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The Lobster (2015)
Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux, John C. Reilly. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou.
The world can be unkind to romantically unattached singles, many of whom spend their whole lives searching for someone who will connect with them in some deeply meaningful way. Or, barring that, someone who will at least agree that life spent with just about anyone at all is better than spending it with nobody. This is not a new theme in film or in any other realm exploring the miserable stuff of life.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster takes our preoccupation with love (or at least couplehood) to absurd extremes in a way that’s supposed to be funny but leans so far over into terrible that I found it difficult to laugh even when I knew I was supposed to, although most of the time I wasn’t sure whether scenes were meant to make me laugh, cry, or recoil in utter horror, which I suppose is the point. Characters go to ridiculous lengths to establish connections with potential lovers, one of them arriving at the baffling conclusion that it’s easier to act like you don’t care about someone who doesn’t like you than it is to act like you do care about someone who does like you.
Considering what’s at stake, it’s difficult exactly to judge any of them, for in this dystopian Ireland, newly single people check into hotels and are given forty-five days to find new partners. If they don’t, they are turned into the animals of their choice. When David, the film’s main character, is abandoned by his wife, he brings his dog to the hotel, because the dog is his brother. The hotel has strict rules, all of them designed to encourage partnering up before the grace period is over, and although everyone is there for the same reason as David, connecting with someone just isn’t easy. That woman is very pretty, and this woman is sweet and friendly, and that sexually uninhibited one over there keeps inviting you to her room, but…but…but…
Lanthimos does interesting work in framing the love-obsessed world, but then he rotates the image, skewering and condemning unapologetic singles who pass judgment on couples. This next-leveling turns what would have been a creative but rather shallow black comedy into something much more interesting in a kind of not-so-fast-you-in-the-condescension-corner-yeah-I’m-talking-to-you way. If I like this movie at all, it’s because I found myself tsk-tsking in the first half and dodging the finger of accusation in the second. What a neat, amusing, and embarrassing experience.
Everything about this film is cold. The lighting is cold. The acting is cold. The dialogue is cold. Even the score, mostly chamber-type classical music, is cold. It’s tempting to call the acting flat and inhibited, but there’s something stirring down there, beneath the surfaces of these characters who seem so insipidly conceived. They don’t have names, and only one or two have backstories. I don’t know what the rationale was here, but this approach makes the film more challenging than seems necessary. Still, flashes of warmth and realness by Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, and a few of the others give the impression that there’s some real acting going on, and I may need another viewing to get a better idea of what the actors are doing.
The Lobster is easily a movie about love, but I wonder if it’s not also about faith, or politics, or education, or anything else with a dominant culture, a defiant counterculture, and people who can’t seem to find their place in the tiny space between. Either way, I find it an inspiring film despite this weird feeling that I’m not supposed to be inspired by it.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
83/100 (Criticker rating)
Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux, John C. Reilly. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou.
The world can be unkind to romantically unattached singles, many of whom spend their whole lives searching for someone who will connect with them in some deeply meaningful way. Or, barring that, someone who will at least agree that life spent with just about anyone at all is better than spending it with nobody. This is not a new theme in film or in any other realm exploring the miserable stuff of life.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster takes our preoccupation with love (or at least couplehood) to absurd extremes in a way that’s supposed to be funny but leans so far over into terrible that I found it difficult to laugh even when I knew I was supposed to, although most of the time I wasn’t sure whether scenes were meant to make me laugh, cry, or recoil in utter horror, which I suppose is the point. Characters go to ridiculous lengths to establish connections with potential lovers, one of them arriving at the baffling conclusion that it’s easier to act like you don’t care about someone who doesn’t like you than it is to act like you do care about someone who does like you.
Considering what’s at stake, it’s difficult exactly to judge any of them, for in this dystopian Ireland, newly single people check into hotels and are given forty-five days to find new partners. If they don’t, they are turned into the animals of their choice. When David, the film’s main character, is abandoned by his wife, he brings his dog to the hotel, because the dog is his brother. The hotel has strict rules, all of them designed to encourage partnering up before the grace period is over, and although everyone is there for the same reason as David, connecting with someone just isn’t easy. That woman is very pretty, and this woman is sweet and friendly, and that sexually uninhibited one over there keeps inviting you to her room, but…but…but…
Lanthimos does interesting work in framing the love-obsessed world, but then he rotates the image, skewering and condemning unapologetic singles who pass judgment on couples. This next-leveling turns what would have been a creative but rather shallow black comedy into something much more interesting in a kind of not-so-fast-you-in-the-condescension-corner-yeah-I’m-talking-to-you way. If I like this movie at all, it’s because I found myself tsk-tsking in the first half and dodging the finger of accusation in the second. What a neat, amusing, and embarrassing experience.
Everything about this film is cold. The lighting is cold. The acting is cold. The dialogue is cold. Even the score, mostly chamber-type classical music, is cold. It’s tempting to call the acting flat and inhibited, but there’s something stirring down there, beneath the surfaces of these characters who seem so insipidly conceived. They don’t have names, and only one or two have backstories. I don’t know what the rationale was here, but this approach makes the film more challenging than seems necessary. Still, flashes of warmth and realness by Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, and a few of the others give the impression that there’s some real acting going on, and I may need another viewing to get a better idea of what the actors are doing.
The Lobster is easily a movie about love, but I wonder if it’s not also about faith, or politics, or education, or anything else with a dominant culture, a defiant counterculture, and people who can’t seem to find their place in the tiny space between. Either way, I find it an inspiring film despite this weird feeling that I’m not supposed to be inspired by it.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
83/100 (Criticker rating)