BEFORE: Movie Year 10 is just a bit past half over, I'm sort of making the turn toward July 4 and then that long straightaway full of music documentaries and concert films, then I'll have to take some time to check where I am in the count at that point. Then I can start to figure out how to bring 2018 to a close, right now that's much too far in the distance. I can only see ahead to the end of August, and one possible small path that will get me to October's horror films. If no other path presents itself, then it looks like I'll take part of September off, and then if I can't link to anything Christmasey from the end of Halloween then I'll close up for the season early in mid-November.
As things stand right now, I've seen 156 films in 159 days. It's all relative, really, so right now I don't think I'm ahead in the count or behind, either. I'm counting yesterday as a free day, no movie, and counting this as my Friday film, because I'll be away for the weekend and probably able to only watch 2 films in three days - so when I get back on Monday I'll watch my Monday film, then take another free day next Wednesday (maybe I'll go see "Deadpool 2") so my Father's Day film will fall on the right day.
Colin Farrell carries over from "Roman J. Israel, Esq.". I've heard various things about this film, (currently available only on iTunes, it seems...) where I guess a man gets turned into a lobster. See, this is what I was afraid of when I watched the movie "Tusk" - if I include the film where a man gets turned into a walrus, then I have include this one, and then where does it end?
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Tusk" (Movie #2,902)
THE PLOT: In a dystopian near-future, according to the law single people are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or they are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.
AFTER: So many questions today, I hardly even know where to begin. First off, WTF? Secondly, am I supposed to take this movie seriously? A key element of this near-future is the ability, it seems, to turn people into animals. How? Even if you could physically, medically, re-purpose a human into something like a horse or a parrot, why would you want to? I mean, it's just not possible, because how do you do that, like where do all the extra pieces go, how do you turn a human heart of a certain size into a parrot heart, which has to be much smaller, not to mention the brain size and capacity, turning arms into wings and all that, plus where do the feathers come from?
The amount of surgery we're talking about here, even if it were possible, would kill a person, right? So it can't be remotely possible, yet that's what we're told, again and again. The main character, David, wants to be turned into a lobster if it comes to that (more on the rules of this society in a bit...) but how would that work? Do they turn his internal skeleton into an exoskeleton, somehow make his blood resistant to the cold of the ocean depths, put his eyes on those little stalks, fashion his hands into claws somehow? It's madness, sheer madness, and I can't really make heads nor tails of this concept.
Now, thirdly, what is going on in this society? What happened, politically, globally, to bring this all about? Was it war, famine, disease, economic collapse? There seems to be this incredible emphasis placed on people forming couples, as if that's somehow better for society as a whole, so nearly everyone is encouraged to find their lifemate, to the point of obsessiveness. And if someone isn't 100% the perfect partner, these people are encouraged to break that bond and try again - with only limited resources and strategies available to save any relationship, and seemingly ridiculous ones at that. Huh? If life-bonds are so important, why aren't there more plans in place to salvage the ones that already exist? Nothing seems to make sense here.
Single people are taken away to The Hotel (or they visit voluntarily, I'm not quite sure...) where they have a limited number of days to pair up with someone, and all the while they are tortured by having to watch the happy couples eating together in the dining room, plus couples get to play sports like tennis, while singles can only swim and play golf. Couples also get larger rooms, get to stay on nice yachts for a while, and (presumably) no longer have to watch silly lectures about how much better it is to be part of a couple.
And if the single people don't form a perfect mating bond before their time runs out, they are turned into the animal of their choice. (Which again, doesn't seem possible, but there it is.) David wants to be a lobster because he loves the ocean, plus they live for up to 100 years and never lose their virility. But then again, they're delicious, so he could be caught in a trap and boiled alive, then served with drawn butter. So there's that to consider. Single people can also earn more time at the Hotel by participating in a hunt, where more single people, the "Loners", are tracked through the woods and shot with dart guns, and the fate of these people seems a bit unclear. (Are they killed? Turned into horses? Forced to stay at the hotel and watch silly lectures about coupling? Not sure...)
And everyone in this future seems sort of flat, like they're all depressed or they don't care about anything, or have strong opinions about why things are the way they are. There's an air of "1984" about this, like millions of people being told what to do by Big Brother and for some reason they don't band together and overthrow the unfair system. The other thing this story sort of reminds me of is a film that came out back in the 1970's called "Logan's Run". In that film, the future society had a ceremony where people were "renewed" when they turned 30, in order to preserve the few resources that were left. The "renewal" ceremony was a sham, just a way to kill off the aging population so the younger people had more resources.
Part of me wonders if that's what's going here in "The Lobster". David, travels with a dog that used to be his brother. How do we know that the government didn't just kill his brother outright, and give him a random dog? We always hear those stories about cats and dogs that get lost on vacation and find their way home again from 1,000 miles away, but isn't the simpler explanation that a similar-looking stray dog showed up on that family's doorstep one day? Am I being too cynical here, or not cynical enough? Was there any indication at all that his brother's brain or awareness was inside the body of this dog?
