Offbeat Loneliness Cinema: The Lobster and Swiss Army Man

It is an unfortunate truism that the bigger and farther-reaching a problem is, the more easily it lends itself to a film. War movies and natural disaster movies have been done countless times, yet as Hacksaw Ridge most recently demonstrated, that well has yet to run dry. But take a problem more personal, more intimate, and smaller in scope, and as a filmmaker, you will have your work cut out for you. If you are lucky, your tale will be moving and relatable. If you are not careful, however, you risk littering the screen with solipsistic whining. Loneliness falls into this latter category of problems, but that didn’t stop two films of recent vintage – 2015’s The Lobster and 2016’s Swiss Army Man – from exploring it anyway.

The Lobster takes its name from its protagonist, a shortsighted architect named David (Colin Farrell) whose wife recently left him. David is taken to a hotel and given 45 days to find a partner, or he will be turned into an animal of his choosing. During his stay, he is fed pro-relationship propaganda, befriends a limper (Ben Whishaw) and a lisper (John C. Reilly), and tries to court a heartless woman before realizing his perfect match (Rachel Weisz) may exist among a fiercely independent colony of loners out in the woods.

Though its premise may be a tough sell, Yorgos Lanthimos’s film gets by on its absurdist sensibility. There is an exaggerated, European-accented formality that permeates the film. Everything from dialogue to acts of violence come across as stilted and uncomfortable, which speaks volumes about the rules-obsessed world that David occupies. The hotel, for instance, doesn’t allow masturbation, bisexuality, or half-sizes in clothing whereas the loner colony punishes romance and makes members dig their own graves. If Brazil is 1984 by way of Monty Python, then The Lobster is Brazil by the way of Samuel Beckett. Though certainly off-putting at times, it’s an effectively deep black comedy aided by a lonely, desperate, frumpy Farrell, obliterating the typecasting of his youth.

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Swiss Army Man explores a similar theme – what it means to be alone in contemporary society – in a very different way. Here, Hank Thompson (Paul Dano) is a marooned man on the verge of hanging himself when a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) washes ashore. Dubbing the corpse Manny, Hank uses its flatulence to propel it across the water like a jetski. As Manny gradually begins to come back to life, Hank befriends him and tries to teach him the ways of the world. They are eventually motivated to try to return to civilization by their shared love for a woman named Sarah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

If The Lobster derives humor from its stiltedly awkward restraint, Swiss Army Man attempts to do likewise from its complete lack of it. Flatulence, erections, and other things a twelve-year-old boy might find amusing all factor prominently here, making the film seem the bastard offspring of Cast Away and Dumb and Dumber. The abundance of crass stupidity makes the movie’s moments of genuine introspection, intended as heartfelt, hard to take. The fault lays not with the actors – Dano is an enthusiastic but bumbling Hank and Radcliffe’s bizarre, occasionally wooden performance suits his “dead” character well – but rather with a script that asks us to understand and sympathize with characters it has inadequately developed. While Swiss Army Man deserves some plaudits for the boldness of its approach, it should also serve as a reminder that not all gambles are worth taking.

The Lobster: 7.75/10

Swiss Army Man: 6.25/10