That's the question that Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos asked when he made The Lobster. "The Lobster" is a dystopian movie that Lanthimos is good at. Like most dystopian works of art, "The Lobster" explores the effects on human beings when certain customs in life become mandatory laws. Lanthimos tries to dig out the collective unconscious about marriage and love customs and social construction in human society, telling the audience the absurdity of reality in the form of black fables.
There are no shortage of good dystopian films in the history of world cinema, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927), Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), James McTegg's "V Word" Vendetta (2005) and the Wachowskis' The Matrix series are good examples. However, different from the formalistic expressions of these films, the realistic style of "The Lobster" makes it more realistic and close to the real life. To some extent, it can be regarded as a return to the dystopian theme.
The Taiwanese translation of "Lobster", "Single Zoo" seems to reflect the content of the film more intuitively: all single people in the city are concentrated in a hotel, and there is a rule that if they can't find a partner within 45 days, they will be changed. into an animal. The first part of the film is the scene when the hero David is sent to the hotel, "he thought to himself, his wife has long stopped loving him, he didn't cry because of this, and he didn't think that when he was abandoned by his lover, most of the people The first reaction is to cry." Compared with the pain of losing his wife, being sent to a "single hotel" has become a bigger problem for David after being single. Being single is considered a crime in this future world, and the hotel has become a prison-like existence, and all single people must wear the same clothes, eat together, and participate in activities together until they find a partner - or are caught until it becomes an animal.
This is undoubtedly a terrifying picture, but it is precisely the director's keen capture of human consciousness in real life. "Must be in love" seems to have become the consensus of people in the real world, an invisible rule that people are accustomed to abide by, but never question. Single is sinful, lonely and shameful. The ecology of the "single hotel" in the film reflects the various influences of these rules on people: some people choose to partner with people they don't love in order to avoid becoming animals; He jumped off the building and committed suicide when he failed to pair successfully; turning into an animal became the final destination of most people...
David and a short-haired woman formed a partner and avoided the fate of turning into a lobster. He thought he loved her, but under the high-pressure management of the hotel, true love was bound to fail. It's an alienated world where the two's partnership ends up being a "lie" - simply because David hides from his partner his grief for his dead "pet".
As with all dystopian works, a world under repression must have rebels. David eventually escapes the hotel and joins the loners in the forest. For David, the forest was supposed to be a symbol of freedom, but he didn't expect "how painful loneliness is". This is the other extreme world, diametrically opposed to the singles hotel, where loneliness is not allowed in the former, and love in the latter. The loners made a series of cruel punishments such as blood sex and blood kisses for those who steal love. This group of people "enjoyed" complete loneliness. They would not rescue their injured companions. Even in the carnival after victory, they would each listen to electronic music and dance alone. They would only dig their own graves and bury themselves.
It can be seen that the hotel and the forest represent two extremes of asceticism. This setting reflects the film's mockery of the establishment of power. The imposition of external forces cannot bring about happy love, let alone true freedom. No matter which party it is, it becomes a prisoner of human nature.
At the end of the film, David returns to the city with his girlfriend blinded by the leader of the loners. In order to prove the "legality" of their love, David decided to blind his eyes with a knife. However, the ending of the film is open-ended, and no one knows if David actually blinded himself. And I tend to answer yes, because in such a "love first" society, like a boat, they must become the habitual continuation of social rules. It is a form of surrender and self-imprisonment. In fact, no one can make an exception.
View more about The Lobster reviews
