Thoughts on "The Lobster" Preface

In May, I heard about the Cannes film festival movie "The Lobster" and knew it was my bag. I emailed the Palm theater: "When are you playing this fine film?" To my dismay, no response. Email is something the Palm Theater pretends to employ but disdains from using. No matter, it was released in theaters nationwide! But with the cursed modifying word "limited." No showings within 200 miles of my home. Video on demand to the rescue?  US VOD release wasn't slated until Mid-June. Not to be bested, I went for Plan D found the video for rent on Amazon.co.uk. It was a 2015 movie after all, having been released in other parts of the world for some time.

Thinking my tenacity had paid dividends, I hit the "rent now" button greedily to cough up four pounds ninety nine pence. "We're sorry, your payment was not accepted. Your credit card must be issued by a bank from the United Kingdom." Damn you regional licensing agreements. Getting precariously close to the end of the contingencies list, I execute Plan E and buy a 9.99 GBP gift card. Surely once my Amazon.co.uk account has a credit, the source of the credit will be irrelevant? Wrong. My Amazon.co.uk credit was sub-divided into categories - 9.99 for amazon, 0.00 for amazon video. I considered setting up a VPN to trick Amazon somehow, but I settled for using the credit to ship the UK "The Lobster" on Blu-ray to America for about 11 GBP, then rationalized immediate piracy of the movie to watch while I waited three weeks for a piece of plastic to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

I was hooked by the premise of being single for more than 45 days as cause for punishment by transformation into an animal. The animal of your choice. A rural hotel the stage for a 45 day rehab program to find a mate. The world a bit dystopian. There were some strange art house moments that seemed weird for weirdness sake, but overall a great flick. I'm going to finally watch this copy that moved five thousand plus miles to be with me and jot down my take.