The Lobster (2015): That's Absurd

Describing Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ movies as unusual would be a significant understatement. Customers leaving the screening of his latest, The Lobster (his fifth feature film and his first in English) used adjectives like “weird”, “strange”, ‘odd” and “absurd”, the last being closest to the mark. To me, it seemed “Bunuellian”, as in the films of Luis Bunuel, particularly The Exterminating Angel (1962) [which I reviewed three years ago]. There’s also a kinship with the absurdist sensibilities of playwrights like Ionesco, Beckett and Albee.

Lanthimos’ most noted earlier picture was Dogtooth (2009), which was nominated for an Oscar in the foreign language film category and won the “Un Certain Regard” prize at Cannes. Dogtooth was a difficult and (to me) horrid art cinema piece. (See my mini-review appended as a postscript, below.)  The Lobster is a significant leap forward - a more intriguing and far more approachable movie. Which is not to say that it is quite mainstream.

The Lobster is set in a dystopian, parallel world to our own, but one where some of the rules are different. This of course is what makes things interesting. It stars Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, along with John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, and Ben Whishaw. Farrell is David, a newly divorced man in a society in which being single is a crime. But there’s a grace period, and as the movie starts we travel with David to a resort-hotel for the newly un-partnered, where he will have forty-five days to find a new mate. Along with David, we learn the basics of this place: upon entry, one’s personal belongings are collected and inventoried, as in a jail (everyone gets the same hotel-provided wardrobe); also as in a jail, one may not leave the premises; no sex is allowed between “guests” (nor self-administered); and potential partners must share some common characteristic – myopia, nosebleeds and sociopathy are some examples. If one does find a match, there are procedures to confirm that it’s both solid and real (i.e. not feigned). Failing that, when one’s time is up, he/she is turned into an animal. (“Don’t let that get you down”, says the hotel manager. “Just think, it means that you’ll have a second chance to choose a companion.”) There is a silver lining: you get to choose your animal.

When David, a slightly pudgy, mild mannered fellow who seems a bit at sea here, perhaps still shell shocked from his sudden divorce, arrives at the hotel with his dog (formerly his brother), he is asked what his own choice will be, should it come to that. David would be a lobster, for reasons he enumerates.

The portrayal of David is so very un-Colin Farrell, that it’s revelatory, much in the way that in Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), Theodore’s dissimilarity from what we’d come to expect from the actor Joaquin Phoenix, made him more compelling and more credible. David meets and befriends a couple of other guys, a lisping man (Reilly) and a limping man (Whislaw), but the women are not interesting to or not interested in him.  Out of desperation, he attempts to hook up with “heartless woman” (Angeliki Papoulia), with surprising results.

I should note here that although the trailer for The Lobster, for those who may have seen it, suggests that the picture will be a quirky comedy, this is not totally accurate or fair. Quirky for sure and sometimes quite funny, the movie too is morally equivocal, shocking at times, and deeply pessimistic. Eventually, there’s a love story of sorts, even in this strange milieu. To understand this, I need to further explain thatThe Lobster is a film in two acts. The first part takes place at the aforementioned hotel. Act 2 is set primarily in the surrounding forests.

In those forests live the “Loners”, men and women who have not paired up and prefer being human to becoming wildlife. These folks live in small bands, hunting and scavenging, and taking care of one another more or less. The tribe near our hotel is led by a determined young woman (Seydoux) who is by turns kindly and steely, sometimes cruelly tough. Although Loner society is in many ways much freer than hotel society, they have rules, too; and these mirror in certain respects those of the society they oppose. Chiefly, Loners may not form romantic relationships of any kind: they may not flirt, kiss, have sex, and so forth. Violating these rules leads to some pretty harsh sanctions.

Despite this, when in the second act David finds himself among the Loners in the forest, he soon finds himself drawn to a lovely woman (Weisz) who, like him, is near-sighted, and like him is lonely. Right woman, wrong place. Needless to say, their budding romance must be kept under wraps.

All of the actors are top notch, including some of the lesser known folks. Farrell and Weisz, in particular, shine. The cinematography,as well is very effective and frequently beautiful, especially in the outdoor scenes. The tone of the film blends an odd and very effective brand of farcical humor, some of which is laugh-out-loud funny, with some disturbing violence and cruelty – most of the violent bits occurring just off-screen, but no less troubling for that.   

Among the things I liked best about The Lobster was that it told its tale – even some of the most ludicrous stuff - in a matter of fact manner, and that it provoked questions without providing ready answers. At the end of the movie, I and my fellow theater-goers all seemed to have the same question: What the heck was that about? Seems to me that it’s a satirical commentary on the state of relationships, dating, computer matchmaking, and/or romance in our digital, multitasking age – notwithstanding the fact that computers, cell phones, social media, and all that stuff plays absolutely no part in the narrative. And, with that, it’s almost certainly a meditation on being alone, being apart, and the concomitant need to connect with others, as mediated for better or worse by our society. But I’m far from sure. If you see The Lobster, maybe you can help me out.

Approximately 2 hours

In limited release

Rated R (for explicit lapdancing and some violence)

PS:  The Lobster was unusual and intriguing enough that I got curious about Lanthimos’ earlier work. So I rented Dogtooth and gave that one a go. Unlike The Lobster, this earlier movie has no discernable story arc, being simply a montage of scenes which, taken together,  develop a picture of an odd and disturbing family - consisting of three siblings, two girls and a boy, all of indeterminate age (somewhere between their late teens and early twenties) and their middle aged parents. The kids have been isolated all their lives, have never left the family compound and have very, very limited access to any referents in the outside world. Dad and mom are somewhere between amoral and immoral in their manipulation of these infantilized young people, with bizarre and disturbing results. 

I found the oddness of it all initially fascinating, sometimes bizarrely funny and eventually quite repellant - so much so that I quit about twenty minutes before the end of the ninety-four minute run time. From other reviewers, I got the sense that this movie does not get “better” at the end.  I can’t recommend it, except perhaps for the most adventurist, hard-hearted cineasts.

Dogtooth is available streaming at Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Google Play, and elsewhere.