Sloppy Critic

The Lighthouse, presented as a black and white vignette of several malcontent filled scenes between the harrowed old endemic lighthouse keeper and a young steward new to the location. The film has a jarbled, often scathing tone about its dialogue, a welcome grating narration to the usual seamless fabric necessitated through the industry. The characters required careful attention to understand their diction and dialect, the syntax misplaced and filled with misnomers. While the audience needs to heed their own attention towards the two, the lighthouse keeper and his new steward often misplace their intentions throughout their biting conversations, which sets an interesting tone as the characters react and understand each other’s tone and meaning without worry. They are in two extremes that fold into one another in a collective mishmash of misunderstanding. Intentions are misled and tempers build in a realistic, meandering pace as the characters test each other’s waters and find that the other’s pool is not exactly to their liking, one warmer the other cold, which eventually comes together in a hurricane of a clash. Incredible.  

            The Lobster is the greatest romantic comedy I have ever seen. Now it’s not a romantic comedy in the same sense that Mama Mia or Crazy Rich Asians would be, with a lighthearted tune about finding love in a hopeless place, showered in sprays of springtime flowers and a dash of the coastal breeze. The Lobster is anything but that. Whereas traditional romantic comedies feature over-the-top emotional outburst, good and bad, The Lobster is deadpan and stiff. Romantic comedies’ set design encompasses bright colors to match the bright character dispositions. The Lobster’s color pallet is nonexistent and dull, best described as “corporate office chic.” Romantic comedies use love and affection, usually signified by the finale kiss between the two protagonists to sell the point. The Lobster uses violence – maiming, murder, mutilation, to create the same desired bond. But the Lobster addresses the same underlying tension inherent to romantic movies – what and how much is each person willing to give up for their significant other?

            In the Lobster, a relationship is not defined by love, that beautiful amalgam that could launch a thousand ships with a simple, tender embrace. Instead, it is based off a singular connection, a requirement for the masses, a quite legal one as we come to find out later on. But first, we are introduced to the hotel and its sacrosanct rule accepted by all potential guests – find a partner by the end of your stay or be turned into an animal of your choosing. It becomes apparent why all of the guests need an extra incentive to find love, they’re all hopeless. They speak with robotic precision in single-answer affirmatives, never expounding on their beliefs or sharing a moment of emotional vulnerability. That’s not to say that conversations never flow throughout the halls, they do, but in the same sense a fart wafts through a drafty hall. So how do they go about finding love without knowing how to communicate? Through superficial, physical communities. This is what people would normally refer to as “sexual attraction,” but within the Lobster’s universe, it’s about the quirks, as John, a man with a limp, expresses when he fancies a girl with a similar limp but she’s whisked away before his eyes.   

            John, humbled by this theoretical heartbreak, understood this banal truth and took matters into his own hands. At the communal pool, he sees a woman with a chronic nosebleed condition and starts chattering her up in the few seconds she takes while swimming her laps. Nothing about the conversation would indicate any sort of flirting or playful banter typically associated with chatting someone up. It’s the personification of attempting to fit a king-sized mattress onto a twin frame, but John has his mind set. As soon as she pushes off and takes her lap, John repeatedly slams his face into the pool deck, the dull, wet sounds of flesh on concrete echoing through the pool hall. Upon her return she faces John once again, only he has a steady stream of blood pouring from a single nostril, imitating her own condition. He explains that he also has a particular nose bleed syndrome and she visibly swoons, a rare show of emotion in the hotel love bubble.  

            John, while his methods unorthodox and his actions fairly scummy, quite represents the ultimate path towards a healthy, functioning relationship that all young lovebirds alike dream about. He sacrificed a bit of himself to be more like his partner. That’s eventually what’s going to happen at some point of any good relationship, it just happens, there’s no stopping it. Think about it, how many of you have dated a guy or girl and suddenly you were wearing clothes that fit their style more than yours did, or maybe you listen to that has since become your favorite of all time and you were introduced to it by the one you truly love. You care and nurture them and they care and nurture you. You’re their biggest fan, and of course you want to be more like your idol. It’s disgusting, and one of the best things in the world. You probably wouldn’t break your nose unprovoked, but for the sake of love and ensuring the stability of the relationship, I’m willing to bet a couple people would force violence on themselves.

            David, John’s friend, goes a different route, thinking this method as completely insane, not because of the method per se but more in the unforgivable act that he falsified a condition to create a bond based off false pretenses. He believes in his own method, to find love through commonality, the natural way. He eventually does, or at least he thinks he does, when he runs into a woman he conversed with earlier, both remarking about the horrible inconvenience that came from a suicide survivor, lying on the ground screaming in incredible pain following her descent from her third story window. They believed that since they had this in common, they would be a right fit together, their hollow, callous disposition towards human suffering bringing them together. Only they came to the same conclusion with different paths. He has a more empty, cynical view of humanity so he chooses not to engage, thinking they are not worth the time, whereas she was more of the ilk to want all other humans dead for the various injustices they are capable, as shown when she killed his dog after a white lie. What might seem like an obvious sign of like-mindedness proved to be a folly, because people with different philosophies in life could eventually come to agree with one another, as a Muslim, Jewish, and Christian would equally agree that murder is wrong, in most cases at least. Would David emulate John’s disposition and adopt the standout characteristic of their significant other, or would he separate from the relationship? He separated, literally running into the night.

