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| Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz go on the run in writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos' excellent The Lobster. |
We should be past the point in human history where any of us
believes there is one way for a person to live his life. We should be, but we
are not. The loudest among us in fact want very much to dictate rules for how
we act, speak, create, love, and in a larger sense exist. Some embrace these
mandates as gospel, while others rebel, lash out, and decry the whole system.
This push and pull is like an ideological tug of war in which no one wins but
those shouting the commands. In truth, we should all probably just drop the
damn rope.
In The Lobster,
Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos depicts a world drained of passion, expression,
and choice. Its inhabitants are offered just one option, a single guiding path
for their lives, and if they fail to remain on this path, a whole other
oppressive structure awaits. The Lobster
is a bold statement about the ways in which we let systems control us through
fear, humiliation, and the threat of violence or worse. Because Lanthimos is a
visionary filmmaker and singular storyteller, the film is also a darkly comic
fable about a hotel where people are transformed into animals.
The rules of this world are established economically and
matter-of-factly. To live in this society, you must have a romantic partner. If
you do not have a partner – regardless of the reason, be it death, divorce, or
lack of interest – you must register at the hotel, which operates like a cross
between a singles cruise and a totalitarian re-education center. Those people
who find their match are returned to The City to live out their days together.
Those who do not meet someone in 45 days are transformed into the animal of
their choosing.
Colin Farrell, here sapped of his usual roguish charm and
dashing good looks, plays David, a schlumpy architect whose wife leaves him for
another man. The first question he asks is whether the man is near-sighted, and
we will soon find out why this question preoccupies him at this devastating
moment. When he arrives at the hotel, accompanied by his brother, Bob, who has
been transformed into a dog, he meets the Lisping Man (John C. Reilly), the
Limping Man (Ben Wishaw), the Biscuit Woman (Ashley Jensen), and the Heartless
Woman (Angeliki Papoulia).
Each of these people is identified by a single defining
trait, both by the world at large and by their own consent. On their first
night in the hotel, they must introduce themselves by their defining feature,
and it becomes clear that in matchmaking, they will live or die (or rather,
transmogrify) by whether they find another person with whom they share this
trait.
We see people try to connect, some desperately, some
earnestly, but most unsuccessfully. There is a sense of resignation in all of
them. None wants to be turned into an animal, but they have been sapped of
their ability to seek happiness in romance. In a world where the options are
pair or perish, there is little time for passion, joy or love.
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| John C. Reilly, Ben Wishaw, and Farrell in The Lobster |
Indeed, the Limping Man, believing himself unlikely to find
a woman with a limp – there was one, but it turned out just to be a sprained
ankle, he says dejectedly – decides to lie to the Nosebleed Woman (Jessica
Barden) and claim he, too, is beset by bloody-nose fits. He resigns himself to
bashing his face against walls and countertops several times daily for the rest
of his life to achieve the illusion, thinking this better than the alternative.
In between these scenes of desperation, we get bracingly
humorous insights into the ethos of this society. The hotel guests gather for
demonstrations, hosted by the Hotel Manager (Olivia Colman), of how life is so
much better for a couple. These include: A man eats alone and is seen to choke
and die, but when seen eating with a partner, she is able to save his life.
Also, a woman walks alone and is attacked by a rapist, but when she walks with
a partner, the would-be rapist does nothing.
These lessons are presented dryly and accepted without
question. We get a sense of a world without human emotion, and it begins to
seem that in a place where becoming a wild animal is the worst fate that can
befall you, even acting like a human being might be considered too beastly.
After David’s own attempt at deception fails and he is forced to escape the
hotel and live in the woods, Lanthimos shows us the beastly side of human
nature.
He joins a group known as the Loners, who have rejected the
rules of the system. They live as a pack in the woods and are hunted by guests
of the hotel – each Loner caught represents an extra day in the hotel before
being transformed. They live, for all intents and purposes, like the animals
they would be turned into anyway. This is not the reprieve David might have
hoped for, and he quickly realizes the Loners are as militant about not
coupling as the rest of their society is about coupling.
Romantic liaisons among Loners are punished in creatively
gruesome ways such as the Red Kiss (you do not want to know) and the Red
Intercourse (do not ask). This poses a problem when David at long last meets
the woman he believes could be his partner, the Nearsighted Woman (Rachel
Weisz). Escapees from one totalitarian regime, their love is now forbidden by
the only other system available to them.
All of this is executed gorgeously by Lanthimos and
delivered wonderfully by the actors, whose purposefully wooden performances are
more expressive than at first they appear. The stylistic choices – such as
Lanthimos’ often-flat shot setups and the actors’ stilted line deliveries,
among much else – are perfectly in keeping with the thematic investigations of
the film.
As David and the Nearsighted Woman become emotionally more involved,
their world opens up. They are capable of more together than they were apart,
which is a seeming endorsement of the state’s rules, but it is not. Their love,
their passion, and their commitment can only exist outside the systems the
world would impose on them. They have dropped the rope on which they tugged and
run from it. In this world though, there is another rope, tied tightly around
the neck, and it is this noose from which they must escape to find happiness,
love, and freedom.
See it? Yes.
