surrealist dystopia

Rating: 9/10 (20 February 2019)

After seeing 'The Lobster' I have no doubt that Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most remarkable film directors living and creating today. Each of his films shocks and disturbs, in each one there are copious doses of absurdity and cruelty. These extravagant and extreme elements are not gratuite as they start from real-world situations (or from history as in his latest film) and amplify them to grotesque and nightmares. The nightmares of the Greek director's films are our very existence, or what it could become. 'The Lobster' is among the Lanthimos' movies I've seen, the best structured and the clearest in message. A mute and tragic scream about the dangers of social and family engineering, about the emptiness of our lives and of the relationships between people.
The story takes place in the near future, or maybe it's not even the future. Life in couples is the only legal form of existence. Those who do not have or lose their pair are sent to an institution that looks like a luxury hotel under strict control, where they divide their time between finding the right pair, participating in propaganda-educational activities and hunting animals. However, the animals (important as in all of Lanthimos's films) are actually just ex-humans, because if loners do not find their pair in 45 days (plus or minus a few days won or lost in the hunting games) they are entering the 'transformation rooms' and turned into the animal of their choice. When the hero manages to escape, he discovers the world of the opposants, only in dystopia as in dystopia, the opponents are also fanatics, extremists from the lonely side, any connection between them being also cruelly punished. Falling in love leads to tragedy and happiness is not possible in any of the sides of this dark world.
The execution is impeccable. As in all the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, we deal with a world whose rules are only apparently familiar to us. The motives of the actions of the characters are often shrouded in mystery. Emotions are controlled by the laws of a society in which fear has become the main resort. Colin Farrell performs one of his best roles, succeeding in rendering the lack of emotional capabilities and the fear of the absurd and the inevitable that is going to happen with remarkable discretion. Bizarre and absurd seem to dominate the world described in this movie, a universe in which Beckett meets Hitchcock, but is our society so far away from it?