The Lobster
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Lobster - Lobsters are human too |
| Original title | The Lobster |
| Country of production |
Greece , United Kingdom , France , Ireland , Netherlands |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| length | 109 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Giorgos Lanthimos |
| script | Giorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou |
| production | Ceci Dempsey, Ed Guiney , Yorgos Lanthimos, Lee Magiday |
| camera | Thimios Bakatakis |
| cut | Yorgos Mavropsaridis |
| occupation | |
| |
The Lobster is a feature film by the Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos from 2015. The film is set in a dystopia in which singles are given 45 days to find a partner, otherwise they are transformed into an animal of their choice. The main roles are played by Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz .
action
Only couples are allowed to stay in a city not named, one of three locations in the film. All singles are brought to a hotel by the sea where they have to find a partner within 45 days. If they cannot find a partner within the deadline, they will be transformed into an animal of their choice. The deadline can be extended by successfully participating in the weekly hunt for refugee singles living in the adjacent forest. As a rule, partners find each other by discovering similarities. Social and didactic events such as dance evenings are organized for hotel guests. Masturbation of men is forbidden and is painfully punished, but male guests are sexually stimulated daily by the maid to increase the pressure when looking for a partner. All hotel guests initially receive single rooms. If there are two singles, they are transferred to a double room for 14 days, then to a yacht anchored off the coast for another 14 days. The partnership is then considered stable and the couple can move to the city.
After his wife leaves him for another man, David is driven to the hotel with his dog (his brother, who did not manage to enter into a partnership in time and was therefore turned into a dog). In the breakfast room he meets Robert and John and befriends them. Among other things, the three talk about which animal they would be transformed into if the transformation should take place. David names the lobster as the animal of his choice. John can attract the attention of a woman with a chronic nosebleed by injuring himself and posing as a nosebleed too. After a few days, a child (conceived by a stranger) is assigned to the couple in order to strengthen the relationship. David woos a woman who is considered cold by pretending to be cold and heartless too. Both move into a double room as a couple. To test David's lack of emotion, the woman kills his dog. Since David weeps over the loss, the woman considers him unsuitable as a partner and wants to end the relationship. David stuns the woman, subjects her to the transformation process into an animal of his choice and flees the hotel.
In the forest he meets the group of refugee singles who are led by a woman. The community, which is always threatened by the hunters, has just as strict rules imposed on itself as the townspeople: a life without a partner is an obligation, flirting and sex are forbidden. Violations are punished with cruel corporal punishment . It is the duty of every single person to dig their own grave prophylactically anywhere in the forest. During one of the weekly hunts for the singles, David is hunted down by Robert, whose time in the hotel is almost up and therefore needs a successful hunt. At the last second, a woman from the single group saved David. The two get closer and notice one thing in common: Both are nearsighted. They secretly enter into a relationship with each other. The singles occasionally go to town in disguise to buy supplies and to visit the leader's parents, who have long shown them a successful life full of work-related travel. During these visits, David and his girlfriend have the opportunity to have some togetherness, as they have to pretend to be a happy couple for the public in town to camouflage themselves.
The singles are planning an attack on the hotel. An ally, the hotel's maid, supports them with access cards to individual double rooms. The attack is said to be bloodless and only to drive a few selected couples into separation through psychological pressure. During the robbery, for example, the hotel manager's husband is made to shoot his wife in order to save himself from supposed death. But the gun is not loaded, and after this breach of trust, the two are left to their own devices. At the same time, David sneaks onto John's yacht. There he exposes him in front of his partner and the child by revealing that John deliberately caused his nosebleed.
The leader suspects that David and the short-sighted woman are lovers. When the maid in the forest accidentally finds the woman's diary in which she reports on her relationship with David, it emerges that both are planning an escape from the forest and want to live as a couple in the city. Under the pretext of wanting an operation for her nearsightedness, the leader and the housekeeper take the nearsighted woman to an ophthalmologist in town, who blinds her with the laser instead of curing her. When the now blind woman notices the betrayal, she tries in vain to kill the leader and accidentally stabs the former chambermaid. Because of her helplessness, she has to submit to the dictates of the leader again in order to survive in the forest. David takes care of them, but because of the lack of commonality of nearsightedness, they run out of things to talk about. Finally he overpowers the leader and throws her tied up in an open grave. Then he flees into town with his blind girlfriend. In a motorway service station, the two of them sit opposite each other with a glass of water and have nothing to say to each other. David orders cutlery with a steak knife from the waiter and goes to the men's room to create a common, connecting element again. He holds the sharp knife in front of his eye. The film ends with the blind woman sitting alone in the motorway service station.
criticism
The film received mostly positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes received 220 positive and only 31 negative reviews. Metacritic counted 40 positive, 4 mixed and no negative publications. On the Internet Movie Database page, the weighted average rating of 7.2 out of 10 was determined from 195,412 users.
The film service judges that "the fable , kept in muted beige, green and brown-yellow tones, transforms questions about love, individuality and togetherness into an abysmal (film) reflection with laconic-absurd humor". The film is “exquisitely cast and staged with sly depth”.
Awards (selection)
The production has received several awards since 2015 and has been nominated for various prizes.
Olivia Colman was named Best Supporting Actress at the 2015 British Independent Film Awards . The International Film Festival of Cannes in 2015 , the production was awarded the Jury Prize. Giorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou received the European Film Award in 2015 for the screenplay and were nominated for the Oscar in the category Best Original Screenplay in 2017 .
synchronization
The film was set to music at VSI Synchron. Marianne Groß wrote the dialogue book and directed the dialogue.
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| David | Colin Farrell | Florian Halm |
| myopic woman | Rachel Weisz | Bettina White |
| Woman with nosebleed | Jessica Barden | Maximiliane Häcke |
| Hotel manager | Olivia Colman | Christin Marquitan |
| Shortbread Woman | Ashley Jensen | Katrin Zimmermann |
| Housekeeping | Ariane Labed | Jessica Walther-Gabory |
| heartless woman | Angeliki Papoulia | Vera Teltz |
| lisping man | John C. Reilly | Detlef Bierstedt |
| Leader of the singles | Léa Seydoux | Celine Fontanges |
| Partner of the leader | Michael Smiley | Oliver Siebeck |
| hobbling man | Ben Whishaw | Tobias Nath |
Web links
- The Lobster in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for The Lobster . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 157959 / V).
- ↑ The Lobster on rottentomatoes.com accessed January 22, 2020
- ↑ The Lobster on metacritic.com. Retrieved January 22, 2020
- ↑ The Lobster on imdb.com accessed on January 22, 2020
- ^ Josef Lederle: The Lobster. Film service , October 2016, accessed on May 16, 2016 .
- ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | The Lobster - Lobsters are human too. Retrieved May 23, 2018 .