The Lobster (2015)
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
“Lobsters are lonely animals. They stay among the rocks during the day to avoid predators, and venture out at night in search of food. Lobsters rarely interact with each other. When introduced into a community, lobsters obtain a certain social hierarchy. This social system plays an important role when the mating season arrives. A male who has a higher status among his neighbors will have a safe haven and can mate with multiple females.”
A mysterious woman (Jacqueline Abrahams) drives her car in the middle of a storm. Abruptly, she stops her vehicle and heads towards a group of donkeys that are on the side of the road. Consumed by fury, the woman kills one of the animals while the viewer observes the horrible scene from inside the vehicle. With this mysterious sequence, and with thousands of questions, The Lobster begins.
This film is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, the greek filmmaker that has managed to develop a very distinctive cinematographic style which was fully exposed in his magnum opus Dogtooth (read our review here). His progressive despair, catharsis, awkward violence, comic rhythm, strange characters, and dystopian stories has earned him a very special place in contemporary art cinema.
The Lobster focuses on David (Colin Farrell), a newcomer to ‘The Hotel’, a place where people must stay for a month and a half if they are singles. Within their 6-week stay, the guests are forced to find a sentimental partner, in order to avoid their transformation into an animal of their choice. Once inside the hotel, we are able to contemplate the main law that rules this grotesque community: marriage is idealized and it is indispensable in order to remain a human.
In addition, the guests have the obligation to go out into the forest and hunt the ‘rebel singles’, which have managed to escape the system and now live in the wild. Each capture earns the guests one more day of lodging in the hotel, which delays the possible transformation process. His days being counted, David pretends to be in love with an extremely cold and cruel woman (Rossana Hoult), in order to avoid becoming a lobster. His lie will have serious consequences and embark him on an epic and bizarre journey.
The Lobster is a difficult movie to classify, I would describe it as a comedy-fiction of black humor with flashes of psychological thriller. Behind its twisted and dark philosophy, we contemplate a fierce and monstrous criticism to idealized love, relationships, marriage, and fanaticism.
Lanthimos projects the idea that a relationship is only successful as long as both parties have at least one or more characteristics in common, otherwise the couple is destined to fail. However, many people pretend to be in love in order to fulfill social stereotypes.
Then we have the forest rebels, which appear to be against the ideology of forced love. The feeling of “freedom” that they claim to have is immediately crushed by the rules that their leaders impose on them: now, nobody can not have any sentimental or sexual relationship. The breach of these rules include severe punishments. It is here when we are able to experience the brutal fanaticism of rebellion.
Lanthimos does something extraordinary: he manages to encapsulate the two ideologies that have ruled our human species for a long time. Our protagonist flows through both, demonstrating that he does not fit into any of them. His ideas are not radical or extremist. David is not against loneliness, but he does not believe that human beings should be forced to live inside it.
It was French philosopher Michel Foucault who said: “… if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal, then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing ”. The main characters of this movie are constantly classified inside these three painful categories, and they can do little or nothing to escape.
After days, hours, months and even years, the movie does not end. It remains beating and reflecting in ourselves and everyone around us.
by Octavio Carbajal González
One of the best directors. By the way I’ve just discovered your page and read a few posts. Keep up the good work!
Great read. Maybe the most amazing thing about this film is that Colin Farrell plays the role perfectly and like nobody else could have played it.
Agree with you, Colin Farrell constantly adds layers of emotional power and credibility to the film. What an amazing protagonist, nobody else could have played it.
have to see this movie! thanks for your review!!
Wonderful review Octavio. I enjoyed the film when I saw it but your review really opened the film up. This is a movie that can work on so many levels beyond the usual “crazy movie” critique. For me it was the standardization and ridiculous regulation that the modern liberal societies seem so enthusiastic to impose on every social situation. Destroying true human relationships with completely meaningless norms. Norms we accept even as the destroy real interactions. Of course, your review goes even further pointing out the “brutal fanaticism” of the rebel. That’s a great observation and one I hadn’t considered.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read, Shawn !. Thank you for the effort and dedication that you deliver for VW. Thank you for your amazing and unexpected articles about unknown and brilliant music. “The Lobster” kept me extremely entertained and anxious. Our world usually behaves in this way, it´s a place that falls into absurdity, conformity and superficial norms. For example, I often watch people with severe problems that are constantly laughing and making jokes about everything (it´s an amazing self-defense mechanism, but it can be extremely dangerous). Fanaticism transforms ideologies into insane beasts that don´t care about destroying everything in their paths.
GREAT bizarre film!
Love Lanthimos, ‘Dogtooth’ is a precious masterpiece, but this one is also a great surrealist film that taps into many important topics. The regulation (and loss) of sex and love, the process of dehumanization. In its center that cruel woman / breathing machine. And nothing in this film has a futuristic look. But what I loved most about your review is that you picked up on the fanatism of the ‘rebels’, which we always want to like and support unconditionally. A very important universal point. Great review
Dogtooth kept me quite uncomfortable throughout the whole movie, my mind was revolutionized. “The Lobster” also did the same thing, but it felt more entertaining. Here, Lanthimos captured gigantic themes inside the plot and made them feel absurd and more accessible; that´s a really hard achievement. “Surreal” is an excellent term to describe the story, and I also agree on your interpretation about dehumanization and the regulation of sex and love. Thank you for highlighting my point about “the rebels” !.
A very disturbing film, and not in a good sense. Emotionless, sick and brutal. I usually love arthouse, but this is ‘art’ in the worst sense, a huge pile of unfinished and incoherent ideas.