does a cup of coffee become more than just that? Ryan says it doesn't skew things but makes you more curious. As it happens, he has a coffee in his hand as he conducts the interview from his boat in London, where he has lived for over 20 years.
"As a cinematographer, you've got a curious eye. You're always looking at things. I like the idea of images creating a story; in the case of Kinds of Kindness, it's 2 hours and 45 minutes of those images telling stories."
After the success of Poor Things, Ryan says he does not think about the weight of expectation that subsequent films such as Kinds of Kindness might carry.
"When we were doing Kindness, there was no pressure. Poor Things wasn't out yet, and nobody knew how it would go. It was a bunch of people making a film, but now we're doing another film, and there's been a huge amount of press. Everyone is talking about it, but it's no different on set; it's just a good bunch of people who like making films and are very lucky to be in a situation where we can make them."
Ryan says working with great directors has made one thing clear to him: he would never want to do their job.
"It's made me realise I never want to be a director because I see how much work they do. Their hands are on everything. It's an exciting thing to do, but it's overwhelming. I need a bit of balance."
Directing may not be for him, but the vagabond world of the filmmaker is where Ryan belongs.
"I'm a circus freak. It has its pros and cons. Home life can be a bit of a mishmash of a mess, but life is for a living, and filmmaking is a way of fully living your life."
- Kinds of Kindness is in cinemas now
