Clever but not enjoyable, downbeat tale of dystopian community

Rating: 5/10 (26 December 2017)

I can't disagree that the subject of Yorgos Lanthimos' "The Lobster" is a dystopian community. Dystopia is defined as a community that is undesirable or frightening but usually stories about such communities are set in the future. Lanthimos, however, provides no back story to his seemingly futuristic narrative, so it probably would be better to label it a "fable." From interviews I've read, Lanthimos is content to have viewers draw their own conclusions as to what the film is about. He apparently has drawn no conclusions of his own and is more devoted to the creative process in contrast to offering up a calculated "message."
Lanthimos' vision is a bleak one at that. His protagonist is David (a one-note Colin Farrell), who finds himself at a special hotel after his wife has left him for another man. In this universe, if you don't have a mate, you have 45 days to find another one, or else you're transformed into an animal. This is perhaps the weakest part of the film, as the transformation process is never explained or shown and you just have to accept this plot point on faith--which seriously damages the overall verisimilitude of the narrative.
The hotel residents can extend their stay by hunting "loners" in the forest by shooting them with tranquilizer darts. Other rules become apparent such as no masturbation (but sexual stimulation by the hotel maid is mandatory). David befriends two men; one, Robert, is punished for masturbating by having his hand burned inside a toaster-the other, John, purposely bangs his head on tables so that his nose will bleed. The main rule for mating is that the couples should have some idiosyncrasy in common. John finds a woman who suffers from nosebleeds and the two are paired off.
David ends up finding a woman who has the highest "kill" rate in shooting loners in the forest. While in a Jacuzzi, she feigns choking, and David, desiring to prove that he's as cold as her, sits there impassively. The woman decides to partner up with David but things take a real bizarre turn when she kicks a dog to death (who happens to be David's brother-transformed earlier into a dog). When David cries, she realizes his earlier "cruel act" was a ruse and drags him to the hotel manager, ordering that David immediately be turned into an animal.
David I suppose has the last laugh, when, with the aid of a sympathetic maid at the hotel, he tranquilizes the woman, who is turned into an animal. At this point David escapes from the hotel and joins the loners in the forest. You would expect the loners to be the "good guys" but this is where Lanthimos proffers up what might be called a "twist" of sorts
The loners don't believe in romance at all and if you try to become a couple, they'll mutilate you. The head of the loners (Léa Seydoux) leads raids to disrupt the activities at the hotel. David breaks into John's cottage and reveals to his mate that his nosebleeds are artificially induced. Worse, the head of the loners convinces the husband of the hotel manager to willingly shoot her, which he does, only to discover that the gun is loaded with blanks.
The second half of the plot deals with David meeting another loner, a shortsighted woman (Rachel Weisz). Since David is also shortsighted, they bond and plan to run away together. But a mole discovers the woman's journal and she's brought to the city in a ruse to cure her shortsightedness. Instead a doctor intentionally blinds the woman.
David and the woman still decide to run away and in a bizarre climax, David enters the bathroom in a restaurant where he is about to intentionally blind himself with a knife, so the couple will still have something in common with one another.
That's it folks! It's all very clever and probably designed to be a little shocking in its unrelenting, bleak view of people who are unable to rebel against the authoritarian world they find themselves in. It could be a parable for a place like North Korea but there's not enough history to explain the world we find ourselves observing.
David's decision to mutilate himself suggests that he hasn't been able to escape the world he seeks to rebel against. Since there's little to cheer about here, we're left to admire the director's imagination-but his downbeat tale doesn't prove very enjoyable or even that enlightening.