Visually stunning but ultimately unprofound

Rating: 6/10 (16 September 2016)

Months later I find I still can't get some of the images in this film out of my head: a figure standing on a distant scree so that it blends into the rock-face, a well-dressed couple walking down a deserted highway lined by hay bales, a dreary-sumptuous hotel interior destined to be as iconic as Kubrick's hexagon-covered Overlook. The Lobster is truly one of the best films of the decade in purely cinematographic terms: all praise to Thimios Bakatakis.
I've sat with the allegory—I won't spoil it—for those same months. I am feeling deeply uncertain about its merits. This is not a conventionally engaging film: because of its absurdities an audience will find it difficult to connect to the characters in and of themselves, and so, like the story of the ant and the grasshopper, neither of whom we yearn for or despise, the value of The Lobster must come from its protreptic meaning, what it makes us think about our own world, what lesson it draws us to.
That lesson seems to be no more than a string of ambivalent platitudes: love is greater than society, but society will win; there's no "the one" out there for you, but wouldn't it be nice if there were—well, maybe there is; human life is like a stay in a hotel, which is nice but also impermanent. I've been waiting for something more, something higher or at least something more original to crawl out of the chrysalis of this film, and now that summer has turned to autumn I've given up hope of new life. In terms of its content, The Lobster is almost irritatingly unmeaningful—not in the way great nihilist art can be, not in the way Fellini is—just grasping at a meaning far, far away from Yorgos Lanthimos' reach.
That said, it is well worth the VOD price—even better if it comes to a big screen near you—to experience the film's unique lens and the splendor of its setting. Just don't expect it to transcend the impermanent beauty of a rocky seaside resort.