I think one of the reasons the ending of The Lobster leaves people so bemused and unsure is because it’s a philosophical ending rather than a resolution. Movies and books have trained us to expect resolution. Ask anyone what the parts of a story are and they’ll say, “Beginning, middle, end.” And typically that end takes the form of a conclusion. The hero is victorious or defeated. The authoritarian institution triumphs or gets brought down. Someone finds love or they don’t.
The resolution ending is standard when telling a story for the sake of telling the story. But it’s less standard when the story is a tool for an examination of humanity.
That sounds pretentious, but that’s the realm of art, right? To explore and examine what it means to be alive. To try to make sense of the world, even if that’s through a defamiliarization of the world.
In the case of The Lobster, the world is very defamiliarized. It’s a full-blown dystopia. But the details of the society are thin. Over the course of the movie, we realize that couples are forced to have something in common; that it’s the government that turns people into animals; that there’s a normal-but-stilted society where people live in the city, have homes, go to the mall, and live semi-basic lives if not kind of emotionally reduced lives. You can exist in this society as long as you follow their very stringent rules.
The Lobster isn’t telling us a story about this weird and whacky world. It’s using this weird and whacky world as way to ask us a question. “If you were in the situation David is in, what would you do? Do you blind yourself? Do you not and become an animal? Why?”
The end of The Lobster
At the end, we see David (Colin Farrell) and the woman he loves (Rachel Weisz) at a diner. They’ve escaped the Loners, which means now they have to blend into normal society.
But the problem is that, in this society, everyone has to have a defining characteristic, and every couple has to share that characteristic. Fair enough. This had been fine when David and Rachel (she’s otherwise nameless) were both shortsighted. But now that Rachel has been blinded…David’s only real choice is to blind himself.
If this weren’t a weirdly specific movie where everyone is a little bizarre, David would have other options. But writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos doesn’t want us to consider other options. He wants to bring us to this moment of truth where Rachel waits at the diner table while David goes to the bathroom to blind himself with a steak knife by stabbing his eyes.
The last shot is of Rachel, at the table. Waiting.
Why end The Lobster like this?
Clearly this is not a resolution. The story’s main consideration had been whether David could find love. He has, but the duration of that relationship depends on him inflicting these wounds on himself. Should he go through with them…then he’ll be able to spend the rest of his life with Rachel. Should he not go through with it…he’ll not only break the heart of the woman he loves, he’ll probably become a fugitive wanted by the state for being a “loner.” This increases the odds that he and Rachel will each be turned into animals. The fact that we don’t know what happens to David means the story does not wrap up.
If this was a story designed to have a resolution, this would be a bad one.
But if this was a story designed around a philosophical question, then this is a perfectly fine ending.
The meaning of The Lobster‘s ending
In storytelling, there’s a basic need to bring the narrative to a moment of climactic choice. Stories that want to resolve will show this choice and then show the reaction of the world to that choice. So in Star Wars, Luke has to decide whether or not to help the Rebel forces blow up the Death Star. He chooses to. Then we watch that play out. He succeeds. The Death Star explodes. Everyone is happy. That’s some resolution.
But if Star Wars was an exercise in philosophy then it would end with Luke having to decide whether or not to join a Rebel army and take the lives of the enemy. We’d be left without an answer. We’d never know if the Empire wins or loses. If Luke becomes a hero, or loses his life trying, or scurries away out of fear. We’d just have endless debates.
Why do philosophical endings deny us the satisfaction of a character making a decision?
Because it begs the question, “What do you think happens? “
Which is a different way of asking, “What would you do in this situation?”
To eye or not to eye, that is the question
If you were in a society where you could only marry someone who had the same defining feature as you…would you blind yourself to be with the person you love?
That’s really the mental exercise that The Lobster is. All of the hotel stuff. All of the Loner resistance stuff. All of the dystopian society. The entire purpose of it is to build the final moment of choice and leave the audience asking themselves: What did he do?
And then: What would I do?
From there, the question gains nuance.
If you’re in David’s world…
If you’re in David’s world, what are your choices? Blind yourself to be with this person? Or don’t do that and get turned into an animal?
Either way is kind of bleak. If you blind yourself, you’re no longer living the same life as before, or capable of the same things as before. Your life fundamentally changes. But if you’re turned into an animal, you’re also not living the same life as before, or capable of the same things as before. So is it better to be blind and living with the person you love, or is it better to be an animal with all five senses?
