Themes and style
According to Damián Szifron:
We are all conscious that this system is not organised in our benefit. We behave like good citizens, we pay our taxes and we are law abiding citizens and buy the products that they sell to us but at the same time we all feel uncomfortable, as the ceiling is low or we didn’t have oxygen. This creates a great pressure that reflects in our love life or family life. We suffer this lack of time, this extreme difficulty to make money and do so many things that we are not interested in. Facing that reality, a lot of people get depressed and some others explode. This is a film about those who explode, those who cross the limit and reveal how really things work.
According to Szifron, despite the film's common themes of catharsis, violence and vengeance, the stories are connected by "the fuzzy boundary that separates civilization from barbarism, the vertigo of losing your temper, and the undeniable pleasure of losing control". This is explored through the concept of human beings having animalistic features. Szifron considers the main difference between humans and animals is the capacity to restrain oneself, whereas non-human animals are guided by their instincts. Humans "have a fight or flee mechanism, but it comes with a very high cost. Most of us live with the frustration of having to repress oneself, but some people explode. This is a movie about those who explode". Wild Tales deals with aspects of daily life and "is a movie about the desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom, and the rage and anguish it produces, can cause us to run off the rails". The characters' lives are also connected because they are "losing time in things they don't care about" and trying to keep up a socially-expected façade. Szifron said the film is "a reflection of millions of people who just waste their lives" because they do not do what they love within a system that is "not designed for the majority".
Wild Tales is based on Szifron's understanding of Western capitalist society as a cage, and depicts the moment at which some people become so frustrated by their surroundings they cannot behave in the socially expected manner. As such, he describes it as a film about the common human need for freedom against society's need to psychologically repress humans' animalistic features. The situations in the film are depicted in an absurdist way, which critics found reminiscent of Almodóvar and Luis Buñuel. The director believed its theme of man versus a system which may have the cards stacked against them would have universal appeal because of global wealth inequality.
The film is said to feature "political anger" and "political subversiveness", and, according to La Capital, it has prompted debates about its "sociological and political side". Psychologist Diana Paulozky, in an interview for La Voz del Interior, said Wild Tales' includes both visible and constrained violence, cynicism, moral hypocrisy, and denigration that may induce public turmoil. La Capital promoted a debate about the film with social security specialist Martín Appiolaza and sociologist Daniel Cholakian. Appiolaza said the film shows structural violence and specific violence towards school and work, and among couples, as well as types of discrimination. He concluded; "the theme of the film is the inequality that arouses violent reactions". Cholakian stated it depicts the violence that involves upper-middle-class, urban people, and that the main victims of social violence are the poorest people; "So the film is light years from reflecting the universality of that theme". Cholakian also refused to discuss violence in Wild Tales and dared to think Szifron would agree with him. Szifron said the film's themes of "government and corporate corruption and bureaucratic malfeasance ... have a universal resonance ... in a world where power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals".
Several reviewers interpreted the film as a critique of 21st-century Argentinean daily life or "a backdrop of 20th century Argentine oppression". Szifron, however, said it could be set "in any other country and in any other period of time". He said the central theme is universal; "man versus a system that's designed against him, not to facilitate life, but to take things out of you". As such, it criticizes several problems and "frustrations of contemporary life", including government and corporate corruption, bureaucratic malfeasance, economic and social inequality, abuse of power, emotional and physical abuse, class and gender bias, social exigence of marriage, macho culture, and the need for revenge. It deals with money, power and elitism, and depicts people as selfish, disloyal and materialistic. In such a "social Darwinian world", the acts of vengeance are usually motivated by class or economic conflicts, beneath which is a desire to break free from what Szifron referred to as the "transparent cage" of Western capitalist and consumeristic society. The main issue, according to Szifron, "is the pleasure of reacting, the pleasure of reacting toward injustice". According to the film's producer Pedro Almodóvar, the film was not meant to support vigilantism: catharsis is only used to stimulate the action.
Film critics Chaz Ebert of RogerEbert.com and Steven Zeitchik of Los Angeles Times commented that the film focused on how "seemingly ordinary people" and "seemingly ordinary events" are involved in or become absurdist situations. James Rickman of Paper called Wild Tales "a cri de coeur against the personal and political barriers that block human curiosity". Claudia Puig of USA Today said it explores "the dark side of humanity and the dehumanization of society", while, according to Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post, it is "a sharply observed case study in human nature". Eric Kohn of IndieWire said the last segment alters the film's overall meaning; "The bizarrely touching conclusion is a cynical take on the ups and downs of a relationship, hinting at the idea that even a mad world divided against itself thrives on the need for companionship". Ty Burr from Boston Globe concluded, "there is no lasting meaning, other than that people are funny, nasty animals when pushed to their limits".
Both in Europe and Latin America, film critics dubbed Wild Tales; "Characters on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", alluding to Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which Almodóvar considered a fair comparison. According to Rooney, Almodóvar's influence is "there in the off-kilter humor, in the stylish visuals and bold use of music, and in the affection for ordinary people pushed to extraordinary extremes". Bob Mondello of NPR said the last segment "is weird, sexy and violent enough to make you think of the wild tales of director Pedro Almodóvar". Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter called Wild Tales a mix of Luis Buñuel, Rod Serling and Almodóvar; several other critics compared its style to that of Buñuel, especially its absurdism and the deterioration of normal life into savagery. Critics also noted similarities between Wild Tales and the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Pulp Fiction, Steven Spielberg's Duel, Michael Douglas-starring Falling Down, Tales from the Crypt, and Emir Kusturica. While "Pasternak" was often compared to The Twilight Zone because of its series of revelations, the third segment was often compared to a Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon, and was said to have slapstick touches and to be "Tarantino-esque". It was also labeled "a cross between Steven Spielberg's Duel and a violent Tom and Jerry cartoon" by Nashawaty, and "a combination of Deliverance and an R-rated Wile E. Coyote cartoon" by Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail.
