Yet another author's bitter view of the human flaws

Rating: 8/10 (28 March 2016)

I'm not too familiar with Yorgos Lanthimos' works, and so far i've only seen his Oscar-nominated Kynodontas. But it looks like the author is on the mission of exposing the defects of the modern society in a not-so-cryptic but still an allegorical way. And while i believe that his view of the parental overprotection/abuse of their children was way too exaggerated and dramatic, his view of the awkwardness of today's relationships between people is much more curious and realistic.
Freddie Mercury, when he was once asked what Bohemian Rhapsody was about, gave a simple answer: "It's about human relationships". The same description probably fits this film if one was after a simple answer. A more detailed description would be inherently subjective, for a film that speaks riddles and metaphors to you is never what it shows but rather what you see, and different people can see different things. What i saw was a rather sad contemplation of how we humans interact with each other, of the pressure the society puts on us when it tries to categorize us or impose its views of normal on us, of the fact that no matter how you run or hide, there alway will be someone who thinks that they know better and that you're obliged to follow their opinion on what's right and wrong.
In the modern Western world, where a CEO of a huge corporation can openly admit being homosexual and have no problem with it, such visions could be considered too dire to be relevant. So maybe the works of Lanthimos are a reflection of his personal tragedies or his experience of living in Greece. But there is still a reason to view The Lobster as a warning (or even a revelation) that we all should pay attention to.
You see, the best way to expose something crooked or perverse is to simply demonstrate it in action. The Lobster does that by showing the societal pressure and personal defenseless as a norm, to provoke a response in us and make us think something like "Why the hell aren't you doing anything? Stand up and fight for yourself!". And it's a powerful tool, for it's often the case that only by feeling discomfort about someone else's compliance and passiveness we finally realize how much we avoid fighting for our own selves.
But the scariest thing about The Lobster is that not everything that it shows is that utterly uncommon. But this time it's not the society and its latent dictatorship, but the people themselves. Even alone with their close ones, even when nobody's watching and there are no rules to play by, they still can't relax and be genuinely interested in and kind to one another. And that's not just fiction, it's what i personally see in more and more people these days: social awkwardness and sociopathy, lack of empathy and ability to read the emotions of others, a general coldness and discomfort from another person's presence. Like the parties where people bury themselves in their smartphones instead of actually talking to someone or the families where the partners hardly even speak, each in their own cyberreality. The way such people talk when forced out of their virtual covers, that helpless look of a fish taken out of the water - that's eerily similar to how The Lobster's characters behave sometimes, which creates a sinister picture of what our world of tomorrow might become. And if some of us do manage to see themselves in that distorting mirror then maybe transforming into creatures that live long and mate happily but are otherwise cold and indifferent is a fate humanity might still avoid.