The Lobster
Go! A Bizarre satire of 21st Century Dating.
Pair up or get screwed.
Relationships in this day and age are very much a chicken and egg scenario. Basically, everyone pecks around on Tinder until they get laid. In most cases, once laid, things will quickly crack and you'll end up scrambled, back online and scrabbling around in the dust for scraps. If you're lucky, your lay might actually go somewhere and you'll grow the thick, cocky plumage of a long-term relationship; but even then you may well get "Ashley Madisoned" - plucked, skinned, roasted and feeling fowl. Back to the battery (powered) farm you go. OK, it's probably not all that bad; but with the advent of the internet, the long-standing search for partnership has been injected with growth hormones. For some, the pressure to pair off is felt greater than ever.
In The Lobster - Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos' English-language satirical-dystopia film - it is imagined that we have reached another level altogether, where singledom simply isn't allowed to exist. Any so-called "loners" are sent away from the city to a bleak and charmless hotel on the coast and given 45 days to find a partner with at least one similar characteristic. Failure to do so within the time means death and subsequent reincarnation as an animal of one's choosing (obviously). Any escapee loners live as outcasts in the woods near the hotel, and their makeshift society forbids them from forming any romantic relationships of any kind; with severe punishments for doing so. The loners are also regularly and cruelly hunted by the hotel guests, who each gain an additional day to find a mate for every loner they take down with a tranquilliser gun. Yup, it is a bit crazy, but it also doesn't take a great deal of imagination to leap from our current "right swipe" on a phone screen to a bonkers world where being single is finally outlawed.
The cast is comedic, familiar and predominantly from the British Isles. Colin Farrell (Total Recall) is warm and wonderful in the lead as an overweight, moustachioed loner entering the hotel after his wife has left him. There, under the jurisdiction of stern hotel manager Olivia Colman (I Give it a Year), he buddies up with a man with a limp (Ben Whishaw; Spectre) and a man with a lisp (John C. Reilly; Wreck-it Ralph), and is pursued by a Scottish biscuit lady (Ashley Jensen; Nativity). Outwith the hotel, we encounter head of the loners, ice queen Léa Seydoux (Spectre), and fellow feral single, Rachel Weisz (The Bourne Legacy).
The comedy of the film dribbles constantly from its extremely dry script and dark absurdity and there are plenty of awkward, cringey laughs throughout. It has a feeling of a film that may have arisen from a successful lab experiment between Wes Andersonian frivolity (Moonrise Kingdom), Coenesque dark humour (Inside Llewyn Davis) and a Charlie Brookerian stinging satire on modern society (Black Mirror (TV)). The characters all have a childish and mechanical nature - the conversations are functional and stern; almost like text messages being read out between iPhone's Siri and Nokia's Cortana. It is purposefully melodramatic, from an excellent slow motion hunt scene with a classical music overlay, to the seriousness and sadness of the arousal enforced upon the men in the hotel, who are not permitted to masturbate, but must allow a maid to grind on their crotch daily to help accelerate their enthusiasm for finding a mate. The relationship between Farrell and Weisz eventually bundles all of the humour and creepiness into some deeper meaning, and both are wonderfully infantile as their connection to one another takes hold.
The comedy of the film dribbles constantly from its extremely dry script and dark absurdity and there are plenty of awkward, cringey laughs throughout. It has a feeling of a film that may have arisen from a successful lab experiment between Wes Andersonian frivolity (Moonrise Kingdom), Coenesque dark humour (Inside Llewyn Davis) and a Charlie Brookerian stinging satire on modern society (Black Mirror (TV)). The characters all have a childish and mechanical nature - the conversations are functional and stern; almost like text messages being read out between iPhone's Siri and Nokia's Cortana. It is purposefully melodramatic, from an excellent slow motion hunt scene with a classical music overlay, to the seriousness and sadness of the arousal enforced upon the men in the hotel, who are not permitted to masturbate, but must allow a maid to grind on their crotch daily to help accelerate their enthusiasm for finding a mate. The relationship between Farrell and Weisz eventually bundles all of the humour and creepiness into some deeper meaning, and both are wonderfully infantile as their connection to one another takes hold.
While it could have been shorter and the story definitely loses its way for a while when it takes us out of the hotel and into the loners' world, overall, it gives the audience plenty of credit by not overly explaining everything and there is plenty in this film to keep up the interest. There are many memorable concepts and challenging ideas, but the most enjoyable are often the most juvenile - particularly look out for Colin Farrell insulting then kicking a 7 year old girl in the shins.
So, go. Seeing this unusual, off-beat movie is way better than checking your emails for eHarmony responses.
So, go. Seeing this unusual, off-beat movie is way better than checking your emails for eHarmony responses.
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