Finding Love In a Hopeless Place

Finding Love in a hopeless place

by Karenna Umscheid

Fall, also known culturally as “cuffing season,” can often feel a lot like a lower-stakes version of The Lobster. There’s no encroaching time crunch that if you don’t achieve a situationship by the end, you get turned into an animal of your choosing. But, there is a certain feeling that things are happening for other people that just aren’t happening for you. In The Lobster, David (Colin Farrell) is sent to The Hotel, where he has 45 days to find a partner, or else he will be turned into an animal of his choice. The slapstick emphasis on partnership is constant; where these pressures are more important than ever, it’s a relief that we don’t live in this kind of romantic dystopia, because there would then be far more animals than humans. If fall is the so-called “cuffing season,” then winter is a retreat to loneliness, as seasonal depression kicks in and the hopeful autumn breezes turn cold and unforgiving. The Lobster lives in this unforgiving loneliness but demonstrates a beautiful, natural love story born out of the strangest and darkest of circumstances. 

The pairing of unconventional, strange romances with an off-kilter sci-fi setting is brilliant. The absurdity of the premise and the beauty and love that emerges within it make The Lobster unique. The dry wit of the film is Lanthimos standard, which means supremely weird and disturbing. Audiences seem split on whether John C. Reilly’s hand being put in a toaster is funny or awful, though it’s more likely that the point is that it's both. The premise itself is brilliant and peculiar in how it is equal parts funny and disturbing. What emerges throughout the narrative is consistently unexpected, keeping the audience engaged throughout the film. 

The heavy devotion in the narrative is astounding and fantastical, perfectly exemplified in the medium of film. The quiet liminality of the setting adds a disturbing nature to loneliness, like there is no comfort in this work Lanthimos has created unless you can find it within your partner. There’s an intense chill in this air, much like the one I feel crossing the street on Boylston and Tremont. There is a sudden alienation in the season, an opposition to the coziness and warmth that hits when you go outside and the sharp breeze slices through you. Lanthimos captures this feeling, the uneasy switch from autumn to winter that makes your lips chapped and cold, and keeps you indoors and isolated as much as possible. This isolation is terrifying, but The Lobster is still hopeful throughout this feeling.
The Lobster gives us an example of devotion and love so potent that it not only exists but thrives in a cold, unloving environment. It delves into the violence and treachery that is both internal and external and lets us know that love can emerge out of the most unwelcoming, strongest cold, in the places we least expect it to be.

The Lobster is screening at Kendall Square Cinema on Wednesday, November 29, 2023. 

Until next time,

Karenna

Photograph: Pinterest