The Lobster

colin farrell

Hotel Manager: Why a lobster?

David: Because lobsters live for over one hundred years, are blue-blooded like aristocrats, and stay fertile all their lives. I also like the sea very much.

quick fox: B+ | Silver

rachel weisz

winding dragon

One of the more famous (and one of my personal favorites) comic panels from Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes is the Sunday strip in which a quartet of deer hunt a human officer worker. Calvin’s cheeky explanation for his reversal of hunting rituals: “thinning of the herds was necessary to prevent starvations.”

I had this panel in my head as I watched Yorgo Lanthimos’ satirical black-comedy The Lobster, because they both toy with human animalistic tendencies—except while Calvin’s antics land him a parent-teacher conference, Lanthimos’ film earned a nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

The Lobster (2016) is a dark, twisted social satire on romantic relationships, set in a universe where it is illegal for a person to be single (a “loner”). The punishment for being discovered as a loner is to be sent to a hotel where you have 45 days to find a mate. If not, you are killed and transformed into an animal of your choosing (in other words, forced reincarnation). The story centers on David (Colin Farrell), a near-sighted man who is brought to the hotel after his wife commits adultery and leaves him. In Dantean fashion, David gravitates from person to person in the hotel, searching for the perfect mate, until a startling event causes him to flee from the hotel and live his life as a rogue loner. 

The problem with satire is that you either get it or you don’t—and this applies to not only the overall production but specific aspects within the piece itself. For me, the concept of choosing what animal I want to be transformed as once I die (though in The Lobster, it’d be more accurate to say “murdered”) is brilliant, because it speaks to a very personal symbol. Throughout the film, I found myself watching the people and wondering what sort of animal they’d want to be, and vice versa, looking at the animals (like the stray camel that appears in the background of the forest) and wondering who they were as people. David chooses to be a lobster because they have long life, blue blood, and life-long fertility, speaking to his fears of death, insignificance, and sexual inferiority. As for myself, I’d probably want to be a red panda because I’m short, Asian, and get to train the Dragon Warrior (sorry, random Kung Fu Panda reference). 

But one satirical aspect that I struggle with is the relentless fatalism. The Lobster loves to throw out maxims (opinions about the world) that are a mix of intentionally inaccurate, accurate but skewed, and entirely ambiguous. These maxims are usually statements about every type of relationship possible—single people (by choice, force, or failed endeavors), married people (divorced, happy, broken, or adulterous), and homosexuality (the hotel gives occupants the choice between homosexuality or heterosexuality). All of these satirical statements, though, creates numerous contradictory viewpoints on the world, and by the end of the film, all cumulates into an entirely hopeless outlook on life. 

The best way to watch The Lobster is to understand that it’s an experimental allegory. The bizarre, hyper-direct delivery of the actor’s lines and the short bursts of classical music playing to slow-motion cinematography build a world that highlights the absurdity of life. The characters’ names—Shortsighted Woman (Rachel Weisz) or Lisping Man (John C. Reilly) or Loner Leader (Léa Seydoux)—remind the audience that everyone functions as a social symbol, ridiculing the methods in which society tries to guilt people into/out of relationships. 

Honestly, it’s difficult for me to give a definitive grade. It’s the kind of film that I know will be interpreted differently not only across peoples, but across time. I, as a single male in my early twenties, will feel a heck of a lot differently about this film ten, twenty years for now. 

But the sheer originality and artistic expressiveness of The Lobster is enough for me to walk away with a favorable impression despite its somber qualities.

ben whishaw