The Lobster

Weird, whacky & wicked but equally dull, sterile & vapid, The Lobster is a strange beast that actually begins quite well but tumbles down the road after the halfway mark to conclude on a rather uninteresting note. The concept is no doubt intriguing and it takes its time to make us familiar to the society inhabiting its tale but all of it doesn't amount to much in the end & it fails to leave any lasting impression.

Set in a dystopian future, The Lobster presents a world in which single people are arrested & taken to a hotel where they are obliged to find a matching partner within 45 days or they are transformed into animals & released into the woods. The plot follows David who arrives at the hotel for the same reason but his endeavours of finding a mate before his time is over ends far more tragically than he expected.

Co-written & directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, The Lobster marks his English-language debut and the idea & inspiration behind it is both clever & admirable. The sequences taking place in the hotel are nicely carried out but its second half lacks the same level of creativity that's present in the first half. The excitement goes missing once the protagonist leaves the hotel and from there on, it just limps throughout its remaining runtime.

The hotel is neatly maintained but it also has a creepy vibe about it. Camera movements are fluid, colour hues wonderfully compliment its overcast ambiance and lighting seems natural for the most part. Editing allows the plot to unfold at an unhurried pace but the whole story feels twice as long because of that, with no idea of where it's headed. Last, the background score is just as odd as the story's content and is intermittently utilised.

Coming to the performances, The Lobster features a fine cast in Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw & John C. Reilly and most of them are simply bland & lifeless in their respective roles. It can be argued that the spiritless rendition of these scripted people was deliberate but it doesn't really help in enriching the experience, at all. The deadpan wit is occasionally amusing but it's also too easy to get frustrated by whatever is happening.

On an overall scale, The Lobster is an uncanny mix of bizarre ideas that, in its effort to play with multiple things at once, may end up drifting many of its viewers. While I found nothing lovable about it, its parody of the society that gives way too much credit to companionship, in addition to the dig it takes at those match-making algorithms which rely on similar traits & likeness factor is one aspect I liked but in all seriousness, The Lobster is too mediocre to be of any significance.

The Lobster is a curious film with shades of the Coen Brothers or Grand Hotel Budapest (the fact that so much is set in a hotel is incidental, or hotels in movies are places to be avoided). Dysfunctional characters drift through, delivering their lines with humorous lack of awareness and emotion, strange rituals are performed to bond the guests, and all the time the clock is ticking - find a partner, become a couple, within 45 days or be turned into an animal of your choice.

The first part of the film is amusing, quirky and entertaining. The style is pleasant and interesting, despite some nasty moments. Some of the shots drag a little, but it adds to the curious atmosphere. The dry, deadpan dialogue is perfectly delivered, Colin Farrell as the main protagonist shows he really is a fine actor.

Then the film changes. New characters are introduced and the mood becomes much bleaker. No longer is this humorous, the stakes have changed. It is hard to identify with the new characters as we had already invested emotion in the earlier ones. And it gets worse, leading to en ending that is as unclear as it is unpleasant.

The Lobster cannot seem to make up its mind what kind of a film it is, is it simply saying that we are all venal and craven in the end? If so, why the humour at the beginning? And if we are capable of love, is it really so shallow as to be broken by people saying things?

I loved the beginning, I didn't like the end. This was one fish dish that left a bad taste.

I had heard reviews of The Lobster and, while sounding interesting, it also sounded odd enough to delay me in getting round to seeing it. Like many have said, the plot is weird; single people are sent to a hotel and given a period of time to find a match or else they will be turned into the creature of their choosing and released to the wild. Those struggling can add days to their stay by being successful on hunts for those singles who have broken free and live as collective individuals in the woods.

