I had the opportunity to watch “The Lobster” the other night. It’s not necessarily your typical horror fare. It’s labeled a dark comedy, which is spot on, but the movie is presented in the surreal dreamlike style that is familiar to a number of A24 films, which gives the violence and dystopian subject matter a fantastical quality that makes the horror of the situation more subliminal and understated.
Before we continue: for those who are unfamiliar with this movie, you should see it first and then return to this article; there’s going to be plenty of spoilers.
Summary
Before we dive into analyzing things, “The Lobster” imagines a dystopian society wherein humans are surgically turned into animals if they reach a certain age without marrying. It’s worth noting that these animals are indistinguishable from naturally-born animals; they’re not mutated or freakish like in “Tusk”.
The main focus of the movie is David, played by Colin Farrell. He is a recent divorcee. His wife has left him for someone, which leads to him being placed in a sort of singles resort where he will meet his next partner, something which will only happen if they share something in common, such as, for example, being short-sighted. Failure to find a partner with whom he shares some kind of commonality will lead to him being transformed into the animal of his choice, which he states is a lobster.
A series of events that introduce us slowly to the rules of this world and monogamistically cult-like society, as well as the existence of an oppositional group of enforced asexual rebels. Within the resort, David is subjected to propaganda-like morality plays promoting coupling instead of being single. Residents of the hotel are kept sexually frustrated to motivate them to pair off with a suitable romantic partner- this includes mandates against masturbation (punishable by a good old-fashioned hand toasting) and regular lap dances from the hotel maids. David eventually manages to escape the resort and live with the rebel Loner group, where he meets an unnamed woman who, like David, is short-sighted. They begin a secret romance, which is discovered by the leader of the Loner group, and the short-sighted woman is surgically blinded, under the guise of a surgical procedure to improve her vision.
David and the woman desperately search for something, anything else they may have in common, but there isn’t anything. David decides that the two of them can escape the Loner group, and he can blind himself so they can have something in common.
The final shots of the movie are David looking into a mirror in a diner bathroom, preparing to cut his eyes out with a knife. We never see him actually do the deed before we cut to the woman sitting in the booth at the diner, waiting, both patiently and desperately, for David to return.
After a painful amount of time, the credits roll, and it’s never made clear if David blinded himself or not.
The Ending Explained
The credits of the movie are mostly silent, but a bit at the end shares the sound of ocean waves. The implication here is that someone has turned into a lobster. However, the movie has done a bit of a bait and switch.
The unnamed blind woman is the one that turned into a lobster; she hopes that as a lobster, she can find David, who she expects to have also been turned into a lobster after his failure to blind himself.
Let’s look at the evidence.
First and foremost, it’s important to recognize that the narrator of the film is the unnamed woman. She tells us all the details she knows, with apparent knowledge of all events; we hear certain bits of dialogue narrated by her and then immediately spoken by the characters. Perhaps this level of detail is because, as they say several times in the movie, losing one sense can heighten your other abilities; perhaps her memory is heightened after the loss of her sight. It is also seen that she keeps some of the narration written in a diary of sorts.
Because she is the narrator, we can conclude that she isn’t telling the story of David, but rather her own story of how David came into her life. But why does this matter?
Who is she telling the story to? In this society, there isn’t anyone we can expect her to speak to, but we can draw conclusions based on what we know.
She is a blind woman left alone at a diner in a society where you are always supposed to be with your partner. She only has so long before she is going to be approached by someone, and she will have to express that her husband is in the bathroom. He won’t be found, and she will be arrested and forced to be made into an animal. This is where she tells her story. The animal she has chosen is a lobster, and this is why: because David would choose to be a lobster.
Did David Blind Himself?
It doesn’t matter. In any scenario, we know that the unnamed woman is ultimately revealing why she is going to be transformed into a lobster, a procedure that essentially occurs over the end credits. We see her as a human, the credits roll, and we hear the ocean.
If he did succeed in blinding himself, the pair were ultimately arrested anyway. If he blinded himself but somehow also killed himself, only she was arrested. If he couldn’t bring himself to do it, he may have tried to pretend to be blind publicly, or even privately, but was unable to keep the ruse up and they were ultimately arrested. If he couldn’t bring himself to do it and ran away, the two were arrested independently.
But, okay, let’s say you really need to know which of the above it was.
We can eliminate a few options based on what we know of David.
Firstly, David chastises John for pretending to have recurring nosebleeds, the only thing he apparently has in common with his new partner. John came up with this lie to evade becoming an animal; his partner doesn’t know about the lie until later and we don’t learn whether or not they stay together. It’s implied, however, that they do not, as everyone seems to believe very strictly in the need for a shared characteristic.
David also tries to lie his way out of the situation by pretending to be emotionless to appeal to the “heartless” woman. It’s a ruse he is able to keep up for a limited amount of time- only a few days- before the truth is discovered.
Looking at these events in combination, we can understand why David was desperate to find a true commonality with the short-sighted (now blinded) woman: he was unwilling to lie again.
So, he cannot lie about being blind (and let’s face it: if that was ever an option, blinding himself wouldn’t have been the agreed-upon plan).
This means either he did it and they were caught nonetheless, or he chickened out and abandoned her.
So What’s the Point?
