The Lobster (2015)
The Lobster is a dark comedy and is Yorgos Lanthimos’s first English-language film. The movie takes place in the future, in a dystopian society where single people live in The Hotel, where they have to find their soul mate/match in forty-five days or be turned into an animal of their choice. The film is truly unlike anything I have ever seen. Between the comedy, the drama and the unusual setting the film is a standout. When you consider the deeper meaning of the film, however, it truly becomes a masterpiece that is sometimes difficult and fascinating to comprehend.
The lobster is extremely thought provoking and will have you evaluating it for days. From my perspective (and there are several, each person seems to get something else out of it), The Lobster shows us how society instills us with the idea that the ultimate goal is to find someone to spend your life with and have children. We are told this at such a young age that when you get older, sometimes being single is almost depressing. I mean Valentine’s Day is a whole holiday devoted to couples. In the film, couples have much more freedom than single people. If the characters stay single for too long you turn into an animal, which forces some people to lie about their happiness as a couple in order to stay human. One other thing I liked about the film was that each person in The Hotel had an imperfection, frequent nosebleeds, a limp, a lisp or even being shortsighted for example. The ultimate goal was to find someone else with the same imperfection, which says a lot abut society as well.
There are many themes explored in the film such as freedom and what someone would do for love. There are also many common expressions about love that are explored very literally in the film. The film is not only one that begs to be seen more than once, but needs to be seen at different times in your life. As I’ve discovered with the movie Her (Spike Jonze, 2014), some films can be interpreted differently, depending on how you are feeling about life when you watch it.
The Lobster is not only deep and meaningful, but on the surface it is absolutely hilarious. The monotone character that Colin Ferrell portrays is perfect, and I can only imagine how hard it was to keep a straight face at times on set. The humor is very dark, but it becomes extremely easy to literally laugh out loud at it. The Lobster is a brilliant piece of filmmaking that cannot be fully comprehended by just one viewing. It is versatile, hilarious and did I mention absolutely beautiful? The world that Yorgos has created is absolutely fascinating. He tells just enough to tell the story and leaves a lot of the world to our imagination and interpretation. The Lobster can be a bit confusing at times, is certainly not for everyone and it is not a film you should turn on the background while you do something else. The Lobster is truly unique, smart, meaningful, thought provoking and funny. B+
The Lobster opens in select theaters May, 13, 2016
Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Awards Won: Jury prize at Cannes Film Festival 2015
Starring: Colin Ferrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden and John C. Reilly