In late 2017, many felt an unexpected warmth from one of the recent offerings of Netflix’s Black Mirror. The season’s fourth installment, “Hang the DJ,” illustrated an allegory for a dating app as prospective couples spent stint after stint of various lengths with one another until their most approximate match was determined. Though the sense of technophobic dread lingered somewhere in the shadows of the tale, it never really materialized in the irreversible and consequential fashion Black Mirror is known for. It could be the fourth season needed some kind of temporary reprieve, or maybe writer Charlie Brooker found Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster trodden similar, darker waters just a few years prior.
A consolidation between the filmmaker’s prior works – Dogtooth, a film about symbolism and meaning; and The Alps, the 2011 effort concerning grief as it relates to fulfillment and identity – The Lobster brandished Lanthimos’ most jarring premise to date. In an attempt to maintain stability and normalcy, all uncoupled adults are forced to a retreat for 45 days to either find their ideal partner or be transformed into the animal of their choosing. After his wife leaves him for another man that wears glasses, David (Colin Farrell) is promptly extracted from his home and brought to a hotel to begin the process.
Quick to establish a dystopian tone, Lanthimos does not hesitate in presenting the bilateralism that pollutes the world of The Lobster. In a procedure reminiscent of a tax consultation, David is dissected for his preferences as to expedite his tenure. In one instance, the auditor requests David’s sexual orientation. He quickly defaults to heterosexual, but after recalling an experience in college, David asks about a “bisexual option.” The auditor explains “due to several operational problems,” this preference is no longer acceptable. This proves to be the first of many stark prescriptions David and the other singles endure as they are given identical attire, meals, and attend formal events emphasizing the painfully drab getaway.
These initial glimpses into the system’s cruelty are both passive and paradoxical; the tenants are encouraged to foster relationships based on their “defying characteristics,” yet they are forced into a regimen that insists upon conformance. Even David’s room number, 101, alludes to this cruelty as an open character filled with ambiguous space (“0”) is trapped between two stark structures (“1”). In essence, a minute variance is allowed, provided it can be contained, harnessed, and wielded in a controlled fashion.
Routine reward and punishment are prescribed to the singles to perpetuate their docility and groom push them towards convergence. As the subjects relate to sexual conduct, however, appears most visceral through the film. One particular scene encapsulates both, as Robert (John C. Reilly) is confronted for repeatedly masturbating, whereas David is “serviced” by a maid to psychologically prepare him for companionship. Both actions yield a similar sense of deprivation. Robert’s hand is held in a toaster for several seconds, compromising his ability to self-indulge further. David, on the other hand, is left without reprieve and begging the maid for more time to no avail. Each is repressive in its own right and emphasizes the conflict of natural human impulse against the parameters of a social construct.
For David, his attempts to comply turn desperate and inadvertently self-destructive. This foreshadowed fairly early as his friend, John, begins self-inducing nosebleeds in order to couple with a woman possessing a similar, albeit uncontrollable and spontaneous affliction. David resolves to pursue a sociopath, finding it “more difficult to pretend that you do have feelings when you don’t than to pretend you don’t have feelings when you do.” Thus, he tragically believes involving himself with someone overtly dangerous is better than failing to find anyone at all. Here, David endures a near-fatal blow by his brief partner when his true nature is discerned. The punishment for such a crime, his partner explains, is to be “turned into the animal no one wants to be.” Though they are encouraged repeatedly to find someone on the grounds of largely a single trait, incompatibility and a failed relationship can be dealt with in the harshest manner.
If the Lobster’s initial movement is a prison of union, the piece’s later acts examine the prison of the self. After escaping the hotel, David finds himself adopted into a community of loners, the same loners he and his fellow singles regularly hunted to acquire a longer stay. This realm is, at least upon first glance, the virtual opposite of the hotel as self-reliance is lauded, any deadlines are omitted, and masturbation is encouraged. Unfortunately and in a striking parallel to the former setting, any indications of romance are addressed with severe prejudice. It is quickly proven the notion of solitude or companionship isn’t particularly problematic, but rather the way in which the world struggles to contain them.
Even cultivating a love for oneself can be compromised by bipolarity. Just as it occurred with the hotel, there is no room for variance. Instead, the façade of individuality persists, and this reaction to retreat’s methodology is more so a reflection than a revolution. Both systems of institutional violence perpetuate a greater whole; the loners provide an outlet for singles to escape to, and in turn provide the prey with which tenants acquire a longer stay. The tandem leaves little room for organic growth, which is why David’s plight proves so controversial in both places.
Unable to find love in a resort encouraging him to do so, David ironically finds it in the forest of celibacy. Love, Lanthimos contends, is most spontaneous when it is most inconvenient, like a weed thriving in the Arctic. Even in the face and aftermath of violence, it manages to persist and adapt in a way consequence struggles to keep up with. In Black Mirror‘s “Hang the DJ,” partnership is an inevitable conclusion derived from seemingly infinite calculations and trials; even a supposed rupture in the system is considered among the variables. The aforementioned considerations still work to retain the original notion of oneself. Afterall and much the like the hotel, a match is considered from a template of predispositions. Sincere romance in the Lobster‘s climax, however, is something far more unpredictable and forever changing. In fact, David is eventually pushed towards self-destruction to retain his partner, literally gouging a new defining characteristic that is irreversible and, within the frame narrative, undeniably bonding.
In almost every scene, Lanthimos examines the close relationship between love and violence. Additionally, the director illustrates how a societal construct can promptly dehumanize the most basic tendencies. Fear kindles passion, but within the Lobster, it does so with a generous amount of kerosene.
