Movie of the Week: The Lobster

Alexa: I’m a sucker for offbeat, low-key sci-fi fare and “The Lobster” certainly checks a lot of those boxes. I thought the trailers gave off an “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” vibe, but “The Lobster” has little in common with anything else I’ve ever seen. While ultimately not as poignant or thoughtfully constructed as “Eternal Sunshine,” there is a lot about “The Lobster” that works. Director Yorgos Lanthimos (who is currently gaining strong Oscar buzz for his new movie “The Favourite”) creates a distinctly bleak world. The hotel is polished and refined but with an almost ashen color palette that hints at something sinister. It’s a world obsessed with romance but one built on a superficial foundation of instant gratification rather than investing time in cultivating a real connection. Is having nearsightedness in common really enough to forge a lifetime of love? It’s certainly an intriguing and timely commentary bolstered by the direction and performances, but I agree with Chris that it misses some opportunities for world building that would have made this weird society feel more complete. And I’m not sure that the ending is as meaningful as the movie clearly thinks it is.

Joel: Though I personally have never tried online dating through websites or apps, The Lobster strikes me as making commentary on the experience of this modern aspect of dating, and perhaps a satire of this type of courtship being taken to an extreme conclusion. The Lobster constructs a world where a person’s relationship status is everything, up to the point where people who are not currently in relationships have to go to a hotel where they have forty-five days to find a companion or be removed from the society. (The fact that they remove people from society by turning them into animals has really no impact on the plot itself.)

Virtually every moment of the movie has an air of awkwardness in a way that makes each interaction feel like an uncomfortable first date. The characters in the movie aren’t so much complete people as they come across as dating profiles that are trying to interact with each other. The pressure to “hook up” or “find someone” is ever present in every conversation and every interaction between people. Plus when connections are made between people, it’s always based around something minimal or superficial, the way you might latch onto a single entry in a person’s likes/dislikes profile section as you try to desperately find a connection with someone.  The Lobster paints this world as a miserable, dystopian level experience, but it’s easy to see where the feeling come from in connection to how romantic relationships are formed today.

The Lobster is not an easy movie to watch. It has a rhythm that is intentionally off beat and doesn’t really let you feel comfortable watching the movie. It never bothers to tell you what the rest of this world is like or where the technology to change people into animals comes from. There are several intentionally uncomfortable moments that seem to take far too long for the movie to move past. But it’s a weirdly captivating movie. It’s one that stayed in my head long after the movie was over, as pieces continued to fall into place as I couldn’t help thinking about it.

Chris: I’ll admit that I struggled with this review because I don’t want to flat out say that this was a bad movie because it definitely wasn’t. However, the pacing of The Lobster was what really bothered me because it’s so slow. The premise is so interesting that I think more could’ve been done with it instead of so many long sequences in slow motion or scenes that last a little too long or moments that are just in silence with really nothing happening. The Lobster is weird and it’s offbeat with incredible commentary on society’s fixation on relationships and the human desire to not be alone. I’d be interested in getting the backstory on why it became illegal to be single for too long or to be single outside of the hotel. What all led to this happening? Finally, the biggest gripe was the ending. Non-committal endings are hit and miss with me. There are ways to do it correctly that cause the audience to talk about it for years afterwards such as Inception and then there’s The Lobster or the ending of Sopranos that seem to do nothing but enrage the viewers. I don’t know where a good stopping point would’ve been for this weird movie but an elongated shot with a blind character just sitting at a diner probably isn’t the best one. Perhaps there’s a deeper meaning to the ending that I’m simply blanking on but it did not sit well with me.

Jason: Let’s just lay it out there: this movie is uncomfortable. There is not a single moment throughout this film that set me at ease. The acting, the dialog, the direction, all of it set my teeth on edge. The one thing that really made me uneasy was the soundtrack. The music in this film was so dystonic and off putting, even during the more subdued scenes, that it gave me the heebie jeebies. At first, the characters made me think of those people from my past who were just so awkward that it made me feel uncomfortable to be around them. All of the characters were those people. Then, as the plot advanced, I realized that they weren’t awkward people, they were socially indoctrinated to be completely paranoid. Their paranoia has become their identity. And therein lies the true dystopia of their society. Not that the events in the movie weren’t truly uncomfortable. I didn’t know anything about this movie until Alexa messaged the group accusing Joel of picking a “dead dog movie.”  And that was pretty light fare for events in this story. Overall, it is not an easy watch.

That being said, I did not dislike this movie. I really like Colin Farrell and I really like John C. Reilly (when he’s not in a movie with Will Farrell, wrong Farrell, I guess). The pacing was slow but I feel that it was deliberate. The scenes that dragged out were intentional and made us feel what the characters were feeling at the time. We got to be a part of these people’s revelations as they happened. And that ending. While Chris feels that it was inconclusive and underwhelming, the ending was NOT the blind woman sitting in a diner alone. The ending was the realization that these two people who so desperately want to break free of their reality have to play directly into it in order to escape, even to the point of self mutilation. I found it very powerful.

A+ all around. Not one I’ll be watching again any time soon, but A+.