In today's post I'll be reviewing a movie I recently watched called The Lobster
The movie is Greek film director Yorgos Lanthimos's satirical work on various social constructs of the society.
The social construct heavily mocked in this movie is Relationships
The Promotional Poster
One thing that caught my attention is the thought provoking promo poster by Vasilis Marmatakis . If you have seen Vasilis's work you will know that he has an obsession with negative space.
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When Vasilis was asked about the poster
The poster intents to highlight what it feels to be alone, and the need to be with someone.
Movie Premiere & Genre
The movie premiered on 16th October 2015 and is available on Netflix . The genre of the film : Romance/Drama/Dark Comedy .
What Is The Storyline ?
In an alternate reality, David the protagonist is heartbroken after his wife leaves him. He is then transported to a hotel. The hotel has a set of odd rules . One of the primary rule is , the people residing in the hotel have to find a suitable partner within 45 days or else they will be turned into an animal.
Upon entering the hotel reception David is asked to surrender his belongings and take a couple of questions. One of those question being which animal does he wants to be turned into if he fails the objective of finding a partner within 45 days.
David chooses to be a lobster.
Why lobster ?! Because a lobster can live a long life about 50-100 years. But most importantly because it lives in the sea. And David loves the sea.
David is given a room and he's clock starts ticking. He has 45 days to find a compatible partner.
Relationships in the hotel are formed based on similar attributes each partner has. For example , A person with an attribute as stupid as a nose bleed has to find another person with nose bleed to be a match.
So you'll find people taking extremes measures to find a match , Like this guy faking a nose bleed to be a match with a girl with a nose bleed
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It is important to note that the the entire movie revolves around the idea of relationships. Everything in the movie is intentionally made to feel so artificial.
The relationships that we witness in the first half of the movie seems so forced and fake.
The first half of the movie is shown in the hotel where David need to find a partner in 45 days to eventually be married and in the second half David is with the loners in the forest.
The loners are a group of Single people lead by the loner leader . The loners too have their own set of strict rules.
As a loner you must dig your own grave
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Interestingly it is among the loners that David finds the love of his life .Unfortunately among the loners relationships are forbidden.
Any form of relationships among the loners will result in serious consequences.
Rachel Weisz as the short sighted woman
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The short sighted woman saves David from a near death situation and that is the beginning of David and Rachel's chemistry.
The Cast & Crew
The lobster is co-written and directed by 4 time academy award nominie Yorgos Lanthimos and co- written by Efthymis_Filippou.
Yorgos's work include The favourite which won the best picture and 7 other awards at the 72nd British Academy Film Awards.
The Protagonist David is played by the Irish actor Colin Farrell . The narrator of the movie and David's love is played by British actress Rachel Weisz .
The loner leader is played by Lea Seydoux. Other notable actors
and actresses in the movie are John Rilley , Ariane Labed .
Awards & Nominations
Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou won the best European screenwriter award at the 28th European Film Awards. Apart from this the lobster team managed bag in several other awards and plenty of nominations.
Bob the Dog(Dog in the movie) went on to win grand jury prize at
the 68th Cannes festival
Conclusion : Skip Or Watch ?!
Yorogs and he's team has done a fantastic job with the comedic performances. My personal favourite of the film is the constant witful social commentary throughout the entire film. It is so good, that it will make you to pause and play it again.
Besides the comedic performances the film does a great job in capturing emotions. You will not see it coming , You'll be enjoying the film and all of a sudden find yourself dealing with emotion.
In my opinion this is nothing short of a masterpiece and should definitely find a place in your movies to watch list.
If you made it till here then thank you so much. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section , I would love to hear them.
Also check out my other posts , I mostly write about Crypto ,Technology and Philosophy and here are the links .
MERKLE : The unsung hero of decentralization
Virtue Signalling Is Vice And Virtuous
Astronomy : The antidote to Arrogance
Ethics In Artificial Intelligence : Why we need it ?
Our Flawed Morality
Contracts run the world
You can check out my other blogging site over here (Long format content )
Read.cash
You can check out a twitter like posting site over here (Short format content )
Noise.cash
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