The lobster film review

Just how “free” are we to enjoy loving and partnering, or not, in today’s rule-phobic, yet rule-obsessed, world of relationships and techno-mediated social function? And what exactly is love anyway, if not just a socio-genetic engineering device to ensure survival of the species? These should be a pretty damn interesting question for a film to address, or at least to explore And for parts of “The Lobster” these questions take an enthralling grip (if by the throat) on its audience But the opening scene reveals the template of all that’s to follow, emotionally A deranged, cold-eyed woman driver hurtles along a road She suddenly pulls over, stomps across a field, gun in hand and we are ready to laugh at some intimation of a punch-line She shoots a donkey – it falls End of scene And so begins the director’s series of rug-pulling, until we are upside down on our badly bruised heads and still impelled, somehow, to force a laugh An anxious laugh – that could have been a thoughtful smile, in less angry hands The plot is blood simple: in some parallel world, single people are given 45 days to find a mate at a bland, almost comfortable, hotel of sorts Later, it becomes clearer that they must fall in love, although it remains a turbid point – the blurry line between finding someone well-suited, and actually falling in love But, fail to find your partner and you forfeit your life – well, forfeit your humanity, and resume life as an animal If you want more than 45 days to find your match you can get bonus reprieves by hunting down single people in the adjoining forest, and shooting them with a tranquilizing dart Of course, it doesn’t really make sense – being coerced into falling in love, for reasons of having just one or two things superficially in common, never works – not even in real life – but it makes even less sense that the couples in the Lobster are not allowed to “cheat” by pretending to have things in common – even if it means thumping your own head to fake a nose-bleed because you want to fall in love with someone with a chronic nose-bleed To “assist” (or coerce) with the task, the near-tasteful seaside Butlinsesque hotel’s events calendar includes lectures on the advantages of coupledom (you will always have someone to perform a Heimlich manoeuvre on you should you choke on food during an intimate dinner, for example), and is presided over by a super-comical fascist couple – presumably a parody of the ideal form of enduring couple love There are quiet chuckles like this peppered evenly through the first half of the film, but by the second act the cruelty becomes quite bludgeoning, and it’s difficult not to believe that the director really does enjoy violent cruelty, whilst seeming to decry the cruelty of simplistic social expectations Although director Lorgos Lanthimos seems most firmly focused on satirizing societal pressures to form coupled relationships, and the mutual envy of the coupled and the uncoupled, it transpires that his real hatred is sincerity itself - which is first attacked, and then endlessly parodied We are invited to think of the pressures of internet dating sites, or Facebook, to conform by performing and by imitating intimate relationships, but the parody remains at a surface level, and the real pains of loneliness are often scorned (a desperate, suicidal woman is given little sympathy, and coolly observed like an insect by another feeling-less woman) Eventually, due to the relentless graphic depictions of violence, we are left with only two choices: become sadistic and chuckle along at the increasingly forced metaphors of violence towards vulnerable creatures, or become masochistic and flinching - praying for some love to bloom, somewhere And it does – sort of But, with some of Stravinsky’s most dry and acerbic chamber music, even love is stripped of any feeling – and mocked, as we watch the bemused, pathetic lives of fools, (donkeys?) such as ourselves In fact, we are forced to either pair with the director’s cynicism, and chuckle along, or be flinching individuals, forced to endure cruelty as we watch masochistically Schlumpy/schlubby Colin Farrell is good at playing an “actor” (David) befuddled by the inhumanity of humanity – but rarely indicating any direct passion, so that it’s hard to tell if this works really well in the film, or just contributes to the cynical atmosphere He meets up with some rebel loners in the forest and has a “forbidden” relationship with Rachel Weisz Is it love? Well, if you call feeling impelled to bring your love freshly slaughtered rabbits, and feeling jealous of anyone else bringing her rabbits, then – yes, this is love And there are some rare moments of genuine closeness, as there are rare moments of cinematic beauty But, meanwhile, back at the cruelty games, human – and animal – frailty are beaten to death, almost as badly and unremittingly as the film’s metaphors re social pressuring It’s tempting to believe that Lanthimos never quite gives up on romance – but really, he slyly replaces it with Sid-and-Nancy-Love-Kills sadomasochism, and the perpetual conviction that love is merely socially contrived manipulation, or even a genetic lottery – in spite of his protesteth-too-much, lion-king roar at those who have turned romance into an industry or social contrivance But, his “Grisaille” method of imitation sculptures of character, without actually evolving them, emotionally, (as, say, a similar fugitive couple in a dehumanized, mal-controlling “order” in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, or even Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner) is unconvincing as a deeper exploration of the pressures to conform – both as a single or a coupled person This 2D reduction of character would be okay if it helped us to think, if at an abstracted distance, about some curly issues of modern day couplings, or not But, the effect of not being quite sure where and when the next act of violence will hit us between our asinine audience eyes, is to defeat the possibility of such a thinking space opening up in any serious or maintained manner The images are often beautiful – the slow motion scenes in the forest of humans hunting in packs is almost haunting, and precipitate of the sort of dream-thinking that film is capable of – but it isn’t quite touching, here, and never quite sustained before we become porous to the next jab of violence Like lobsters, we are in hot water, with no way to escape, or to transcend Seasoned with sprinkles of Orwell, Buñuel, Coen Bros, and exotic touches of animalia (a flamingo wandering through the forest backdrop, that we must now see merely as a failed-to-pair human) there is occasional real psycho-cinematic depth, side by side with laboured, and unpregnant moments of enforced humour The irony of this is as inescapable as it is unfortunate - a film cruelly parodying the cruelty of enforced and manufactured expectations but treating its audience in exactly the same manner We are not just amused by the intermingling of satire with cruel violence, we are deliberately forced to laugh – this being aided by the entourage of Gervaisian characters (The Office, Extras and so forth) as if an audience signal directing us to laugh, when we know that something very serious is struggling to irrupt our thinking circuits Sometimes, the film approaches the deep entwining of love, humour and murderous cruelty of Martin McDonagh’s In Brugues, but unlike that other entwined exploration of love, hate, warm and cold, guilt and beauty – Lanthimos seems to purposely (I’m tempted to say “perversely”) conflate these – as if, by sleight of cinematic hand, love and cruel blinding must necessarily be part of the same coinage But, ultimately if the film does eventually get around to extolling the necessities of devotion (this is where David appears to self-transmogrify into his chosen form; a Lobster) as an essential ingredient left out of the modern online dating and mating regimen, then that can’t be bad can it? Maybe not, but is self-blinding really a necessary part of “real” love? After all Lear and Oedipus were, ultimately, fools, of the cruellest order We are not just talking of Love’s need to be a bit blind to the beloved’s faults – we are talking of a concrete and cruel demand that the beloved must suffer exactly the same privations and damage, in exactly the same parts of the body as one’s own suffering Even the potentially poetic, potentially touching, final scene sharply pushes right into our eyeballs the metaphor of the lobster, and punctures any tender depiction or invocation of an alternative to cruel, cool, controlled, masochistically sacrificial love Quel dommage Neil Maizels ©2015 ... in exactly the same parts of the body as one’s own suffering Even the potentially poetic, potentially touching, final scene sharply pushes right into our eyeballs the metaphor of the lobster, and... maintained manner The images are often beautiful – the slow motion scenes in the forest of humans hunting in packs is almost haunting, and precipitate of the sort of dream-thinking that film is capable... conflate these – as if, by sleight of cinematic hand, love and cruel blinding must necessarily be part of the same coinage But, ultimately if the film does eventually get around to extolling the necessities