Thoughts on "The Lobster"
You have my immediate attention when you open on an angry lady executing a donkey with a pistol grosse pointe blank. Guess she was mad at her ex? That jackass. I also appreciate Colin Farrell (cast as David) packing on 40 lbs to make those of us with Dad Bods feel slightly less inferior.
The Lobster is a strange movie set in an alternate reality where being single for too long is punishable by transformation into the animal of your choosing (Have vegetables and minerals been thoughtlessly excluded?!?!). Singles are incarcerated in an Orwellian rehab hotel to accomplish mainly two things: 1) find a new partner, and 2) hunt with tranquilizer guns for single people who live like hermits in the woods.
1) The concept of a soulmate is perverted in this universe; the singles obsess over shared physical characteristics as equal to love. My nose bleeds, your nose bleeds, let's live together forever. Conversations are a clinical exchange of facts, feelings are not discussed. A woman speaking with Colin Farrell for presumably the first time explains that she always swallows after fellatio, like it was a pertinent factoid written below her name-tag for a speed date.
2) Capturing singles in the hunt prolongs the 45 day timer. The hunting scenes in slow motion filmography have branches snapping, leaves flying, and darts whooshing (all set to a lovely score) and are pretty funny in a dark way.
There are strange goings on in the Hotel Orwell. Maids make room visits to give occupants erections (In this universe foreplay seems to be a woman rubbing her butt on a man's fully clothed crotch). Masturbation is punished by hand in hot toaster. The band at a mixer dresses in all white lab coats. The female attendees wear identical dresses. The hotel staff act out parables demonstrating the disadvantages of being single, and train guests in proficiency of shooting their standard issue rifles.
"Lobsters live 100 years, blue blooded, stay fertile all their lives." David says as he chooses his animal type. It's romantic, it's like David is ensuring he has more than 45 days in his next life to find a mate and start a family. But in this life, deciding to fake love rather than find it, he sets his sights on a cold blooded woman (192 Hermits captured) devoid of feelings (she watched indifferently as a failed suicide jumper wailed and bled out on the cobbles). Mild cons to be sure, but on the bright side he likes her short hair *facepalm*. This will backfire on David later when she murders his dog brother Bob to test his indifference, and almost reports his fake love. David takes revenge by tranquilizing her and turning her into an animal (I'm thinking Opossum, Opossum look like they feel nothing. But it's implied he made her a Pig).
David flees the Hotel Orwell and takes a stab at living with the Hermits. If things weren't weird enough for you yet, now they ratchet up to full steam art house cuckoo looney tunes. Whereas the Orwell Hotel embraced extreme relationship-ism, the hermits preached extreme solitude-ism. Everyone has their own grave dug and at the ready. No flirting, no helping, no sexual contact. Violations are punishable by violent acts and maiming. They have standard issue headphones attached to discmans and dance to electronic music en masse yet somehow alone. A man is caught in a bear trap and none of his fellow hermits will help him out. They advise him to try to get back to his grave to die in it.
Ironically David finds love in the anti love culture, a female hermit (she is given no name and is known only as the short sighted women. Which is the same flaw David has, which in this world means they are star crossed lovers). At least he has a legitimate reason to like her; she saved him from being shot by a former friend's tranquilizer gun. They go on stealth missions into a city where they pretend to be in love, which they relish because they are not pretending. Police in the city interrogate anyone appearing to be alone and request to see relationship certificates. Eventually the head hermit notices that David's acting is a little too good... And uses a ruse of fixing Rachel Weisz nearsightedness to blind her.
The blind woman and David take revenge by leaving head hermit tied up in her self dug grave. Searching in vain for some commonality to replace nearsightedness, David concludes he must blind himself to preserve the love. We are left with the cliff hanger, whether or not he can go through with it as he hovers the tip of a steak knife before his eye in a restaurant bathroom. There's a joke in there somewhere about love is blind. Rachel Weisz narrates the whole movie by the way and her tone is deliberately odd.
I don't think David goes through with it. I'd like to think he could pretend to blind himself with his partner never the wiser, retaining his sight for their advantage. Averaging one eye each to make it in their bleak world. Being newly blind in a new city starting a new life does not seem like a recipe for success. Alternatively maybe the steak knife lances David's brain. The end. How is the blind woman going to be able to check the dinner bill for pricing mistakes?!?!
All in all the Lobster is actually a bit pretentious but I still like it for the bizarre and original premise and the fleshed out dystopian society. I also may have eaten a Colin Farrell sandwich while in Massachusetts recently. I've been single for long enough now to have been turned into an animal twelve times. I think I would have chosen Owl. Swivel head, night vision, power of flight, razor talons, googly eyes, wise and fierce. Owl's well that ends well.
