The Lobster

Finding a partner when you’re single and of a certain age is hard enough in today’s Western culture. All the chick flicks and sitcoms hash out the encyclopaedia of dos and don’ts when it comes to relationships. Imagine the hardships you’d have if you were mateless in a society where singledom was literally not an option. This is one of the many confronting themes that Yorgos Lanthimos’ dark drama The Lobster explores. 

Set in a dystopian society where, by the laws of the City, single people are sent to a Hotel to find a mate within 45 days or be turned into an animal, the film follows David (Colin Farrell) and his struggles in trying to find a mate within the time frame. Finding the confines of the Hotel too inhibitive, David escapes and joins the woodland band of rebellious Loners where he meets a potential match (Rachel Weisz), but discovers that the freedom of the wild singletons is still no freedom at all. 

In truth this a stunning film. But I do not mean ‘stunning’ in the positive sense of it leaves you awestruck by its magnificence. It’s ‘stunning’ in the literal sense that it leaves you stunned: shocked and unable to move, terrified even. This effect is caused by an accumulation of hard-hitting themes and layers about human behaviour. For a start, it pushes the human race off its high horse of thinking that we’re above the animals. The fact that society is driven by humans’ need to pairbond raises this point and it’s then viciously highlighted by the fact that people who can’t find mates are turned into animals. 

This science-fiction narrative element is a real stinger because it’s taking a stab at the perceived superiority of humans as a race and not so subtly intimating that animals, with their less-developed brains, may actually be smarter in the realms of relationships. 

A further stab at the human superiority complex is taken in the way that everything in the film is in some sort of binary. For example, at the Hotel there are no half sizes in clothes or shoes, there is only suits and dresses on offer to inhabitants (all the same style), and there is only reward or punishment for behaviour. All the complexities that we surround ourselves with; cognitive schemas, integrated knowledges about the world, are reduced to the binary level of black or white, intimating that we’re not as smart or complex as we like to think we are. 

The film gets its sinister and depressed tone from all this, causing its audience to feel the same way. In fact, the feels that one gets from this movie are horrible, but kind of interesting. The cinematic experience is akin to being fastened to a stretching-rack like in torture scenes of pirate movies. Each narrative turn of the wheel pulls your head away from your feet and it’s just as painful. 

The film’s lack of emotion in everything from the performances, to the sets, to the lighting is lacklustre and dull: a portrait of a species burnt out and tired with itself. As a result, you can’t bring yourself to form attachments to any of the characters. The strange, dystopian, science-fiction setting is what you’re attracted to; perhaps blended with the romantic quest narrative of will the boy get the girl. And there is so much horrible and confronting stuff that happens throughout the journey that you’re actually forced to think ‘he’ll be much happier as a lobster’. 

Whether you argue that this is what makes this movie good or bad is a matter of opinion: for me, I can’t see myself volunteering to go on the stretching rack again any time soon. 

In terms of a confronting and mind-churning drama, The Lobster hits all the nails on the head, but it is definitely an acquired taste and even those of you who like the occasional black comedy or darker drama might find yourself at a loose end with this one. 

Starring: Colin Farrell, Olivia Colman, Roland Ferrandi, Ashley Jensen, Ariane Labed, Ewen MacIntosh, Garry Moutaine, Imelda Nagle Ryan, Angeliki Papoulia, Lea Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Riley

Rating: M