Wikipedia refers to this film as an "absurdist dystopian black comedy" and that gives me at least a little more understanding - perhaps none of this is meant to be taken seriously. It's all some giant metaphor or allegory, but for what? The role of some governments in dictating relationships? I guess there are some societies like China and Russia that try to mandate marriage over singlehood, or try to put limits on bearing children, adopting children, make laws about divorce or gay marriage or something. Perhaps some people find this ridiculous, like how do you legislate something very personal like relationships? Then there are things like the "single tax", where married couples get bigger tax breaks, doesn't our own government encourage marriage, on some level?
Or perhaps this is a satire about LGBTQ issues - remember a few years ago, before gay marriage was legal everywhere (and don't think there aren't people trying to un-do that, because there probably are) and the main argument against that was that if we open up the definition of "marriage" so that it's no longer constrained to be between a man and a woman, then it was somehow a "slippery slope" that would lead to people marrying their pets and committing bestiality. Which was a ridiculous argument, because nobody was asking for that (OK, maybe a few freaks) and anyway, the definitions of words are changing all of the time. Language is fluid, and changes all the time to represent the changes in our society. Gender and sexual preferences are fluid too, and some people seem to have a problem with that as well. Are people who are against gender reassignment surgery (or I think now we're supposed to call it "gender confirmation surgery") also afraid that this will lead to people being turned into dogs, cats and horses?
Anyway, it sort of becomes a moot point because the film didn't really pay off the way that I thought it would. The procedure of a human becoming an animal ("species reassignment surgery"?) is never really seen, we only see a blond woman before the surgery and then a horse with blonde hair, and as I stated above, that could be easily faked, so I can't really take it seriously. After David has trouble connecting with "Biscuit Woman" (the other characters aren't given names in this film, just descriptions, which de-humanizes them a bit, but also ensures that we don't get too attached to them...) he pretends to be as heartless as "Heartless Woman" so that she'll mate with him, but this just leads to more problems. (Is this the moral of the story? That forming any relationship leads to problems? Again, it's quite difficult to suss this out...)
David is then forced to escape The Hotel and go on the run, linking up with the band of Loners, the single people who live in the woods and are ritually hunted by the guests of the Hotel. Damn it, this leads to a whole new set of unanswerable questions, like "Why do they have to live in the woods?" and "Why is their leader so keen on having everyone did their own grave in advance?" and that's all before asking "Why do they let themselves get hunted like that, why don't they DO something about it?" This is so maddening, because we only get information about this future society in drips and drabs, so we're never able to form a coherent picture about why society is like this, what happened in the past (near future) to bring about all these rules and absurd situations (in the farther future).
Whenever any of the Loners wants to go in to the city (and one assumes they have to buy necessities once in a while, like ointment or tampons or new ponchos) they have to pair up and pretend to be part of a couple, so that they aren't harassed by the police, who want to see the papers from all the single people. (Again, WHY?) Which leads to another question, if it's so easy to pretend to be a couple, then why don't all the single people do that? People pretend to be married all the time, for immigration reasons or to conceal their sexual preferences, so why can't the Loners just pair up and live the lie, wouldn't that make things a whole lot easier? I mean, I get it, they're rebels of a sort, but why aren't they working to change the system, instead of pulling silly pranks on the staff at the Hotel?
There's just this constant feeling that I'm missing something, that this is all one big metaphor for some concept that I can't quite grasp. Instead I have to fall back on guesses about what it all means, like how it sucks to be single, but it can also suck to be married, or maybe about how you have to compromise your ideals a bit in order to accept a partner into your life, and maybe you'll end up smashing your head into the furniture a few times a day, but in the end marriage beats the alternative. Or in the latter part, it seems the film is about how you'll never find a mate if you're looking for one, but as soon as you relax and give up the search, suddenly it seems that love may find you. But in the end I fear that this interpretation says a lot more about me and what I saw in it than it does about what's inherently there to find, because of how damn obtuse this film is.
Another possible interpretation is that since the film opens with a very strange scene, and also closes with a different strange scene, that the whole thing was a writing exercise, to see what kind of story could possibly link those two strange, random scenes. It's unlikely but it's not outside the realm of possibility. I just don't know.
NITPICK POINT: The film mentions there is one animal that nobody wants to get turned into, and then maddeningly never tells us what animal that is. That's going to drive me crazy.
Also starring Rachel Weisz (last seen in "Youth"), Lea Seydoux (last seen in "Spectre"), Ben Whishaw (last seen in "The Zero Theorem"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Carnage"), Ariane Labed (last seen in "Assassin's Creed"), Olivia Colman (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Angeliki Papoulia, Jessica Barden, Ashley Jensen, Michael Smiley, Roger Ashton-Griffiths (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), Ewen MacIntosh, Roland Ferrandi, Garry Mountaine, Imelda Nagle Ryan, Emma O'Shea.
RATING: 3 out of 10 fingers in a toaster
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