Missed Opportunity Movie Review: "The Lobster" (2015)
It feels like it might be a fitting time for me to have discovered writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos’ pulsating slice of surreal dystopia that is The Lobster. After all, 2020 has been a year that’s redefined surreal in a country that has rapidly developed some dystopian flavor. It’s nice and serendipitous like that- 2020 is a fucked up year, and The Lobster is a fucked up movie.
That’s not a dig.
David (Colin Farrell; Fright Night 2011) an architect who has just gotten out of a twelve-year relationship. That’s tough, but it’s not the end of the world- unless you live in this society, where being single is a criminal state of being. Your next stop is The Hotel, a place where you have 45 days to make a lasting match with someone who shares identical traits as you and meets a host of compatibility components. Should you fail to do that, you’ll be turned into the animal of your choice and set loose in the wild to have another go at life. David’s choice is to become a lobster. Does that sound extreme? That’s because it is…but just stick around.
The Lobster is one of those movies that is presented in a very linear way for the sake of structure while the colorful bits and story beats are metered out in a decidedly non-linear way. By that nature, it’s an unorganized and disjointed film that could easily lose certain people. There’s not really any way around that, though- this is a movie that makes it clear in the early proceedings that you’re dealing with a horse of an entirely different color; a film that’s making an artistic decision to jar you with moments that would belong at home in Man Bites Dog while presenting a surprisingly tender and awkward love story…or at least the search for that storybook love story.
That’s one hell of a tricky balancing act to pull off in a movie that’s also making a visual statement from the color palette to the tone. The Lobster occurs in a world that could easily be a precursor to OR a subculture of the land of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale. Not only does Lanthimos nail that overall vibe, but he uses it to cleverly leave you asking a lot of questions about how your own society views “relationship goals”. If allusions to social message put you off a movie, then you’ll take something different away from The Lobster. And that’s the thing about the story of David- you can run with it in a few different directions and it generally works.
You don’t get results like that without a bedrock solid supporting cast, and there are some good ones here turning in killer performances- John C. Reilly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Talladega Nights) as the somewhat-lisping man, Rachel Weisz (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns) as the Short Sighted Woman, Olivia Colman (Hot Fuzz) as the ruthless Hotel Manager, and Ashley Jensen (ABC’s Ugly Betty) as Biscuit Woman. They all blend seamlessly together to make a satire with unusually sized teeth (even by black comedy standards).
And in one of those cases where a movie’s flaw is the testament to the thing it does the best, The Lobster manages to keep you wrapped up close to the story, despite your occasional confusion or rewind. It’s not meant to be fully absorbed on the first viewing, I don’t think. Frankly, it’s kind of refreshing right now to know that there are movies like that still being made.