If we were in our world…
So in real life we don’t have to have a defining characteristic. No one is going to turn us into an animal if we’re single. The stakes are much much much lower. If anyone was trying to make you blind yourself out of love…well, they’re probably a psychopath and you should run away.
But we can extrapolate. When you commit to a relationship, there’s always a cost. In most cases, this is a matter of losing a bit of your individuality. Instead of being a single entity, you’re now part of a couple. You can’t just move into whatever apartment you want. You have to consider how the move will affect the relationship. If the apartment you want is 30 minutes away from where your significant other lives, that could be a problem. If you want to live in the middle of downtown and they don’t, that could be a problem. You have to compromise.
But this can be bigger than compromise. If you love NYC but your significant other gets a job in San Francisco, do you move? What if you go on a few dates with someone, are falling for them, then they tell you they have a child? Does that change things for you? Do you flinch? Or are you fine with it?
None of these things are as serious as having to blind yourself, but they are examples of the cost of a relationship and accepting the conditions of being in that relationship.
The Lobster and 1984
“That’s all well and good, Chris. But is there a resolution? Can’t a movie do both resolution and philosophy?”
Oh, yeah, certainly. I think something like Blade Runner is a good example of mixing resolution and philosophy. We get the initial conclusion to the showdown with the replicants, but there’s the philosophical with Deckard making a choice to run away with Rachael. The question there isn’t would we choose to run or not…it’s would we be able to love an android as though it were a human. Deckard can because he now believes there’s no difference between humans and replicants. Or at least doesn’t care.
If we’re looking at the resolution of The Lobster then I would argue that the conclusion is in the title itself. A lobster is the animal David chose to become if he were turned in to one. If David chose to blind himself, then the title is a very limited one, as it only applies to the theoretical of what David would become. But if David ops to not blind himself, it’s probably safe to assume he gets captured and is returned to the hotel to become an animal. In which case, he would become the lobster.
I also can’t help but compare The Lobster to 1984 and Brazil. All three are dystopian society films that follow very similar narrative arcs. The character starts within a cruel dystopian system. They start to doubt the system. They break out of the system and meet up with a resistance force. The woman they love is part of the resistance force. But the resistance force ends up falling apart. In 1984 and Brazil, the main characters are caught, tortured, and ultimately rehabilitated into the system. They’re alive but have lost the essence of their individuality.
For much of its narrative, The Lobster follows the exact trajectory of 1984 and Brazil. That means it is either using their basic structure to eventually diverge, which is something V for Vedetta does, or it’s using the exact same structure because The Lobster is a retelling of 1984.
If The Lobster wanted to borrow in order to set-up the divergence, then we never see it actually diverge. And there’s no real implication of diverging. Which I think would support the reading that David fails to blind himself and ends up subjugated by the system. Just like the endings of 1984 and Brazil. In this world, that means becoming a lobster.
Rachel is waiting
I do think it’s worth noting that there’s a bit of a hold on Rachel while she waits for David to return. The shot maintains for enough time to create the doubt he may not return. To the point where we may be looking out the huge window behind Rachel, expecting to see David running down the street, abandoning her to her fate. The hold here functions as a dramatic moment to make us wonder what’s taking so long. We start to expect David to come back any second…any second… But the more time that passes the more we’ll worry he won’t show up. It’s a nice use of tension building that really drives home the philosophical question.
“True love is blind” David went through with it. He wants to live and went to extremes to do so. By blinding himself, he guarantees his continued survival, as well as being with his true love, a love so strong, they even had their own secret language. Awesome film
I think he did blind himself. I think the name does give the ending away for 2 reasons. One, lobsters mate for life, and two, lobsters can’t see very well. They are basically blind, they can only make out some shapes of objects in dim light.
I think if they wanted the fact that lobsters mate for life to enter into the equation, they would have brought it up.
They did bring it up, he explains it in the beginning when he’s asked why he wants to become a lobster.
David says he wants a to become a lobster because they live for 100 years, they are fertile for life, they are blue blooded like aristocrats, and he loves the sea.
David says nothing about lobsters mating for life and in fact lobsters do NOT mate for life.
