Movie Review : The Lighthouse (2019)
Robert Eggers didn’t need a global pandemic to draw interest for his new movie The Lighthouse. Strong off the success of his now cult endeavour The VVitch, he could’ve filmed two hours of Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe struggling with unspeakable boredom and it would’ve turned heads anyway. It’s not exactly what The Lighthouse is about, but it’s close enough. Eggers’ sophomore effort is one of these movies where nothing happens, but everything happens. It would normally be of interest to a very particular crowd, but it might earn new fans due to confinement.
The Lighthouse is the story of two men: Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson), who are contracted to man a lighthouse on an island for a four weeks period. They’re not particularly fond of each other and a weird tension settles between them. Wake is hoarding the easier and more glamorous tasks for himself, sending his younger colleague to do the grunt work. Wake and Winslow endure each other until it’s time to get off the island, except a storm hits on the day of their departure. Drunk, exhausted and struggling with isolation, they start losing their mind.
Everyone I know loved The Lighthouse. It’s not surprising because a) the trailer is wholeheartedly honest about being a black and white period people featuring two man going insane in a lighthouse and b) that type of movie is only watched by people likely to enjoy it. It isn’t meant for unsuspecting mainstream audience. There is literally zero chance that someone who pays money to attend Fast & Furious screenings will love it. The Lighthouse is not meant to be a straightforward emotional experience. It’s meant to make you feel uncomfortable and worldwide confinement helps greatly with that.
See, The Lighthouse is a movie about isolation on the surface, but it isn’t really about isolation. It’s one of these coldly intellectual and analytical movies where the characters are vessels for different ideas. The most important being various myths, ranging from Oedipus to Prometheus by the way of sailor mythology (sirens and whatnot). That’s one thing about The Lighthouse that slightly bugged me: it borrows ideas and channels them through its characters, but never commits to one in particular. Thomas & Ephraim are whatever Robert Eggers felt like saying at the time.
Not that it’s dumb or frustrating, but authorial intent is more important than anything in this movie. It feels controlled and maybe slightly contrived. There’s a lot to like about it. I love that Ephraim’s relationship to Wake makes his character emerge better than conventional exposition ever could. Grateful and obedient early, being victimized by Wake reveals his incapacity to deal straightforwardly with problems and his devouring need for a father figure. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe work expertly off each other to drag Ephraim’s real nature out in the open. It’s clever writing, but great acting.
The Lighthouse does make a great point about isolation, though: the world is unabashedly unchanging. Change and rhythm are the life-blood of sanity. The film illustrates that idea quite cleverly through the constant blowing of the foghorn. Wake and Winslow’s world is reduced to a one note song and they start hallucinating and seeing signs in the same, unchanging world out of pure desperation for their life to have a purpose. Stuck on an island, doing physically daunting tasks, that purpose is too clear for Ephraim be able to cope with. Maybe The Lighthouse is about isolation a little bit.
I liked The Lighthouse a little less than people around me, I suppose. But I did enjoy it. Any film that thinks outside conventional screenwriting and storytelling frames is interesting to film nerds like me. It was just a little too academic for me to go from “like” to “love” if you’ll allow me the Facebook react metaphor. Bottom line: there’s two kind of A24 enthusiasts in the world. Those who like Robert Eggers and those who like Ari Aster better and I’m the latter. It’s like the Beatles vs Rolling Stones or Metallica vs Megadeath debate. It’s not a competition. It’s a question of personality.
7.6/10
