Can someone explain what it's trying to say? Is it a movie about relationships? Authority? The ugliness of people? The consequences of loneliness? I know some people will say I'm a moron for not getting it, but I'm trying to understand.
Try not to reply with "Go back to watching Disney."
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I think it's all about extremism in relationships, that's why the setting is very dystopian. You've got the extreme married people (The hotel management) and the extreme anti social people (loners). Also there is a significant mockery about the rule and traditions for relationships/couple/married, like being not married/couple is wild and freak like "animals."
shareBefore I start I apologize for my poor English.
At first sight I was thinking "what a cr*p"(and still I am thinking what a cr*p because of all the cruelty it depicted and it wasn't necessary), but I think what it was trying to say is that being strict on your belief will result in many problems. For example you should choose between 0(being married) and 1(being single) and you should stay royal to your choice for rest of your life and you should condemn explicitly the other group(however you should be able to choose for example 0.4003 and change your opinion anytime and anywhere). Accordingly, I think you can see this on many scenes, for example at the beginning when the hotel reception ask for the size of the shoes and He(Colin Farrell) say 44.5 and the reception answer back you should choose between 44 or 45. Even before that, when he should choose between homosexuality or heterosexuality.
I watched this movie last week, and saved some comments, because of IMDb deleting all the threads.
This comment is from user "TheMadHattress":
To be honest I don't think anyone understands the movie, including the cast. Apparently Yorgos the director didn't like answering the actors questions about the movie. As such I think it's a film where you just take it for what it is. Maybe you find some sense in it or maybe you don't.
I took it to be a movie about authority/herd mentality of humans and also about our perceptions of normal. Everyone in this movie behaves as though they are on the autism spectrum and therefore that is the films 'normal.'
Also something that came to my mind is, we never actually SEE anyone become an animal. We see the girl with beautiful hair as a horse but how do we know she is the horse? How do we know people aren't just killed in the transformation room and animals are brought out?
I took it to be saying something about the nature of fear and how often we are afraid of things that aren't true or real, but those fears keep us in place.
Comment by user e_nineteen:
Also something that came to my mind is, we never actually SEE anyone become an animal. We see the girl with beautiful hair as a horse but how do we know she is the horse? How do we know people aren't just killed in the transformation room and animals are brought out?"
Comment by user Sanitylapse:
Although I wonder if it would have been simpler just to tell the people they would be executed if they didn't find a partner? It seemed the animal thing was largely about scaremongering them into forcing companionship (hence the whole, you've earned a few extra days, etc). Telling them they'd become an animal might just give them an element of 'ah well, I won't bother with the love thing'. Colin Farrell's character, for example, chose a lobster because of the benefits he saw in living as a lobster for a while, suggesting that he was at least anticipating it from a practical standpoint.
Comment by user hiperaberus:
I will tell how I see it in a nutshell: it is about conformity. Even when you rebel, when you end up in the rebellious human group that will also have rules limiting you. The cherry on the cake: even love is a human construction based on rules. Did he conform by the end? The non-conformists became non-human.
Comment by user b-sfacebook93:
In my opinion,
In this movie what I noticed was that emotions weren't real. A time in the future where technology improves and where humans get set back 1000 years in emotions, going back to the very basics. I felt like every actor here played as an individual, rather than a team. Everyone had their own thing to do, part to play. putting the acting more towards themselves rather than focussing on: whats my relation with this other character'.
This is what I would call an emotional rollercoaster type of movie. You want this or that to happen, but it doesn't. Constantly teasing you with idea's but in the end, pushing you back to reality and showing you what our Collin's mission was all about.
The knowledge I gain from this, it showed me that you can't force or fake love. You can't be anyone different, be you! Choose a partner not because of the similarities, but for the beauty of differences!