Lanthimos' works have a deeper hidden meaning. He wants us to find the message rather than just giving it to us. But Kinds of Kindness could be his most opaque work so far. Many people just want to be entertained and not think too hard about what the film is trying to convey, which might explain why it is languishing in the mid-sixties. Personally, I enjoy the challenge and think that the three stories presented have the common theme of work.
In the first story, a man complies with the directives of his boss, which include when he should copulate with his wife. When he is ordered to crash his vehicle into another and kill its driver, he finds this morally objectionable and declines to great consequences. His wife leaves him, he falls out of favour with his boss and he risks foreclosure of his home. Desperate, he enacts the very thing that he initially turned down. This story seems to be about sacrificing one's autonomy in the pursuit of the status and wealth that work affords us.
In the second story, a man's wife goes missing for several months as she embarks on a scientific excursion. Upon her return, he is convinced that the person standing before him is not really his wife. She looks like his wife, sounds like her and professes her love for him, but he remains adamant that it is not the same person. He tests her with increasingly bizarre and gory challenges that eventually claim her life, upon which the real wife materialises at his door and he welcomes her with open arms. This is an allegory for losing oneself to work to the extent that loved ones no longer recognise the people we originally were.
In the final story, a woman and her colleague dedicate their lives to seeking a fabled figure who has the power to bring the dead back to life. They are part of what appears to be a cult and any interaction with their former lives, including with their partner and children, is considered impure and grounds for banishment. It is not a stretch to imagine that this story is about how the blind obsession or commitment to work impedes the connection one has to family and destroys important relationships.
To sum it up, Kinds of Kindness is potentially a cautionary tale about losing ourselves to work and thereby sacrificing our autonomy, self-expression and relationships. It is about people watching what is transpiring on the screen, perplexed and repulsed, when it fails to dawn on them that they are witnessing the story of their lives and the disgust should be directed at what they have given up in the name of work, reputation and material wealth.
