Review of The Lobster (2015) by Cgtaylor — 11 Jun 2016

I went out to see this movie with my roommate and her boyfriend. Their friends had highly suggested the movie, so we made an outing of it. I’m not especially fond of R rated movies, and the plot seemed thin, but perhaps humorous, and I convinced myself to have an open mind, and try something new.

We all regretted watching this movie and afterwards agreed: if we had been watching this at home we would have stopped after twenty minutes. I knew very little about this movie coming in, but if it was meant to be science-fiction, I saw no science; if romantic, these themes were lost in its bizarre mood similar to how pungent, rancid flavors destroy delicate ones – and if comedic, then only to those who can purge themselves of compassion and empathy.

This movie is at best a bitter, twisted satire. I pity the people who saw marriage in such a dystopian light that they could conceive such a story. While I agree that there are many things amiss with today’s standards for marriage and relationships, this movie went too far. For example, in this movie:

• Even in their desperation, people relied on insignificant, superficial similarities to find ‘mates’:

A limp, frequent nosebleeds, perfect hair, emotions or lack thereof, shortsightedness, and finally blindness – criteria that lead to the pursuit of hollow, shallow, and altogether meaningless relationships, save one near the end; but even that one was plagued by this practice.

• Single people where adamantly reminded of their ‘misery’ and given lessons in the ‘importance,’ or rather, the ‘benefits’ of being in a relationship while at the hotel, which also made it its business to encourage and engage its occupant in sexual habits that they deemed beneficial and prohibit and punish those they considered damaging to ‘relationships’.

• Brutality, however, is apparently under standard trade laws and thus monopolies are prohibited. The Loners, the alternative to society, make many allowances that the hotel and society at large prohibit whilst they live in exile. In stark contrast to the rest of the society, Loners are expected to be alone permanently: you can talk, you can come, you can go, but any sign of sexuality, of attachment, even something as fleeting as flirting, will be severely and mercilessly punished, and their leader is the typical sadistic, manipulating, power hungry psychopath that these types of movies seem to breed.

Are we superficial? Yes, we are. Do we feel pressure to be in a relationship? To have a ‘significant other’? All the time. Is the world cruel? It goes without saying. Are we all flawed? Of course we are. Do we really need a movie to tell us this in some bizarre, twisted fashion? The fact that these types of movies are on the rise is itself a satire against society. But does exacerbating the issue like this do anything? Would a doctor ever suggest rubbing filth and excrement into a wound as part of a treatment? – it would only make matters worse, and satires like this have the same effect.

If you want to help society, if you want to see it healed, you have to teach people what it means to be good, not chastise and mock them for what they didn’t know was wrong. And to do that you need to show them what it means to be good, to be wholly loved. As Antione de Saint-Exupery said, if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and assign them tasks and work; teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. Likewise, we need to teach people to long for a love that is kind, a love that is patient, loyal, humble, noble, and most of all forgiving. A love that protects, hopes, and always perseveres, not one that pretends, harms and falters.