THE LOBSTER
A24
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya
Grade: B
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Written by: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Lea Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Ariane Labed
Screened at: Park Ave., NYC, 4/12/16
Opens: May 13, 2016
The best science fiction stories are not only riveting as tales but serve as well to satirize our own, current society. In “Logan’s Run,” each person is put into a machine and evaporated upon his or her thirtieth birthday, the reflection on the present day world, at least in the West, being obvious. In “Fahrenheit 451,” where people are kept brainwashed and allegedly happy while staring at the government leader on the big screen, one brave group escapes to a world of books, committing them to memory. Not only is this a clever spoof of Big Brother government and the affect of TV on people: it is more prescient than ever today consisting of people tapping their iPhones rather than reading serious books.
Along comes the movie “The Lobster,” co-written and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, whose “Alps” features a group of people who start a business where they impersonate the recently deceased in order to help their clients through the grieving process, and whose “Dogtooth” focuses on three teenagers who cannot leave their house, because their over-protective parents say they can depart only when their dogteeth fall out. Lanthimos, aided by a tweezer-sharp script from Efthymis Filippou, continues in a surreal mode with “The Lobster,” which takes aim on present-day conformity with an emphasis on how society pressures people to marry and have kids.
While the film is overlong at just under two hours, several episodes show great originality with a satiric bite reminiscent of the equally surreal films of Luis Buñuel, whose almost plotless “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” finds six upper-middle-class people regularly interrupted in their attempt to share a meal. Though no lobster emerges, Lanthimos aims to show that not only are people pressured to marry in order to fit into every society currently existing: at the same time, those who opt to join a culture in which romantic attachments are greatly discouraged will find their lives equally intolerable. In the broadest sense, Lanthimos’s critical target is the nature of political and social extremism,
Lanthimos hands Colin Farrell the brass ring as the principal character, the only one in the movie with a name—David. Filming exclusively in Ireland, the director’s regular cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis turns the lenses on a dystopia that at first looks like our own country, with its mid-level hotels and shopping areas. The objective of the society is not materialism—there are enough movies and literature attacking that—but on coupling and reproducing. They have ways to make people conform. If the folks at a resort hotel (looks like a singles weekend at the now defunct Concord or Grossinger’s) do not find partners to marry within forty five days, they are hunted down if necessary and turned into animals of their choosing, which explain why a camel is seen roaming Ireland’s seashore. David chooses a lobster because of its longevity, and because he had always like the sea. Through Lanthimos and Filippou’s surreal imagination, the hotel manager (Olivia Colman), reading the riot act in her warning about animal transformation, notes (in the movie’s most deadpan statement) that “a wolf and a penguin cannot live together, because that would be absurd.”
The unnamed characters do have a way to distinguish themselves—by some aspect of their physicality. Thus The Limping Man (Ben Whishaw) and the less handsome Lisping Man (John C. Reilly) will look for partners whose disabilities mimic their own. In fact The Limping Man, who does not find a woman with a limp, instead hits on The Woman with a Nosebleed, deliberately banging his head on the table in order to be at one with his choice. This could remind one of couples from different religions either converting to share their spouse’s faith, or meeting in the middle with a compromised version of a belief.
Like the folks in “Fahrenheit 451” who escape from the clutches of government, David flees the society, presumably not eager to become a crustacean, only to find that the group called The Loners go to the opposite extreme. Rather than pressure people to couple, the Loner Leader (Léa Seydoux) enforces a system in which romantic love is banned. Nonetheless he and Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz) discover an emotional bond, which allows Lanthimos and Filippou to carve a parallel story from their angle.
“The Lobster” is filled with comic moments as well as gruesome drama—the latter involving a situation in which a man is about to gouge out his own eyes with a steak knife to remain united to his blind love interest. “The Lobster” is the director’s first English language drama with just a smattering of French and will be appreciated by a sophisticated audience that can appreciate both a complex story and the scathing trashing of our rigidly conformist society.
Rated R. 119 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B+
Acting – A-
Technical – B+
Overall – B+
