The Lobster [DVD + Digital]

I waited a whole day before reviewing this. It deserves that much time, and it deserves to be watched with patience and your full attention. If you are looking to be entertained, go elsewhere. If you are looking for something completely original that makes you question reality and love, then watch this. The opening shot is extraordinarily beautiful yet disturbing. I’ve read a lot of reviews by people that love one half of the film or settings, but hate the other half. They belong together. The cinematography through the entire film is beautiful, and the musical score is a perfect compliment. Many scenes of this film reminded me of portions of Melancholia.The film is about love and lies. What are the limits, boundaries, and expectations we impose upon ourselves as a society, and as individuals?Can we move beyond them? Will we make life better or worse if we try to? What is the cost of imposing rules like these on a society? You may have read that the main character is doomed to be turned into an animal (a lobster, his choice) if he doesn’t find a love match within 45 days. True, with a few disclaimers, which I won’t spoil. As a viewer, you could get really particular and start asking detailed questions about the rules of this society, or the alternative group of people that rebel against these rules. So go ahead, because maybe we should question the superficial means of expressing love in our current culture. As well as the meaning of unconditional love, commitment, loyalty, gender roles in a romantic relationships, and the toll of lies on relationships and culture.I keep going back to this film in my head. Many reviewers cited their dislike of the so-called stilted or unfeeling behavior of the characters. I remain convinced that it couldn’t be any other way. Everything about this reality is based on lies. It reminded me of the movie The Lives of Others. When you trust no one and can’t tell even the person that you love the most the truth, and even that relationship is required to be based on something superficial, then how can anything a person does be authentic? Life becomes about appearances and emotions become buried, meaningless, and hard to find. You find a new language. How can we find our true selves, much less a person that will accept and love that self? What do we have to give up in order to find that, and are we really even doing that in our current society? Why do we willingly participate in a culture that judges our most innermost thoughts and feelings by the most obvious superficial elements? Why aren’t we judging people on their authentic selves, their heartless souls, rather than haircuts and outward appearances?And as a totally bizarre comparison, today I watched Florence Foster Jenkins. A completely different and much more conventional type of movie that was a graceful and beautiful depiction of unconditional love and acceptance of your life mate. Non-traditional love, and an interesting compliment to The Lobster.

I wanted to like it. The dry humor and all but it honestly wasn't funny. Not even in a dark humor/dry/or bleak distopian sort of way. I could see how the movie could have been good, if they had come out of the monotone expressionless blank personalities, but it just didn't work.I think it's funny how many reviewers on here giving 5 stars seem to think the rest of us are too unintelligent to "understand" the humor in the movie and why its supposedly so funny.No, we get it. We get that we are supposed to "get it." It just wasn't even darkly amusing. It was droll and boring. I kept waiting for it to change but it never came out of its bland moroseness. There are plenty of movies that are bleak and dark. The road, Children of men, as well as series like TWD and GOT that are extremely bleak and dark but they also work. There are also movies that are supposed to feel hopeless, but we end up feeling for the characters. Pick any zombie or end of the world movie. Society under control after the end of the world movie.So the point of the movie is supposed to be that everyone is going along with the forced hotel stays, finding a mate or death. Hunting each other down for extra days with no question. Believing they are going to be changed into animals without questioning it. Everyone is just letting the hotel owners decide their fate and it seems to be privatized but also something that everyone is collectively going along with.Then, when Colin escapes, he ends up with the "free people" who aren't actually free, The loners who aren't actually alone. But instead of being free, there is another leader and set of rules and the whole thing is hardly any better than the city/hotel system.And still, no one questions it. Everyone follows along with the rules no matter how wrong they are. Rachel Weitz charcter allows the leader to force her into a surgery she doesn't actually want, which then blinds her. Even when the two main characters are finally free (a second time) from the loners, we still see Colin and Rachel, so subservient to and brainwashed with the idea that a mate has to share the same defining characteristic that he goes into the toilet to gouge his own eyes out with a knife in order to be a match for Rachel's newly blind character.(I am aware that a lot of the fans of this movie think that that is the point we are all not "getting") But my point is, why call this a dark comedy when it isn't? Why not go for another genre and not leave the people who are watching it looking for a dark comedy but feeling like they've just had two hours of their lives hijacked? And even for those who didn't watch it all... to put that dog scene in there and just spring that image on all of us was actually a cruel and disturbing thing to do.Yeah I get it. That's supposed to be the joke. The jokes on us -the masses too stupid to "get" the movie. The ones that I guess the director assumes need to be shook and woken from our mainstream dull and boring lives? I think the jokes actually on anyone narcissistic and bloated full enough of their own ego enough to actually make that assumption, when the reality of the situation is that the movie sucks.