On The Lobster (2015)

"I raise my left foot. I bring my

elbow to my knee and tap it twice.

I bring my foot to my knee and tap

it three times. I lie face down.

I kneel down. I touch my left cheek

and then lie face up."

Yorgos Lanthimos is a master of taking these innate flawed identifiable human qualities (i.e. lust and carnal desire, shameful self-preservation, corruptions of power and posturing... etc.) and planting them into these bizarre alien concepts in such a way that they become reflections of the futility of existence and societal conventions.

The crushing pressure from these rules set in place by this unsound society mold and shape every action and corrupt every intention; disingenuous words hidden by pretense fade away to reveal the dirty underbelly, yet from the same mouth comes a hopefulness for the real.

The Lobster escapes from one prison of existence to the next, each coming with its own set of rules that, if broken, result in certain death; even in a removed setting abstracted from other people, the prison of convention and societal norms poison and sully the mind, at the end they are just sitting ducks, oblivious to the world's dangers that will inevitably come.

A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him. If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him. The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies, are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat.

- Orison Swett Marden

Originally posted on Letterboxd on 21st January, 2024