'The Lobster' defies definition, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing

Every once and a while I see a film I can't quite figure out that defies explanation. The Lobster is one of those films.

It's an uneasy mix of some truly unsettling scenes, mixed with some uncomfortably funny ones.

 A lot of critics are lavishing it with praise and while I do applaud its originality, I'm not sure I'm totally on board with it.

It reminds me to some degree of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, another low key black comedy with some brilliant ideas that went off the rails for me.

I think I could enjoy this movie more after repeat viewings -- I can't imagine it will find much of a mainstream audience but I do think it could become a midnight movie staple.

The first half is fantastic. Taking place in some kind of alternative universe, an against-type Colin Farrell plays a socially awkward schlub who checks into (or is forced to enter? it's never clear) a creepy hotel where you have to meet and marry someone or risk turning into an animal (albeit of your choice) after just 45 days.

Comparisons to Kubrick are apt -- from the cold, but beautifully-composed shots to the intially detached narrator who appears to be ironically commenting on the action. Characters almost all speak in a robotic, deadpan way -- which may grow grating for some viewers -- but it at least reflects a consistency of vision.

Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in The Lobster

At about the midway point though the movie starts to feel a little rudderless (and overlong). It never becomes boring but I feel like I lost the thread of what this film was trying to say. If its goal was to keep viewers off-kilter, it achieved that but its jarring bursts of violence and at times horror-like score felt, on occasion, like weirdness for the sake of weirdness.

Farrell deserves some credit for stretching, and he has some very impressive comedic scenes -- but I also couldn't help but feel like he was an odd choice. The supporting cast fares much better for me on first viewing, especially John C. Reilly -- who is much more adept at the timing this kind of film requires -- and Olivia Colman, who will be familiar to fans of the great British sitcom Peep Show, gives a scene-stealing performance in what I would describe as the "Tilda Swinton role."

It's such a hard thing for me to gauge, that line between ambition and self-indulgence. I am always more receptive to a movie that swings for the fences and misses than a movie that relies on tired tropes and panders to its audience. And The Lobster definitely doesn't do anything like the latter.

I was expecting a movie on the same wavelength as Her, and this movie manages to be far less accessible and charming than that movie was. The tone is both monotonous and caustic. There are times when it felt like I was watching an inside joke that I wasn't in on. And yet I couldn't help but discuss the film after it ended (speaking of which, perhaps the one thing that is predictable about the movie is that it ends in a Sopranos-like offbeat note).

This film creates a whole world of its own that probably raises more questions than answers -- it would make for an intriguing TV series or a novel. As a film, I feel like it can't be easily dismissed, but it also isn't easily digested.