Movie Times Ep. 14 – The Lobster
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Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster presents a world in which it is illegal to be single, and if you’re unable to find a partner, you get turned into an animal of your choosing. So — a gritty, hyper-realistic drama, basically.
Joe and Cheryl watched Colin Farrell struggle to find love (“love”?) in a weird-ass hotel, and in the woods, and inside their own black, black hearts, then spent some time talking about performing love, human cruelty, and the animals they would choose to be.
Joe’s Addendum: Re-listening to this before posting, I have so many more thoughts. One, I was way off on some crucial plot details—and look at me try to insist I’m right and that Cheryl is wrong! I’m so wrong. Cheryl is always right. Also, now I’m rethinking how the movie works with similarity and difference and how we should feel about it. Maybe the protagonist’s self-blinding as also an act of devotion that challenged this viewer’s own norms RE: what’s ok to do to one’s own body? But I’m also now skeptical of the director’s impulse to frame the self-same as both impossible and the character’s drives towards likeness in each others’ faults as grotesque. Or is his representation of this flat? And my reading of these moments as grotesque? You win, Lobster.
Cheryl and Joe watch movies and talk about them at their kitchen table. Our method: watch a movie, go home, turn on the tape recorder, and get off topic. The conversations cover boy bands, necropolitics, and something in between. Email questions, comments, and movie recommendations to: movietimeswithjoeandcheryl@gmail.com. Make us watch things so you don’t have to.
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