There’s no doubt in my mind that he didn’t go through with blinding himself at the end. I don’t think they truly loved each other enough for him to go through with it. Yes, they created their own secret language together but that was when both were short sited. Once she became blind, he tried to make it work but they just kept falling more and more apart. She even said that he hadn’t visited her or brought any rabbits for her in a few days. She didn’t truly love him either. When she first was blinded, she said “why couldn’t you blind him instead?” That’s not something I’d say about the person that I love more than anything, just saying. He’s also very cold blooded and has very few if any emotions. He wasn’t as cold blooded as the crazy bitch that he lied to be with, but he was close to that in my personal opinion. The only time throughout the entire movie that he showed emotion was when he knew that she killed his dog (which is actually his brother). Besides that moment he showed no emotion at all whatsoever, no smiles, no laughs, no anger, no compassion not even when the short sighted girl told him that she was blind. It seemed to me like he was trying to figure out how to act in that scenario. Another thing, the movie decided not to give a name to the girl that was waiting for David to blind himself, in the credits she’s “the short sighted girl”. I think the reason why is that the creators of the movie are implying that she isn’t as important to him as some of us have lead on to believe. Finally, he’s a liar and has been from the very beginning. To me I think this is more of a defining characteristic of his than his short sightedness. Someone that is called “short sighted” is usually a way to say that someone hadn’t thought things through before taking action but David was very good at thinking things throughout the movie. He was very advanced at coming up with plans to better his situation whether it was getting the maid to trick the crazy bitch so that he could shoot her or come up with a secret language to communicate with the short sighted girl, or even something as simple as knowing how to manipulate the leaders parents when they were in town. This is another defining characteristic of his but it usually comes as a result of him telling a lie so I think they are mutually connected. She on the other hand was not good at thinking things through and I think was symbolic of how the end went with her thinking that he’d actually go through with what she wouldn’t do herself (like I said earlier, she mentioned that she wishes it was him that got blind instead of her). Anyway, back to David’s lies. He was caught in several lies throughout the movie, even small unnecessary lies such as lying about when the short sighted girl was blind, David said that what she was holding in her hand was a kiwi when in fact it was actually a tennis ball. At that point he didn’t care much to try to help her, he just wanted the sexual relationship that they had before and when she refused to let him even kiss her, he got upset and left and didn’t come back to see her for several days. This leads me to believe that he once again decided to lie, what he does best, by not going through with what he said that he would at the end which was blinding himself. He didn’t see her for days and then he all of a sudden decides that he’s gonna stab his eyes out for her? I’m not buying it.. The movie title and ocean sounds in the credits lead me to believe that this is the direction that they were going as well but most people hate bad endings like that so instead they made it a psychological ending to make you actually think about what they did and also think about what we as the viewer would do if we were in that situation. I like how they ended it to be honest, it gets us to think more in depth about all of the possible scenarios and why they would happen.
You’re basing all of this on love… versus survival. You’re right that there are many incongruous moments, both the characters are hot and cold towards each other (most everyone in the film is cold)… I’d argue that David and the Short Sighted Girl’s “love” is actually lust (animalistic love), and their “devotion” to each other has more to do with survival (even their sign language was born from necessity to speak privately). Even when she lies to him — after she was blinded, she pretends not to be — it isn’t because she is afraid he won’t love her (as I first thought when watching the scene) but because she’s afraid of being rejected and alone… she needs him to help her survive. To feed her and protect her.
Your theory that he’s lying about wanting to blind himself falls apart in Firth’s performance in the last scene. Why struggle — in private — with something you never intended to do, filling your mouth with paper towels so you don’t scream? He has every intention of making the sacrifice… not for love, but for his own survival in the city (where else can he go? Not back to the hotel, not back to the Loners).
The question I think the movie (and its ending) asks us to examine is: what’s the difference between love and survival anyway? After our animal instincts attract us to someone sexually, and lust turns to “love”… is that not just the desire to feel safe with someone? I’m talking on the most base level, once you take away all the other complicating emotions… Not dissimilar to how all nuanced emotion has been stripped from the characters…
Just watched the film for the first time and finding this site years later, but wanted to chime in 🙂
This is a great breakdown, but in this case I think the ending makes it clear that he went through with it by the inclusion of the sudden, heavy-handed cut to black on that last scene. It’s not as if the credits simply started to roll; the film was very explicit about it… so even if we don’t see the result, we still know what happened.
Hi,
Firstly, I read all the comments too, and I think both ending are possible and have enough good arguments. And to be honest keeping both possibility teach us a lot of more. One point though, when David is asked to answer honestly by his friend, about which is worse; hitting nose time to time, being animal and dying in woods, he replied being an animal is worse. So I don’t think he would choose being animal. I think ending see sound is indication of he being a “lobster” metaphorically – mating for life, and both lovers ending up in the see-life together.
