The Lobster (2015)
The Director
Yorgos Lanthimos
The Actors
Colin Farrell (David), Rachel Weisz (Narrator/Short-sighted woman), Lea Seydoux (Loner Leader), Olivia Colman (Hotel Manager), Angeliki Papoulia (Heartless Woman), Ashley Jensen (Biscuit Woman), Ben Whishaw (Limping Man), John C. Reilly (Lisping Man), Michael Smiley (Loner Swimmer)
The Trailer
The Cause
Toxic levels of allegory
The Story
"Hello. I'm the hotel manager and this is my partner. We'd like to welcome you. You're one of the lucky ones you have one of our superior rooms, which means you have a view. Did you read the leaflet? Very good. Now the fact that you'll turn into an animal if you fail to fall in love with someone during your stay here is not something that should upset you or get you down. Just think as an animal you'll have a second chance to find a companion. But even then you must be careful; you need to choose a companion that is a similar type of animal to you. A wolf and a penguin could never live together. Nor could a camel and hippopotamus, that would be absurd. Think about it." - Hotel Manager
The Rundown
As an aficionado of doomsday cinema, one of the trends of the sub-genre I find to be interesting is the tendency toward allegory. To tell a story simply about the end of the world with no deeper meaning hidden beneath it is a flat and fairly lifeless affair (see: The Darkest Hour). But it is possible to overdo the allegory to the point where there is no actual text above the sub-text and the story gets lost in a monotonous circle jerk of self-indulgence. The Lobster is that.
Colin Farrell stars as David, a short-sighted Ned Flandersy man who is dumped by his wife. In the society in which David lives, being a single adult is tantamount to committing a heinous crime and so David goes to (or is sent to, it is unclear) The Hotel. The Hotel is a facility for single people with no companions. They are given 48 days to find a mate or be turned forever into an animal of their own choosing. The 48 day period can be extended during one of The Hotel's daily hunts where the singles are bused out into the woods to hunt escaped singles with tranquilizer dart guns.
Failing to find a suitable mate, David settles for a woman who takes delight in cruelty, pretending to be a bastard himself to sell the idea that they're compatible. That plan goes horribly and David flees into the woods to live with the loners. The Loners have their own society and rules which prohibit any sort of romantic contact and even something as innocuous as flirting will be treated with violent punishment. It is among the loners that David finds Rachel Weisz, whom he falls in love with.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out what The Lobster is trying to say. As message movies go, The Lobster is at times almost moronically straightforward in delivering its symbolism. Society favors couples and treats single people as pariahs or couples who have not yet formed. The Hotel is an absurd twist on singles retreats and the various explanations from the staff on why it's important to be in a relationship or how lonely it is by one's self is a clear allegory on how we try to force people to couple so that they can find self-worth.
Inversely, The Loners are the other side of that coin. In rebelling against the system The Loners have created a system of their own with a set of rules as farcical as The Hotel. This is a message toward those people who take maybe a bit too much pride in being single, to the point that they want everyone else to avoid relationships so they won't be alone. They're even more mean-spirited and authoritarian than The Hotel and their leader is nearly as sadistic as the heartless woman who David marries.
The irony of course is that each system actually supports the opposite ideology. The rigid and forced nature of The Hotel is a detriment to finding a mate and the free-spirited chaos of the The Loners encourages relationships through organic means. It's no mistake that David's true love doesn't enter into the picture until over halfway through when he enters the woods and joins The Loners.
The next paragraph is about the film's end so skip ahead if you don't want it spoiled. Where the story comes to a head is at the end of the film when David stands in the bathroom of a diner contemplating cutting out his own eyes with a steak knife so that he can be like Rachel Weisz, who has been blinded by the leader of The Loners as a punishment for falling in love with David. The question of whether he goes through with it or simply lies to her about doing it is the thesis statement of the movie. Is love superficial or is it true? The audience is left to make up their own mind.
There's a dedication to putting things out in the open with this movie. Nobody speaks in subtext, they literally speak what they're thinking at any given time in a monotonous awkward droning way. This po-faced tone coupled with the farcical ideas and images put forth in the movie lead to a lot of the genuine laughter the movie elicits. This is a black comedy where the comedy and the darkness exist nearly independent of one-another. There are many moments of pain and suffering but they're all given the gravity they deserve and while the humor informs the darkness it's generally disconnected from it.
My big gripe with this movie is that there's no rhyme or reason for the dystopia. I know that is moronic thing to complain about because the film is obviously allegorical so it's just that way because it's convenient to the plot. The world is farcical and one simply needs to take it at face value, but it feels like there should be some reason for why citizens of Great Britain are now required to be in a relationship to enjoy the rights of a citizen. There are allusions to the rest of the world so are we to believe that this is a blanket policy for all Earth? A character mentions wanting to watch Stand By Me, so it's clear there was a before time, what was the catalyst that changed things?
Add in an angle that involves smart phones and this movie is basically a lesser Black Mirror episode. I'm a big proponent of having a solid plot on which to build metaphor rather than the other way around but the very concept of the art film seems to be a plot built around an idea. It's a fight I'll never win so I'll just complain about it here.
Aside from that, do you ever watch an art film and just think "oh, this is just a little too arty." This is that movie for me. I must stress that I thoroughly enjoyed The Lobster and I'm eager to revisit it again, which is more than I can say of similar overly-arty high-concept films such as High-Rise or Her (both of which I found watchable but not re-watchable.) Also like those movies, The Lobster just drips with forced quirkiness that just begins to wear on you after a time. Some of those stylistic choices; like the choice to never show any of the film's violent acts up close or even at all are appealing and interesting. Other choices just feel like they're made to pull in people who earnestly like pretentious art movies like The Fall and Perfume: A Story of Murder. If there is any reason you find this movie to be unsufferable I can assure that this very thing will be the reason.
Though The Lobster nearly collapses under the weight of its own obnoxiousness at times, it is a very well-made and enjoyable black comedy. Those who find artistic movies annoying will find this movie annoyingly artistic but if you can leap over that hurdle there is a rather intelligent breakdown of the concepts of relationships, love, and what those things mean to society as a whole on top of some great dry comedy. I hate it a little bit but I like it a lot.
The Shill
The Lobster can be found on Blu-ray, DVD, Amazon Instant, and Netflix.
Next Time on Doomsday Reels
"You will remember our motto: 'Freedom is obedience, obedience is work, work is life'. Well, now understand once and for all that the reverse is also true, 'Disobedience is treason, treason is a crime, crime will be punished!'"