The point of the movie isn’t their romance. The movie is about facing the futility of true love in a world where the idea of marriage as a legal contract is pushed to the total extreme. The point of the movie is that this relationship ISN’T romantic, as close at it may seem at times.
David wasn’t in love with his wife, and she wasn’t in love with him; the pair were united by a shared superficiality which she easily found again in someone else, with whom she likely shared more characteristics than she did with David. Unfortunately, David, born and raised in this society, is unable to get past the idea that you must have a superficial commonality with someone in order to be legally paired with them, thus, he can never possibly understand what true love actually is. The closest we see is his relationship with the short-sighted woman, and even that relationship is filled with his own jealousy and insecurity.
Because of this lack of understanding of love, and because his motivation for marriage is more out of desperation to survive and be accepted by society, and not intrinsically motivated by a love for a potential partner, we can conclude that his rational mind would convince him that he could find another suitable partner, with whom he shares a commonality, rather than have to take his own sight.
Think about the plan: two people who are very recently blind would expect themselves to navigate a city in which they can be arrested at a moment’s notice for suspicion that they are not legally married. They don’t have documents to prove their marriage, they don’t have a place to stay. There is no scenario in which the plan, as it is, succeeds. David would realize this, and since his survival is his primary motivation, he’d leave the diner to pursue some other desperate means of finding a partner.
No matter what, the important thing to remember is this: the short-sighted woman believes that becoming a lobster is her best chance at finding David again. She is caught and will become a lobster, and she believes that he was or will be caught and will also become a lobster.
Thus, if there is romance to be found, it isn’t within David, but within the short-sighted woman.
Who is the Short-Sighted Woman?
We don’t know who she was before she met David, but it’s fairly safe to assume that her circumstances were similar to David’s, as they are around the same age and live in the same general region. She finds herself living with the Loners, and at the end of it all, finds a connection with David that appears to be more sincere than the connection he feels with her.
She isn’t given a name in the script; she’s referred to simply at the short-sighted woman. This is a reflection of how David views her: she is a woman that shares this characteristic with him, and that is all that matters. He doesn’t know what she likes, only things she dislikes- which all happen to be things he likes and vice versa. What a great foundation for a relationship.
Nonetheless, she comes to depend on him and that dependence fosters affection. This is why, at the end of the script, she fulfills the plot and becomes The Lobster of the title.
David may be a major character, but this is the short-sighted woman’s story. She is the lobster.
Why does the movie end where it does? Because her freedom, her story ends there. Our final moments with her are coming to the understanding that David is not coming back. The credits allow us to reflect on this.
And then we’re left with the hope that maybe, just maybe, they can be together as lobsters, somewhere under the ocean waves.
Stay Shocked,
-Z
“The Lobster” is streaming now on Max. You can purchase it digitally and physically through Amazon.
To learn more about Simply Shocked’s history with horror, read our blog post “Why Horror?”
Categories: Analysis, Film Analysis
Nah. I’m really sorry, it was an interesting reading, but you got it all wrong I guess.
You assume she’s getting turned into a lobster and make all of the hints support your assumption, but I don’t see any real evidence.
Starting with the David dilemma, I agree with faking blindness wouldn’t be a realistic option to him. Abandoning her wouldn’t bee a good choice (I will explain later). You quickly dismiss blinding himself for two reasons, for the obvious tragedy of losing a whole sense and because “he still would be arrested”, but I think you’re making the same mistake I made trying to reason: you’re seeing this scenario as a “real life, real world” scenario, and it doesn’t work like that. Firstly, in this world a person would indeed be willing to blind himself, even cut limbs or fake nose bleed (as we could see) to have a romantic partner. Finding love is more important than “being yourself”. And in this world the fact you need a document to prove your relationship is not that “logic”, I mean: the simple fact you are actually in love it’s enough to claim your documents. Look at David’s ex-wife. She started loving someone else: that makes David a loner without a couple license but his wife doesn’t have to go to the Hotel or anything at all because she DOES have a romantic partner and both of she and her new boyfriend are accepted in the society. So, David and the blind woman could have a chance in the society because their love is valid.
Althought is a very black humor and we in fact can say “how David views her: she is a woman that shares this characteristic with him. What a great foundation for a relationship”, in this world, this IS real love. In our world that kind of relationship sounds pretty toxic, but it’s stated that in that world, different from ours, it doesn’t exist and can’t exist what we call “real love”, because here, real love is literally this: finding someone who shares something with you and loving them. That’s why I say David love was pure, and that’s why abandoning her doesn’t seem a good option.
If nothing I’ve said convinces you yet, let me just say something: it’s impossible that the woman, or even David, would be turned into lobsters. They are both considered criminals in the eyes of the Hotel, so they would be punished by turning them into “the animal who anybody wants to be”. So they wouldn’t be transformed into a lobster as their choice, but rather something else.
The sea sounds and the end can mean other things. The actual ending is “there’s no ending, it depends on what you want to believe”, but in one of the best analysis I’ve read, someone explained why blinding himself would be probably the most realistic option. But I already wrote so much.
But, I must confess, there’s plenty of good observations in your analysis. The whole “keeping sexually frustrated” is a really smart and simple way to describe it and I haven’t seen it mentioned in any of the more than 30 analysis I’ve read.