Art or self-indulgent drivel?

Rating: 3/10 (11 June 2016)

Many years ago, as a young film student, I attended a screening of a film called "Savages" at which the director, James Ivory, was present for Q and A. Savages is about a group of primitives who stumble out of the forest to find an abandoned mansion. They enter and, one by one, assume the various trappings of civilization. One character finds and plays a cello. And, as you could have guessed, one by one, they leave the mansion to return to their presumably more noble lives in the wild.
After the screening one attendee earnestly asked Ivory, "By having the cellist be the last one to leave the mansion were you making the statement that it is the artist who is the last to appreciate his art?" Ivory bemusedly shrugged and responded, "Um, no, I mean, somebody had to leave last."
I think of that moment when I see a film like The Lobster and see how very hard some people will work to ascribe profound meaning to what some others will dismiss as self- indulgent drivel.
I'll concede that's probably too strong a criticism in this case. The Lobster's artifice, which I won't bother to describe since so many of the other reviews have done so already, is clever enough and the film has its moments, some of which are genuinely funny.
The struggle to find loving relationships and dealing with loneliness are central tenets of our existence and Lanthimos deserves credit for examining them in an offbeat and inventive way. But, despite it's ardor, The Lobster fails to develop the subject matter in any meaningful way or reveal anything particularly insightful. It pretty much says all it has to say in the first 30 minutes and the rest of its two-hour length finds us waiting for a point which never comes.
By itself that might have been excusable were it not for a relentlessly somber tone and pace that wore me down to the point where any concern I had for the characters was replaced by an obsession with checking my watch to see how much more I'd have to endure.