The Meaning of The Lobster Movie: Explanation of the Plot & Ending. In every second modern film, the theme of human relationships is touched upon. Free relationships gradually lead to the depreciation of family values. The meaning of the film Lobster is built around a fantasy future, where members of society are placed in strict limits, obliging them to create pairs. Citizens who break the rules are turned … into animals.
Description of the story
The painting by Yorgas Lanthimos describes a totalitarian dystopian society where the personal desires and preferences of the population are not taken into account. Accommodation takes place according to unshakable rules:
- Society members must be in pairs.
- After a divorce, the police catch singles in cafes, shops, and other public places.
- The fugitives are placed in a hotel for 45 days. Although the institution has the necessary amenities, tight control evokes associations with a concentration camp.
- Guests are required to have time to find a partner based on the same characteristics in the allotted time. The Law of Opposites Attraction does not apply here. Potential members of the couple must have similar characteristics (cruelty, hearing loss, poor eyesight, lameness, curly hair).
- If the loners fail to create a new union, the poor fellows are subjected to the reincarnation procedure, turning into animals, and sent to the “pampas” – a forest teeming with other animals.
- Singles can increase the length of stay in the hotel. The main condition is that they are obliged to deal with the escaped outcasts of society, hiding in the forest. For each hunter killed, 1 day of hotel accommodation is added.
Welcome to the hotel
The plot of the film The Lobster revolves around the architect David (Colin Farrell). Left alone at the age of 40 after a divorce, the main character ends up in a hotel. He becomes a witness of how the guests begin to imitate features that are not inherent in them, trying to get closer to the neighbors they like.
Regular training sessions are held for hotel guests to demonstrate the benefits of being a married couple. However, members of the fictional world have little freedom. They have the right to choose the type of couple – gay and heterosexual union (without this, the film would have been criticized by viewers and critics). The second is an animal that a loner will be turned into in case of failure. David, unlike the vast majority who choose dogs, wants to become a lobster.
On a note! Lobster is one of the few creatures on the planet that live to be 100 years old. Throughout the entire period, he retains fertility, without needing a permanent pair. The moment helps to better understand the meaning of the film The Lobster, exposing loneliness as a crime in the world invented by the director.
Significant other
The situation changes dramatically when the protagonist decides to personally deal with the heartless neighbor who killed the dog (in the past, the brother of one of the guests). Having no legal rights, he turns her into an animal, and he himself escapes into the forest. Finding himself in the pampas, David joins the partisan group. The laws established here are even wilder than in the rest of the world:
- physical, spiritual rapprochement are prohibited;
- lack of mutual assistance;
- kissing is punishable by cutting off the lips;
- each member of the group is obliged to dig a suitable grave for himself.
In a new, mirror-opposite world, David finds his other half (Rachel Weisz). They, as required by general laws, have identical external signs – myopia.
The Lobster Ending and hidden meaning
The world of the protagonist is turned upside down when the chieftain of saboteurs learns about the flirtation of the chosen ones. She tricks the heroine into undergoing an operation that will make her completely blind. The notorious similarity of the characters ends. According to the laws imposed on David from birth, the couple had nothing in common.
However, emotions take over. Out of a sense of revenge, he cracks down on the chieftain, burying her body in his grave. In the final scenes, the characters openly walk along the road, enter a cafe. The meaning of the ending of the film The Lobster reveals the moment when David, taking a knife, goes to the toilet. Standing in front of a mirror, he tries to deprive himself of his sight by alternately aiming at his right/left eye. What ended the film Lobster, the director deliberately leaves open. The whole question is what the main character will choose – to continue to follow the rules or, contrary to fate, will remain with the chosen one.
The ending of the film Lobster is a dark screen, which can be interpreted as:
- following the suggested rules, David decides to blind himself in order to stay with his beloved;
- the hero cowardly runs away, choosing the lot of the Lobster, and the blind Rachel waits a long time for a companion in a cafe;
- the former architect could not decide what was dearer to him.
There is another, hidden meaning of the film in the picture – the failure of a real human society that condemns the choice of people who, for certain reasons, want to remain single.
Movies with meaning always leave a lot of questions after watching. The lobster is a prime example of a thought-provoking painting. A person, being a deeply social being, on a subconscious level, absorbs the rules and standards established by society. Even having experienced the feeling of falling in love, not everyone is able to develop it into a strong union without a cementing element, which in the film is the similarity of signs.