Also divergence btw 1984 and The Lobster is clear: in The Lobster, David’s path starting from his run away till end is not drawn by someone else but him. So till end it is him deciding – he is not forces or manipulated, so I don’t think it would meant similar ending as 1984, as in 1984 lead character was forced to betray. Actually I don’t see many similarities btw two works, except both being dystopia and rebel lovers. I especially appreciate David’s efforts after his lover is blinded.
As final note: Challenging yourself with ending that does not fit into your perspective is more enlightining in any case, I think. So enjoy both ending.
Best
He clearly did not blind himself and became a lobster. If you wait till the end of the credits you just hear the sound of the ocean….
I found that the glasses at the table give indication to what happened in the end. When Rachael is waiting for David to come back, the waiter comes and only fills Rachel’s glass before leaving. David was feeling pessimistic, so his glass remains half-empty; she was optimistic, her glass gets refilled. If we stay with the idea that it is Rachel giving the narration, we can assume she is relaying the events to her next potential partner. The glasses represent their outlooks going into the last scene, and tell us David did not feel comfortable abandoning his sight for this woman he was unsure of; only a shortsighted fool would sacrifice his sight to see amongst the blind.
I disagree about the title. Lobsters mate for life. I think the name can be interpreted that he found his life partner, which is why he goes to sacrifice his eyes. I don’t think the name just means that he inevitably becomes a lobster. Also, why didn’t he just go stare at the sun till he went blind? Seems a lot less violent and pretty effective toward their end goal.
That’s a terrific counter-point that I actually don’t have any counter-counter to. I may add that as an addendum, crediting you, of course.
I think it’s more of a metaphor, in the whole movie we see people making decisions more out of fear and self preservation than love. Making a firm decision out of love requires a certain amount of resolution and knowing sacrifice. It requires a level of bravery. There is not much in this world more real, in ways of going against our own preservationist impulses, than a knife to your seeing organs- there is no hiding from it or disguising, or playing it down.
Lobsters do not mate for life
Lobsters don’t mate for life
There’s also a literalization of the phrase “love is blind.”
In not showing the ending to the audience, the film in effect blinds us, because we don’t get to “see” what happens. So that’s another confirmation that the film is trying to get us to consider what WE would do.
We have been seeing things both from David’s perspective (being the lead character) as well as Rachel’s (as narrator) up to this point, seeing and hearing. But, as Rachel indicates before David goes off to attempt the gouging, one gains in other senses when a single sense is lost. I think that the implication is that David DOES gouge his eyes, because the screen goes black while centered on Rachel’s image. He/we can no longer see her. In blinding himself, he both gains and loses her. Similarly, we lose a concrete ending, but potentially our “eyes are opened” to other senses, through our speculation and imagination and what ifs.
Really love that. Especially the point about hearing Rachel as narrator. If David does blind himself, his main interaction with Rachel would be via speech. There’s something really nice then about the last visual being her and then the main voice of the movie being her.
One of the best ending explainers I have read. Thank you and love from India.
What about the narration? The narrator is Rachel, but who is she telling his (and their) story to? Was it just her journal, which they found by the river? Or is she actually recounting his life in the last few months to someone else?
If he blinded himself and returned to her, could she be explaining to the hotel management why he all did that (including telling them that he never told her what animal he turned the woman with short hair into — I like to imagine he turned her into something cute and cuddly without teeth sharp enough to hurt anyone… such as tiny a lap dog who would be constantly reprimanded or rejected for acting out her true nature).
If he didn’t blind himself and left her alone, why would she need to tell anyone all of the minutiae that apparently he shared with her? Maybe she had to tell the story of her lost love (perhaps in another journal) to try to understand why he did what he did in leaving her?
One last note: putting 2 blind people together seems ill advised in any number of ways. Not that blind people shouldn’t be in relationships with each other (of course they should and do), but in the context of the film’s world in which they stress the benefits of having a partner. Surely it would make a blind person’s life easier to a degree to have a sighted partner, in the same way she (as narrator) describes not having someone to put ointment of the painful parts of one’s back one can’t reach.
Oh, and for a little while at the end, I thought he was going to become her seeing eye dog… I guess I’m just a romantic.
The narration/VO stops completely when her journal is found by the leader and doesn’t return. Seems like a very deliberate choice and explanation for the device. So I wouldn’t buy into your first theories that it’s her explaining to someone else.
