The Lobster

The Lobster is one of those hilarious dark comedies that makes you feel guilty for laughing throughout and horrible for laughing afterwards.

Messed-up filmscape.

You aren't introduced to its fascist sociopolitical dynamics at first, so it seems like choice is still an option for the participants.

As it unreels, it becomes clear that extremists have held control for some time, and their authoritative micromanaging of human relationships have been fastidiously naturalized.

You hear this in the dialogue, the script, everything boiled down to awkward blunt expressions of confusion and loneliness, adding desperate depth to carnal credulity, the actors involved ironically bringing to life what might seem like decomposing prose with expertly timed inverse uniformity, their tones and gestures staggeringly reanimating, stitched together by the hauntingly observant narration.

Narration doesn't add much to some films, but it's a key component of The Lobster.

I don't want to give too much away, but from what I can tell, in The Lobster's realm you must have a partner and that partner must have the same idiosyncrasy as you (blindness, nosebleeds, ruthlessness, a nice smile).

If you can't find one within a specified time you're transformed into an animal of your choice.

If you escape to the woods to live with the loners you're hunted down like an animal.

It's like Yorgos Lanthimos imagined a world where you could not exist on your own, where you couldn't live without being part of a social order, and then fastened it with brutal punishments for refusing to obey, everyone under constant surveillance, totalitarian forms even encumbering those embodying subversive content (the loners) as they feel compelled to live their bohemian lives with a similar sense of strict gruelling cohesivity.

Mirrors and shadows.

Some of them actually find love which causes excruciating pain, the film consistently presenting interactions doomed to fail that seem so unfamiliar and bleak that the distance produces laughter until something excessively violent happens which isn't funny at all, like a discordant heavy metal xylophone solo broken up by machine gun fire.

The Lobster messes with your head to perhaps suggest that some folks just want to live alone, chill bachelors and bachelorettes, leave them be, let them do their own thing.

Coercively managing the social is the worst.

The expression of every thought.

Love truly blind.