Headscratchers / The Lobster

• If the movie was about love conquering hate (in the form of sexual repression) why was the protagonist so spiteful as to try to ruin limping man/nosebleed girl's marriage or feed the leader to the wolves or kick that girl in the shin?
  • David kicked the girl in the shin because he was trying to be what he wasn't: heartless. That came back to bite him and he learned fro his mistakes. He tried to ruin the relationship between Nosebleed Woman and Limping Man because it was a sham, much like his relationship with the Heartless Woman. He wasn't vindictive in his actions as he calmly walked into their house, explained the situation, then left when they got upset. As for feeding the Loner Leader to wild dogs, there was some symbolism in that. The characters have destroyed their sexual repression.
  • That's not what the movie is about. Lanthimos doesn't go for simple stories affirming common morals. Being single is not depicted as "hate", the society is just weird.

• Without knowing about the secret society in the woods, how did David feel comfortable asking the maid's help?
  • He knew about them as he and the other hotel residents would regularly hunt them. He didn't know the ins and outs of the society, but he saw them out in the woods with his own eyes. Considering he would now be in trouble with the hotel, his only other option would be to escape to the woods and hope for the best.
  • As for asking the maid for help, that was sheer desperation. At that point, either he would be reported to the Hotel Manager or possibly get killed by the Heartless Woman. The maid was nice to David during his stay and saw him running through the halls, so he had to try his luck and ask for her help.

• Why did the maid engage in her duty of sexual torture of the lobster? They were behind closed doors after all and she was really a mole who hated participating in the whole thing.
  • One of the major themes of this movie is that people go along with societal pressure and rules in spite of their desires. Notice that the hotel staff have no weapons and there are no locked doors or barb wire fences around. People just go along with the established order even though they don't want to. The maid later escapes to the woods and it's just a simple matter of making up an excuse to go out there. David escaped in a similar matter when he ran outside with no one around to stop him.

• Why is this movie categorised as a comedy? I don't just mean here - everywhere! The trailer, IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes... Isn't it really more of a horror? Drama/horror/spec-fic...?
  ** Surely not comedy... I realise that what makes people laugh is subjective, but how much of this movie can really be called a "comedy"?

  • Dark humor is like food. Not everybody gets it.
  • The recent history of dramas passing themselves off as comedies is vast enough to fill a TV trope page of its own. Colossal is a good example.
  • The movie is obviously a comedy. The events depicted are absurd and played for laughs. The characters are not normal people from our world shocked by the scenario they are put through, but people from a very strange world for whom this is normal. They take the events in relative stride as just how things are rather than usually being scared or saddened.

• Is there no punishment in this setting for cheating on your partner or divorcing them? It feels like a big hole that we don't hear of any consequences for David's wife straight-up leaving him for another man, with him being given no extension on how much time he can have because of this. It's not HIS fault he's no longer in a relationship. Do people whose partners die unexpectedly also have to find a partner in barely any time?
  • To the last question, the answer is yes. John the limping man mentions on his second day at the hotel that his wife had died just six days prior.

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