What if she got lasik and this is another test shown throughout the film of his commitment to joining a relationship.
I’d just like to point something out because I have not seen anyone mention this, but at the end while Rachel is waiting, it looks like she can see. She knows when the waiter fills her glass and her eyes follow him as he walks away. She also gazes out the window as if she was looking at her surroundings. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell David that she could she if this was in fact true but it sure seems like a plausibility.
In the ending she does all of that because her senses are heightened. She can hear the waiter come up, she can look where she assumes where he is pouring her glass, she can hear the construction outside (I would). According to her, being blind is different but you get used to it, we just see her used to it.
I think that the title itself is a way to mislead the conclusion because David can become a lobster in the very literal way, because he can’t hurt his eyes and then are punished by the government, or he does blind himself and become a lobster metaphorical way, what means he become a live longer partner to his girlfriend, like are said the lobster often do in the nature. The title itself mislead us and make the doubt of the end more stronger. We could argue that the narrative about the movie suggests that the literal interpretation is the correct, because in many moments we see that this dystopic world is a very literal one, like the way they talk and are asked to choose about sexuality, without middle terms. But the metaphorical interpretation gets its support of the fact that the two characters are rebels, and are trying to get out of the literal and straight rules of their society, and that could suggest that the metaphorical interpretation is the one that match the couple and their behavior. In this case them become a happy live long couple, like a lobster couple does in the nature.
In any case, the doubt stays with the viewers because, seems to me, both are very good arguments.
Sorry for the bad English, I am a self-taught learner without many resources to study the language.
The contrasts between the literal sense of this dystopian world and its metaphorical/philosophical interpretations is amazing !!!!! Its Great that you pointed that out??
I wonder can you just explain what Edinho writes up there? I am really wondering what he did tell there but I didn’t catch it.
But if David blinded himself, and the short-sighted woman encouraged it, wouldn’t that mean that they stopped being “rebels”, meaning that they chose to reintegrate in this dystopian society where a defining shared characteristic is essential for a couple to exist. And so, with the characters choosing to be the “same” as everyone else, wouldn’t it suggest that the literal interpretation is the correct one?
After a quick search in Google I realized that lobsters are blind, or kind of, which also leads to the hypothesis that David became a human lobster
Oooo that’s a really great point!
Insightful response and one that I feel satisfied by embracing.
This is a very nice article, thank you!
My overwelming optimistic heart really wanted the guy to come back to that table… Unfortunatelly you are probably right that the title is self explainatory of the ending…
I wanted him to come back too :(. Thanks for the feedback Athanasia 🙂
Well, they do say that ‘love is blind’ after all.
Haha, good point
Oh I didn’t thought of that ! That’s a good point !
If it’s true love he blinded himself.
I believe he did it. When John slammed his face on the desk to cause the nose bleed , he asked David what would be worse. Become an animal? Or fake a nose bleed? David answered to become an animal. So I take from it that David went through with it. Also the fact that David is very matter of fact in his actions. He would not have even considered the plan of escaping in the first place unless he had already made up his mind to go all the way.
Good catch. Im glad someone mentioned this because I remembered that scene as I was reading through the article. Also, when David was speaking (not signing) in code to Rachel, she asked if he was sure he was prepared to do that. He said of course he was sure and he wouldn’t have proposed it otherwise. You can tell she was kind of taken aback by it too, which leads me to believe he was proposing blinding himself.
It’s interesting that David comes close to threatening the eyes of another character, but backs down (once he has decided the man is not shortsighted).
But seriously nothing we say matters its totally a personal choice how to end it cause i think that’s what the writer wanted. I just mean we can’t draw any logical conclusion on this its simply upto us to decide what we want.
I know I’m late to this party but I had an opinion about your comment… he did say it was better to “fake a nosebleed” than to become an animal. So who’s to say that he doesn’t go through with it but tells her that he did? Plays out his life with her and others they encounter believing he is blind as well. Or only blinds himself in one eye. Then they’re technically both blind in one eye. She just happens to also be blind in the other. It’s far fetched and not the most common interpretation but that’s the great thing about this movie, isn’t it?
Yeah! I think that “fake a nosebleed” line is a great basis for that theory!
I’m just saying that if he does gouge his eyes out, he’s not coming back to the table; we might hear a horrifying scream, but he’s not sitting back down to dinner… just sayin’. 🙂
he put paper on his mouth in case he wanted to scream he wouldnt be able to