The Lobster [Review by Haus]

The Lobster is the first English-language film by surrealist and mucho cray-cray Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes and all that, since this same fellow previously delivered Dogtooth–a movie so bat-guano nuts and high on its own supply that Parsi and I debated its merits for several days before ultimately starting this website to discuss it.

The two films are similar, too. Both highlight the absurdity of social elements we take for granted in our lives; both feature largely emotionless and generally unlikeable characters inhabiting a strange, isolated little world; and both offer an at-times-uncomfortable blend of cute weirdness with stark violence.

Both also are well worth seeing, though you might not always enjoy the experience.

The Lobster is arty, yes, and well done, yes, and memorable, yes, but it’s also a dark, absurdist, and generally heartless satire of mating set against three ultra-bland British environments. It runs long and comes off mean. I recommend it, but I can’t say I really liked it–at least not all of it.

The basic premise: In a dystopian (and very chill) Britain that prizes coupledom over pretty much all else, singles have 45 days to find a mate before being turned into an animal of their choosing and set loose in the woods. This 45-day purgatory takes place at a rather nice looking country hotel, where singles wear identical outfits and eat proper little breakfasts and plot their last desperate shots at finding a partner. Those who manage to couple up are eventually reintroduced to the city to rejoin society–security guards there will spot-check to ferret out secret singles–whereas those who don’t find a mate at the hotel are indeed transformed into beasts. A group called the Loners, who reject mating in any form, inhabit the nearby woods and are (for some reason) regularly hunted and tranquilized by hotel guests and staff.

Colin Farrell plays David, a quiet husk of a man whose wife has left him, triggering his 45 day countdown. During his residence at the hotel, we meet several other laconic, anhedonic, one-dimensional, and single-minded weirdos. Rachel Weisz is good here, and Farrell delivers his best performance since Minority Report, albeit one that evidently involved woofing Quaaludes and not acting very much at all. The story is strange enough that I’ll leave it be for you to see.

Director Lanthimos is whole-hog committed to this absurd world he’s created, and the film has a unique (and quite grey) style. It’s deliberately funny, but also totally extreme. Several lingering scenes are downright hard to watch.

Which is all an odd choice, really. This story could’ve been quite playful if the tone weren’t so very Kafka-meets-Orwell. To satirize modern dating or the societal pressure to pair up do not themselves require Lanthimos to brutally maim his characters, or indeed to populate his world with cruel, unflinching automatons. But he also paces The Lobster like a British country drama, and ties it all up with social niceties. It’s a real trip.

It bears mention that an absurdist twist on dating does not itself a pleasant filmgoing experience make. While The Lobster is stylistically interesting and generally unhinged, I didn’t love it and I doubt I’d see it again. The film’s chief fault in my view is taking itself rather too seriously from a plot perspective, and offering little emotional payoff if you actually manage to invest in the story. I didn’t like the final act at all.

And yes, I know it’s holding a mirror to society. But let’s not vaunt supposedly deep themes for their own sake–self-satisfied art house pictures irk me, without more. The Lobster’s strange tone, flat characters, and occasional cruelty can’t hide the fact that the basic theme at work here is cognitively available to a five year old: Pair up or die, the oldest truth in the animal kingdom. I mean, I get it. I just need more.

So where does that leave us? Well–you might not always enjoy watching The Lobster, but you’ll enjoy having seen it.

It’s weird, you know. I could grouse about this film forty ways to Sunday, but I still say see it. Dammit Lanthimos, you got me again.

Haus Verdict: The Lobster is balls-out weird and wholly committed to its calm dystopian world. Satire, yes, but a trip, too. See it and you’ll remember it (probably for life). 

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