Dissecting The Lobster
(Warning: some spoilers)
A man checks
into a hotel, accompanied only by his dog. He has forty-five days to find a mate and
begin the process of reintegrating into the only socially acceptable way of
living, in a couple. If he fails, he gets turned into an animal. It’s not all
bad, though; he does get to choose which animal.
The Lobster combines a wry look
at relationships and social pressures with Yorgos Lanthimos’s trademark devious
scenarios and obscurely threatening atmospherics.[i]
The film has been widely described as a satire and also compared to
Kafka, whose work is not exactly satirical but functions in a similar way,
presenting what is recognizably an exaggerated and distorted version of our
society. What I found curious about the film was how these different elements
undermined each other.
Not everyone would agree. In the generally favourable notices, reviewers
saw the combination of the film’s carefully constructed fictional world and
satirical edge as providing much of its bite. Here’s Bob Mondello on NPR:
Lanthimos is fond of hermetically sealed satires like
this, where the logic is rigidly internal and the results of following that
logic determinedly strange. The Lobster is his first film in English, and it plays
cleverly with the compatibility assumptions behind, say, singles groups and
online dating sites.
‘Hermetically sealed’ is the mot juste; Mondello inadvertently puts his
finger on what I disliked about the film. The fictional world is very cleverly
constructed, but it leads the film to overplay its satirical point.
The first half of the film, more or less, is set in the hotel, and there
is much fun to be had working out the rules of the game, both social and otherwise.
There are plenty of droll moments, from couples in the hotel being given
children to prevent them from arguing, to Colin Farrell inquiring into what
sexual options are available, to Olivia Coleman, dependably superb as the hotel manager, reminding
Farrell of what he has signed up for:
In this part of the film, the fictional construction and the satirical
points work together: the fictional world is unfolded for the audience in a
series of barbed comments about relationships, romance and the pressure to find
a partner. The world Farrell finds himself in is in many respects a version of
our own, but one where certain implicit social conventions have been codified
and are backed by the law.
The problems start when Farrell escapes from the hotel. The loners he
stumbles across living in the woods reject the strictures of mainstream
society, and are hunted for their pains by hotel guests. So far, so like a
number of science fiction films. However, the
loners do not only reject the requirement to form couples, they do not permit
their own members to pair off. This makes for a pleasing symmetry in the
fictional world: both ordinary society and the loners who reject it turn out to
be bound by rigid rules concerning relationships. But the satirical point of
this symmetry is less clear. The attitude of the loners feels like a
contrivance rather than an exaggerated version of something with which we are
familiar. It is noticeable that the jokes which studded the first half of the
film largely vanish during Farrell’s sojourn in the woods.
Perhaps it might be suggested that in these scenes the film is
satirising something more general, namely any group which rejects mainstream
society but which imposes its own strict conventions. But in the context of
this film, such an interpretation feels like a stretch. The loners are
rejecting mainstream society, but specifically because of the requirements
concerning couples. It is not explained why they would wish to be bound by new
rules, and without any motivation for this the satirical point is unclear.
Granted, it is not made clear either why mainstream society in this
fictional world insists so rigidly on people forming lasting relationships, but
there is no need, since in our society there is a familiar pressure on people
to do so. Without some way to link the motives of the loners back to our own
social mores, even if that way is rejecting them – because of a fear of
commitment, or an exaggerated sense of isolation or of personal space – the fictional
world is untethered from our own, drifting too far away for the kind of
proximity that is crucial to satire.
[i] Dogtooth, his first film, is highly recommended (both that film and The Lobster were written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou).
