Eye for an Eye

Rating: 7/10 (2 December 2018)

"The Lobster" is certainly an off-beat dark comedy and satire. The dystopian depiction of state-enforced couplings and the equally rigid renegade singles is rather simplistic, but the absurdity of it all is quite amusing. In it, those not already bonded to a romantic partner are forced to check into a hotel with other singles, whereupon they have 45 days to pair up or be surgically transformed into the lower animal of their choice (hence the title). Indeed, David (Colin Farrell) brings his brother, who is now a dog, along with him. Hotel guests--or, rather, inmates--also have the chance to extend their stays by slaying the renegade singles, who like other "uncivilized" animals inhabit the woods. To encourage the marriages, the hotel performs parables on a stage for the guests (a woman saving a man from choking at dinner, and the man protecting the woman from being raped on a walk) and enforce symbolic punishments (on the first day, inmates have one arm tied behind their backs). Punishments for other offenses, along with those applied by the loners in the forest, have the flare of the Code of Hammurabi or Biblical laws of retaliation. A man who masturbates--a decidedly singular act--in the hotel has the masturbatory hand burned in a toaster. Likewise, acts requiring a partner are similarly punished by the loners, whereas masturbation is accepted.
"The Lobster" is most amusing while occupying the hotel; whereas, it threatens to derail into a self-contradictory celebration of coupling in the woods when David meets Rachel Weisz's character, who up until then had been providing monotone narration. Their shared short-sightedness (note the use of this term instead of "near-sighted") marks them to be together, just as one's defining characteristic--in a society that reduces one to be identified by their limp, nose bleeds, lisps, sociopathy or what have you--required one to find a mate with the same trait at the hotel. Fortunately, however, writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos and company don't settle for such a cop out of affirming the state-repressed individuality in rom-com banality. The acting remains intentionally stilted and the characters entirely unsophisticated. As the pun with the main couple's sight underscores, this is a world where an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.