Surreal, Absurd, Endearing & Funny; THE LOBSTER is a Bizarre One I Highly Recommend

Rating: 8/10 (21 August 2017)

The latest film I can obsessively recommend to my friends, knowing they'll probably never watch it, is THE LOBSTER. I think I first took notice of it when Cracked mentioned it in an article on (then) upcoming insane movies that weren't getting enough attention and the plot synopsis demanded I track down this movie and watch it as soon as I could. In THE LOBSTER, Colin Farrell is a man who is recently single and must attend a program wherein he has 45 days to find a new mate or he will be turned into an animal. He chooses as his potential future animal a lobster because of their long life, blue blood, and lifetime of fertility. The film, from Greek writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos, is set in a dystopian world where relationships are government- regulated and loners, those who manage to escape their transformative fate, are outcasts that live in the forests. People attending the resort in search of a mate can extend their time through a hunting ritual where they're released into the woods with tranquilizer guns to hunt the loners, garnering additional days for every loner they bring in for transformation. The film chronicles the desperation of our main character David (Farrell) as he does whatever he can to find a new connection before accepting more drastic measures and going the route of a fugitive loner, where he happens to meet a lovely woman (Rachel Weisz) who might in fact be his ideal mate, assuming they get out alive.
THE LOBSTER is a surreal gem of a film that I can't seem to shake from my mind for a while after watching it. There's just so much here to break down and examine. I'm obsessed with the strange world that Lanthimos and co- writer Efthymis Filippou have created. We've got this bizarre world where the government mandates that everyone must have a mate to the point where, if authorities see you wandering a city alone, they can demand to see your papers verifying your relationship status. There's a strange recurring theme where you can only exist as either end of a spectrum with no gray area in between. For example, in addition to the outright relationship vs. loner existence, there's a moment at the beginning of the film where David is partaking in the resort's entrance exam and he's asked his sexual orientation. He claims as heterosexual but then admits he had engaged in some experimentation at a point earlier in life and wanted to know if he could be labeled bisexual but, no, this isn't allowed (there is some mention that this had caused some complications within the program at some point in the past). Each society exists by a strict set of rules that operate as polar opposites; masturbation at the resort will get your hand mauled whereas making out in the loner tribe will scar you with the "red kiss". It's all so strange and infinitely interesting with a hint of vague social commentary on relationships within.
I find it difficult to make a case for people to check out THE LOBSTER. If you're not as intrigued by the strange world Lanthimos and Filippou have created as I am, you might find the movie dull. It's got a very dry sense of humor and all of the dialogue is delivered in a flat, matter-of-fact manner with little or no emotion with few exceptions. The characters are almost robotic in their behavior and the only ones who come across as near-human are David and Weisz's short-sighted woman. There's another strange element: Farrell's David is the only character in the entire movie with a name. Everyone else is defined by a trait. Weisz is short-sighted. John C. Reilly has a lisp. Ben Wishaw has a limp. The characters populating the world of THE LOBSTER define themselves by one outstanding trait and seek their mate based on that trait, to the point that some will even fake it just to avoid transformation; even when not trapped in the "civilized" world, David desperately seeks that shared trait with the short-sighted woman to feel secure in his affections for her. I find more to love about this quirky little film the more I mull it over in my mind and I'm sure there's an audience for this sort of oddity out there but I know it could very well be off-putting for a lot of people. It's surreal, absurd, funny, and endearing, and now I kind of want to watch it again.