The concept is cleverly constructed so that it is weirdly convincing despite its utter absurdity. Within this the film satirizes relationships, singles – in particular the extremes of those two situations. The push for companionship, with its common ground, and its rituals, and the digs at elements of life such as children distracting from conflict. Perhaps it hit a bit too close to home with its regimented rituals, and awkward neediness. On the other side the extreme version of singlehood is also dug at once we are in the woods. It is not as clever as some would tell you, nor as smart, but it is certainly interesting, darkly funny, and pretty engaging throughout. It doesn't pull it off totally, but I enjoyed it from start to finish – its oddity runs through from the ideas, the performances, down into the specific dialogue. Having such a great cast helps, but the tightness of creative vision throughout is what holds it all together. As odd and slightly unsuccessful as it is, it is still well worth watching.

"The Lobster" takes the tropes and expectations of modern-day relationships and satirises them almost out of existence. The farcical "Hotel" aims to partner 'loner' humans with each other (based on 1 characteristic) in a stress-inducing timeframe of 45 days, often resulting in deception and the suppression of true feelings in order to garner a relationship as a means of escape. The other side of the coin is the outcast tribe living a meagre existence in the woods, where even flirting is punished with physical mutilation. The cold mechanical delivery of every single character's lines emphasises the absurdity of the situation, and bizarrely makes the jokes even funnier. Not since Richard Ayoade's "The Double" has cripplingly awkward humour been so effective. This film has a lot to say about the fickle nature of relationships, set against the background of a dystopian society. The cinematography is as flat as the actors' delivery; this contributes to the emotionally-stunted, often silent world that the characters inhabit. The ending is beautifully ambiguous and surprisingly tense for such an understated scene. A score which fluctuates from terse, rough string melodies to Italian opera heightens the sense of weird-art-film which pervades "The Lobster": definitely a film which requires full attention, reflection, and a mind open to arty weirdness, "The Lobster" is a remarkable oddity.

There's no chance that you'll see a film as weird as The Lobster this whole year. In what is effectively an indie art-house piece, you get a completely insane and almost unfathomable world filled with more and more absurdities everywhere you look. However, it's such an incredibly unique and eye-catching film that it's still hugely engrossing and surprisingly entertaining to watch.

The story centres around one man, played by Colin Farrell, as he attempts to find a partner as a part of this bizarre system. The first act revolves around his time in 'The Hotel', and is not only hugely odd, but both dramatic and unnerving as well as hilarious to watch, featuring some of the best dark comedy written in years.

The film takes its story as seriously as any drama, and you feel that through the deeply disturbing atmosphere that emerges off the screen. However, as the film is just so weird, it eases you into the oddness of it all very impressively through the use of humour, something that more pretentious art-house films fail to do, and are resultantly a lot harder to really get into.

So, you'll definitely be laughing a lot, if not in a more disturbed than hugely entertained manner, throughout the first act, and by the end of it, you'll surely be as used as you can be to the incredibly weird feel of this whole film.

Just to give you an idea of how unorthodox this film is, every scene is full of awkward silences, the actors speak as if they're reading off of cue cards with no emotion whatsoever, the imagery is very ugly and unpleasant to look at right the way through, and the incredible slow pace of it all means that the film feels like it goes on for about five times as long as it actually does.

And yet, I still can't get around the fact that this is a brilliant film. Mainly, it's the fact that it's just so unique and almost shockingly bizarre, but it's just filled with so many captivating ideas that it's impossible not to be fully drawn into this insane story.

So, the performances, the directing, the writing, and pretty much everything is stunning, apart from one big issue that prevents this from being a truly incredible film. Following the end of the first act, the film does lose its way quite a lot, taking almost too big a leap into an even stranger abyss than you ever imagined at the beginning, and, with a little less humour in the latter stages, isn't as easy to watch as the first act had been.

However, it does pick up again towards a terrifying and as bizarre as ever conclusion, and that's why I'm going to give The Lobster a 9 out of 10, but I must warn you that if you feel you can't cope with this film for longer than the first twenty minutes, then it's not for you. This is definitely a cult film for the ages, but won't be a big hit with general audiences.