            David, was unwilling to change a part of him to inherit that of his lover. Albeit this is in a more exaggerated scenario, but it does exemplify the harsh questions required to maintain a healthy partnership. Usually it’s more along the lines of dedicating the same amount of time to a relationship, expressing gratitude at the appropriate moments, or agreeing on the virtues of marriage, extracurricular activities and all. A more flexible type of person, such as John, would gladly take the self-imprisonment and flexibility for the sake of love, but David stood firm for his core belief, and so his story continues. David’s actions are indicative of someone who is unwilling to settle for something less than what he is comfortable with, the same crux that Rachel McAdams faced in the Notebook, leaving her banker boyfriend/husband in the wind when Ryan Gosling comes stumbling in with his letters. She realized she was not genuinely fulfilled by the scope of the relationship and decided to act. Socially unacceptable in her family’s eyes, but it is what she felt was right for her. David just needed to find his Ryan Gosling.

            The cliched idiom says “Love is blind,” but would you blind yourself to see if that statement rings true? What would you do for love?

Hae-Mi is a brilliant representation of the oft-forgotten femme fatale. In Burning, she finds herself in the middle of a love triangle in her search for stability, looking to her past in Jong-Su and aspirational needs with Ben, but neither could fulfill her true, inner desire, a sense of self.

            There is a single scene that encapsulates the thematic element of Burning (2018), and it seems like a throwaway, artsy-fartsy moment where Hae-Mi dances topless with graceful intentionality in the dusk’s fading light, to smooth, coffee bar style jazz. We are connecting with this character from whom we have only seen a miniscule fraction of, as a foil no less, as a love interest for the two male characters. Alone in this moment, she is not the object of sexual desire, as she was earlier in the film when she was entangled with the main character. The same amount of nudity, but from her perspective her body is not used to seduce anyone else, in isolation she uses her form as an intimate expression of self, the fundamental core of any artistic endeavor. She thrives in her own space, but once she snaps too and finds herself under the visage of the two male characters, who have silently watched her from across the lawn, she breaks down in tears as the music fades out. But the tears are not from sadness, rather they are the result of a cathartic epiphany, a realization that she has found her true standing in life that is wholly separate from the attention of a sexual partner, neither Ben nor Jong-Su.

            Jong-Su, sees Hae-Mi as his and his only, confessing to Ben moments before Hae-Mi’s performance that he was in love with her, exclaiming it in defiance as if Ben would suddenly relinquish all interest because Jong-Su wanted it more. But up until this point he has only seen her through a lustful gaze, nothing more, despite what he might claim. They had a single awkward hookup before Hae-Mi went on her trip to Africa, and for the days he was tasked to come in and cat sit for her while she was away, he would masturbate or imagine her masturbating him after falling asleep masturbating on her bed. With how socially inept he proved to be leading up to the awkward hookup where Hae-Mi invited him to hang out during her break, grab a drink after work, kissed him, helped him strip off his clothes, and put the condom on. He was a mess, and this all indicates that she was his first, hence the repeated masturbation and obsessive fascination and attraction. He believed it to be a magical story meant to be from the moment they reconnected after being childhood neighbors.

            But consider this interaction from Hae-Mi’s perspective, which becomes all but clear in the first scene when Jong-Su runs into her on the job. Hae-Mi’s first words are asking if she got prettier from the plastic surgery she got, as she playfully remarks that Jong-Su used to call her ugly all the time when they were kids. Her playing initiator to her former bully is a statement piece for herself, to hopefully close the loop on her incessant, haunting childhood insecurity that followed her into adulthood. She’s a practiced flirt, throwing out all the signs in the world that she wants to hook up with Jong-Su, but none of them lands until she finally goes in for the kiss to really send it home. And strangely enough, she asked a relative stranger into her home and take care of her cat, without any worries that he would rob her or harm her cat. She has no one else she could trust, susceptible to someone who understands her plight and shares some modicum of empathy.

            In comes Ben, charismatic, well-spoken, rich, very well put together in the most casual sense, plus he knows where all the coolest, well-lit coffee shops there are in Seoul, the opposite of Jong-Su in every sense. He and Hae-Mi met during her trip in Africa and she seems to be completely smitten, and it’s not hard to see why when we get a view of Ben talking on the phone in the backseat of Jong-Su’s car, he’s attentive and playful, at least from his side of the conversation, and we wait with bated breath to hear who he’s talking to; a girlfriend? Wife? Side piece? No, he’s talking to his mom. He just has that natural charisma. It’s no surprise that he attracts beautiful women and a bevy of friends, he’s a delight to be around. But the crux is, he knows exactly what he’s doing, confessing to Jong-Su that he made a hobby of burning abandoned greenhouses every month or so. He cycles through women at a constant rate, dating the same type of women and giving them a sense of purpose, a flash in the pan, reigniting a burning passion within them, but he always moves on to the next flame, as evidenced later on in the film when Ben starts dating another attractive woman, similar to Hae-Mi in disposition, following her disappearance. He was never after love, but Hae-Mi was, seeking that concrete foundation to settle her insecure mind.

