What does it mean?

Rating: Null/10 (27 August 2018)

In The City you have to find a partner before you get too old. If you don't, you get sent to The Hotel, where you have only forty-five days to do so before you get turned into an animal. It is suggested to look for someone in The Hotel that you have at least something in common with. No matter how minor that something is. Do you both perhaps suffer from the same physical ailment? Perfect! More than enough ground to build a relationship upon. Right?
The Lobster is very much an art film. The premise is highly symbolic, is not even meant to be logical and realistic, and plays on your emotions more than your common sense. And it is told in such a way that it's clear that there's something behind all the nonsense to get, if you know what I mean.
I sure did not get whatever that something was, to be sure. The obvious parallels with societal pressure to find a partner, the fear of spinsterhood, the physiological urge to mate and so on, are of course blindingly obvious, but it's the add-ons that baffle me. Like the whole 'get turned into an animal' thing. Does the film try to claim that beyond certain age you cannot find a partner? Probably not, but then why such a final solution. If it was meant to convey that society believes you incapable of finding a partner beyond certain age, why not a death penalty?
The whole film is very much like that. Clear goals and basic messages conveyed through muddled metaphors, odd symbolic language and a plot so stilted and woodenly acted that it had to be intentional, for whatever reason.
Still, it is very professional on the technical level, the actors are trying their best and some of the metaphors are actually really spot on. Whenever the film tries to be a pure satire, it works really well. It's a shame that it seems to think itself above such a pedestrian art form.