“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” That is one of the more famous first lines in literature, from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The novel goes on to detail how that want brings characters together in matrimony. Readers have always questioned whether Austen believed her line or not. Was she reveling in courtship or making fun of it?
I would guess that Yorgos Lanthimos, the primary filmmaker behind The Lobster, favors the cynical interpretation. His film plays like a modern take on Austen, taken to absurdist, Kafka-esque lengths: adults must be married and must be with their spouses at all times. Singles are relocated to a hotel, where they have 45 days to find a mate. Those who fail are hunted, tranquilized, and transformed into animals. Hence the title – when our protagonist David enters the hotel, they ask him what animal he would like to become should it come to that, and he chooses a lobster.
The first half of the film explores the absurdity of this system, as people try to manufacture love under threat of self-negation. Then David transgresses these strict rules and has to flee the hotel, to be hunted. In the wild, he encounters a group of radical loners who struggle to survive and commit themselves to singleness. The opposite of the official society, the loners exact savage punishment for any display of romance. Of course, among the anti-amorous loners David finally finds love.
Obviously, The Lobster is an allegory for the modern situation of single adults. The prevailing culture counsels them to look for a mate, but all the pressure and expectations make it impossible for real love to spark. But the lonely alternative is no better, and offers no hope of happiness. And if one finds true love somehow, the world tries to rip it away – David has to make a truly awful choice at the end of the film. Lanthimos paints a very dark picture of the world of romance, with none of Austen’s subtlety.
It is a fascinating portrait, though. The Lobster portrays a fantasy world without displaying anything out of the ordinary, yet the fantasy is not fanciful at all, going for resonance rather than comedy. The film calls to mind those of Wes Anderson and Charlie Kaufman, with their rigid absurdities. Lanthimos effectively uses those absurdities to point us back to the strangeness of our own customs.
I come away with the question, though, is he aiming at the right world? In my observation, our common culture doesn’t pressure people to pair up for life; watching The Lobster, I felt like it was unintentionally lampooning the Church. We Christians are the ones who push people to marry, too often implying that singleness is fundamentally wrong. We don’t really have an equivalent of the loners – maybe monks, once upon a time – but that just points back to the lack of community and support for singles in the Church.
You might say, “but we don’t turn people into animals – that’s absurd!” And you’d be right, but if we assume that everyone naturally wants to be married, don’t we imply that those who aren’t are a little less developed, a little less human?