            Hae-Mi searched for security in others, but when she found two sides of the same coin in Jong-Su and Ben who only lusted after her for her physical appearance, something that she had been self-conscious of throughout her life. Despite accomplishing what she thought would ease her insecurities, attracting men with relative ease, she felt the same emptiness within her subconscious. By freeing herself from the clutches of the male gaze, performing in the only scene where she is not sharing the frame with another character, an epiphany strikes her over the head. She’s her own person and doesn’t need to subjugate herself to the clutches of others’ perspectives, wants, and needs. She’s free.

Harold and Kumar is the most important movie for Asian-Americans in the history of American pop culture. Miss me with movies like “Memoirs of a Geisha” where everything’s depressing and the characters were Asian because shit it was set in Asia, what else were they going to be. But Harold and fucking Kumar set the stage to normalize Asian-Americans as something more than just a vague bundle of stereotypes that people can joke about because of the whole “model minority” thing. This stoner comedy took those stereotypes and rolled with them, but in phenomenal fashion, intertwining them in between character depictions that showed heart and dimensions outside of the typical norms of those who might not be familiar with Asian people.

Harold is an accountant. Kumar is applying to medical school. To insiders and outsiders alike, you can go ahead and nod “yeah that seems about right.” The character introductions are damn fun. Kumar’s sitting in a haughty office, full of polished mahogany with the dean interviewing him as a potential medical student. Cut to Kumar and he’s slouched over, wearing cargo pants, a t-shirt and a hoodie. He could not give less of a shit, in direct defiance to the ethnic stereotypes that Indian men crave to be doctors. Those who do have to be strait-laced, polite and boring. Kumar is smart, since he even got to the stage of getting an interview with a medical school dean, but him actively tanking the interview is him not conforming to the constructed path that his family made for him.

Harold is what most Americans think of Asians, especially Koreans: quiet, clean, and pushovers. Cleaning his area before he leaves work, giving up a prime parking spot without putting up a fuss, and parallel parking until he gets it just right, he validates just about every thought white people have on East Asians. That feeling can’t be synthesized more than the two exaggerated assholes who push their work on Harold so they can party, even quipping that he would probably love to do it since Asians love math.

But my god after these two intro scenes, Harold and Kumar meet back at their apartment, get high and all they can think about are White Castle sliders. For the remainder of the movie, their ethnic backgrounds are never used as a throwaway joke, instead they’re leveraged in ways to continue the story and keeps in-line with the character’s internal logic.

Harold and Kumar run out of weed, so what do they do? They go to the hospital where his brother and father work and it’s apparent why he has this desire to fight going into the family lineage. He doesn’t want to be lame like his brother even though he loves and respects his dad. His brother’s a tightwad, and this isn’t about Kumar fighting his Indian heritage, it’s about not being a hodgepodge who walks a straight line. Everyone can relate.

Throughout the film, Asian stereotypes are never really used to put the main characters down as the butt of the joke, but they instead re-interpret the stereotype to break the mold and insert their own humor outside of the predisposed notions of race.

When Harold and Kumar goes to a hospital to try to re-up on their weed supply, Kumar is met in the lobby by his brother and father, dressed in scrubs and a white lab coat respectively while Kumar is in a t-shirt and hoodie. He lies through his teeth and performs a misdirection to not only his family but the audience by pretending to come to his senses and take his medical career path in a more serious direction, just to get close and nab his brother’s ID card. Later, when Harold and Kumar are dressed in masks and scrubs, Kumar is pulled into an operating room in a hurry as doctors and nurses mistake him for his brother. A man’s been shot and Kumar moves quickly without a moment of hesitation, spewing off orders in confident fashion and works in a steady flurry to extract the numerous bullet wounds. He can be a doctor, he has the skills, but it took a very unorthodox method of practicing medicine that got him to push himself as a future board-certified doctor.

As the night moves along, Kumar is the one who makes a lot of the choices and steers them all in the wrong direction, causing more and more misfortunes along their supposedly simple path to get a couple of fast-food sliders. At the end of the movie, Harold takes charge and steals a paraglider from the same douche who stole his parking space in the beginning of the movie. He takes advantage of a situation and implores his will to get what he wants at the end, without fear.

And when they finally, finally get their burgers at the end of the movie and lay back in satisfaction of their gluttony, Harold’s bosses walk in, drunk and living in excess. Harold walks right up to them, demands they cut the shit, and speaks to them with authority, even threatening them with blackmail if they don’t do the work they pushed on him. He doesn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about him, and now he’s a free man, living independent of the situation thrust upon him in the beginning of the movie.

Harold and Kumar break open the conventions and introduce an underrepresented group of people to break away from the stereotypes and enter into a real realm of personality. They show that stereotypes are explicitly general and people are more than welcome to come to realizations of their identity without their ethnicity painting them in a disadvantaged corner. Thanks Harold and Kumar.