I often like to walk along a busy thoroughfare, taking for granted the happy faces, either with friend or lover. What brought them together and will they last? Who can say, we must trust that they actually appreciate each other’s company at least.
This well established trusim is somewhat challenged in the Lobster. A film that although set in near contemporary times, takes on a dystopian reality, where spurned lovers choose to check into a isolated hotel to find another special someone. The duration of their trip is to be forty five days. That’s how long the guest has to find a lover. If they fail they are to be ‘turned’ into an animal of their choosing. David (played by Colin Farrell) chooses to be a lobster if things don’t turn out for him.
We see David stripped of his individuality and personal affects, one arm tied behind his back to ensure no personal relief is attained in his small single room. Thankfully he is allowed retain his dog, which is quite important in the context of the story but I won’t spoil it. He is soon introduced to some of the fellow guests. Ben Whimsaw and John C Reilly with a particularly good lisp.
The only means of increasing the length of your stay (and subsequently, the chances of finding courtship) is by catching one of the loners who live in the woodlands. Loners are those currently living off the grid, preferring to take their chances in the wild, away from the functioning cities of normal people in normal relationships.
The social scene at the hotel is limited. The entertainment is provided by the husband and wife couple ( Olivia Colman, great as always) but despite his best efforts David doesn’t see anyone he likes enough.
It is a film that offers the viewer plenty of time to think about the world we live in now and how while we feel connections are often difficult, forcing the issue in some 1960s style resort with succinct East German style small talk hardly makes for a better option.
The term visually stunning is thrown around far too often these days. Especially in the ea of digital filmmaking and the advantages it offers. However d.o.p Thimios Bakatakis works very well here, often utilizing Kubrikian style wide shots to compliment the eery dated premises of the hotel.
It’s not what you’d call a melodrama either. The actors deliver their lines in a cold, matter of fact fashion, drawing attention to the fact that we often spend so much of our own lives speaking in a routine cadence, trying to convince a stranger that we’re just about normal enough.
As time goes on, the film manages to portray perfectly so many traits of the modern meat markets, be it discos or online apps. Women throwing themselves at men despite their better judgements, men pretending to be something else to impress women. In the film the mission appears to be find someone and move back to the normal life in the city. If you fail you get to live out your days like an animal. It’s fascinating stuff and not only because it’s the kind of swill served up by churches and governments ( and Western romantic comedies) for so long. It holds up the single person as someone been forced to comply for the sake of uniformity.
Eventually David, with time running out on him, decides to try and start something with an unnamed heartless woman. She sees through his falseness and he decides to flee, making his way into the woodlands. Here he meets the previously mentioned Loners and lives happily ever after…
….well not really. But I don’t think me outlining the plot can do this film the kind of service it deserves. Rachel Weisz also stars, as does upstairs in the mecca of Irish retail, the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre.
The producers must have paid a small fortune for that location
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