Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster‘s wan love-dystopia could easily be put on silent and played alongside Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool, and everything would seem in its right place. And it turns out that now the director’s mercilessly melancholy humor and penchant for displaying humanity at its most automated and dulled-by-society has actually been applied to A Moon Shaped Pool — with Radiohead posting a short clip set to “Identikit” by the Greek director, on Instagram.
Radiohead have been releasing a series of vignettes inspired by songs from their ninth album; before Lanthimos’ video, The Double/Submarine writer/director Richard Ayoade made one for “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief.” Weirdcore, director/cinematographer Michał Marczak, comedian/writer Adam Buxton, Oscar Hudson, and artist Tarik Barri have also contributed their own clips.
The Lanthimos vignette features Holy Motors star Denis Lavant eating an invisible sandwich at a diner, and looking existentially vacated while doing it. Lavant proved his physical acting prowess in his many over-the-top roles in Motors, and those skills certainly carry to this tale of an ethereal hoagie (or, who knows, an evanescent panino?), whose absence is so specific you can almost feel the squish of the bread, the crunch of the lettuce and the splatter of the mayo that never were. (Unless Lavant/Lanthimos used a real sandwich which was then edited out in post, in which case, eff THAT.)
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