Movie Review: The Lighthouse

The Lighthouse **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Robert Eggers.

Written by: Robert Eggers & Max Eggers.

Starring: Robert Pattison (Ephraim Winslow), Willem Dafoe (Thomas Wake), Valeria Karaman (Mermaid).

 

The Lighthouse is about two men stationed at an isolated lighthouse in the 1890s for weeks on end, who rub each other the wrong way from the start, and then slow (and then not so slowly) start to drive each other insane. Robert Eggers follow-up to his terrific debut, The Witch, is a film that wants to place you right there on this rock with these two men, and drive you just as mad as they go. And remarkably, it succeeds. The film is a stylistic triumph – shot in black and white, on a very narrow aspect ratio, using film stock and lens designed decades ago, the film resembles one of those Guy Maddin films which shoots out in all directions, while trying to seem like some lost relic for time gone by – except Eggers is more tightly focused than Maddin as ever been. It’s two men, and some birds, on this rock – and there is no getting out of it with your sanity intact.

 

Ephraim (Robert Pattinson), is the younger of the two men – already having a number of different careers in his past, who decides to take this on as well – for mysterious reasons. Thomas (Willem Dafoe) was a sea captain, before an injury hobbled him, and he has now been keeper of this lighthouse for years, and dammit, that’s the way it’s going to stay. He senses something up with the new young man – he calls him nothing but lad for the first half of the movie – and he pokes and prods him. It seems like the division of labor on the island is that Thomas runs the lighthouse itself, and Ephraim does pretty much everything else. Ephraim better not even think of going into the top part of the lighthouse itself – that is Thomas’ domain exclusively.

 

The best decision that Eggers made when making The Lighthouse is in the casting of Pattinson and Dafoe – two of the most risk taking actors working right now, and two who have the right kind of faces that they don’t look out of place with the old school visuals on display from beginning to end. Pattison has used his clout from the Twilight series (where, admittedly, I didn’t think much of him) to work with some of the great directors, and great up-and-coming directors there are – from David Cronenberg to David Michod to the Safdie brothers to Claire Denis to James Gray and now Robert Eggers. It’s a great performance from him here – and a difficult one. He starts out as the audience surrogate – he knows only marginally more about lighthouse keeping then we do – and he has to learn all about the chores, the isolation, those damn birds, etc. as the movie progresses. But he’s also a man with a secret – this doesn’t seem like the type of job a sane man would take – and bit by bit – we get some reasons why he took it. From his part, I think I’ve seen Dafoe give better performances than he does here, but I’m not sure I’ve seen him (or anyone) have more fun than he has here as Thomas. Again, there is a progression here – he starts off rude and crude – there are a lot of farting noises in the film, and they are all coming from him. He is crass and rude, and pokes and prods Ephraim as well. But there is something perhaps a little deeper, a little darker, a little more cunning about him then you expect. His voice is almost a caricature of a pirate – it could be used for the Sea Captain on The Simpsons – but he uses it to great effect. You see very easily how he could drive someone crazy.

 

As with The Witch, Eggers is tapping into some North Eastern American mythology here, alongside some Greek myths, and H.P. Lovecraft for good measure. It is all perhaps a little neat – perhaps a side effect of it being reversed engineered by Eggers and his co-writer brother, who had figured out what they wanted to tap into, and then came up with a third act to fit it. And yet, the film goes to some genuinely deep, darker places – including a final image that will haunt you forever (and judging from what I’ve seen on Twitter, mine was not the audience that had someone scream out “What the fuck was that?” at the end.

 

As with The Witch as well, Eggers shows himself to be a brilliant, daring stylist. Each level of production has been carefully thought out to provide the best period detail imaginable, or to better give you nightmares. The visuals are striking – of course – but the sound design is truly terrifying. And Black Phillip from The Witch has found an ideal analogue here in the scariest seagull in cinema history.

 

In short, The Lighthouse is a daring film from one of the most daring young directors working today. Eggers doesn’t do half measures – he goes for broke. And he does that brilliantly here. I’m not sure The Lighthouse will quite haunt your nightmares as long as The Witch did – but it’s pretty close – and another sign that Eggers is a great filmmaker at the beginning of his career.