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The Lobster (2014) - An absurdist, dystopian love story
I watched this conversation between Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant today, and learned of Farrell’s film The Lobster, which features him and Rachel Weisz. I really enjoyed it, it is an absurdist, distopian, and surreal love story which tickled all of my favorite sensibilities. I highly recommend it.
Has anyone else seen this? Did you enjoy it? Do you have any other modern films to recommend along the same lines?
Edit: it’s also a comedy, at least for two of us.
Yeah, in the interview/talk I linked to Farrell said it did not read as funny in the script. I found it hilarious. I even wrote down a quote:
Besides the humor is there anything particular that calls to mind absurdism?
Well, the entire premise for me... people have a tiny window of time to find a human mate, or they get transmutated into the animal of their choice.
Absurdism: the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe.
This is what I thought you were talking about.
Fair enough. I was using this definition:
There are some reviews out there that call it this, so at least I’m not alone in this pointless existence. :)
I never understood trying to pin labels into things. I enjoyed the movie, the premise was a bit absurd but likeable.
Oh the premise was “absurd,” at least in my pedantic understanding... but the deadpan tone was so good that I totally suspended my disbelief. It reminded my of Life Aquatic, or Woody Allen’s Sleeper, but even less “on the nose” than those two. I am no cinephile, but I imagine that both Allen and Anderson would both liked to have made that film. I hope that it’s a cult classic in the future.
Thank you.
Did you read the plot summary? The very premise of the movie seems rather undeniably absurdist to me. A dystopian society where single people are arrested and sent to a hotel where they have 45 days to find a mate or be transformed into an animal.
Though I would agree that the premise of the movie is absurd, I believe what @DonQuixote is referring to is the scholarly form of absurdism. It's fair to assume without knowing much about absurdism in a scholarly sense, anything that fits the adjective absurd would be "absurdist". But if you study literature professionally or wound up in a high school that teaches it, you might recognize absurdism as a specific philosophical framework used in literature.
I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not sure to what extent it follows this framework, or even if it ignores it in an acknowledging manner, but I wouldn't say the summary alone would back this up! I hope I could offer some insight.
You don't have to be all that scholarly inclined to know about absurdism, though. It's probably one of the most discussed entry-level philosophical topics. The step right behind existential crisis and nihilism.
Great movie. Underrated.
Well, I did watch it a long time ago. So I don't have a lot to say at the moment about it unfortunately. But I do remember loving it quite a lot. And it introduced me to the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos.
So far, I have watched three films by him: The Lobster (2015), Dogtooth (2009) and the most recent one, The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017).
He is... an interesting artist. I don't really know what his films are about. I really don't. And for that reason alone I sure as hell wouldn't recommend it to the average movie-goer. But if you're more tolerant of non-mainstream and experimental films, then they're surely worth a watch.
Were you to try any of his films, I'd go for The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), which is pretty recent, with Colin Farrel (whose performance was spectacular), in English and with well-known actors (Nicole Kidman, Raffey Cassidy and Barry Keoghan). It's also got this awkward and tense atmosphere, with small hints of deadpan humor here and there.
Dogtooth (2009) is... is really out there. It's that kind of film that people walk out of. I don't know... I'd say it's not that bad, but experience tells me my tolerance for “weird shit” and controversial scenes is really high, so I must warn you about it. It's got a bit of the deadpan humor, but in general it's just creepy and suspenseful and it's even harder to figure out than the other two (I mean, the other two films make some sense on their own without too much thinking, but this one requires a lot more deliberation than those).
What would those lines be? Because thinking about this film reminds me of a lot of other films for several reasons, but I'm not sure I'd call them similar (probably not).
I’m not sure what those lines are exactly either.. just anything that makes you feel a similar way or uses similar techniques.
Thanks, I’ll check out The Killing of a Sacred Deer.