The Lighthouse

UK Release Date. 31 January 2020
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 49 mins
Director. Robert Eggers
Cast. Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karaman, Robert Pattinson.
Rating. 55%

Review.

“Tell me, what’s a timberman want with being a wicky?”

A remote island off the coast of New England in the 1890s and two lighthouse keepers - the veteran Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and the younger Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) - arrive to man the lighthouse for a four-week shift. A savage storm strands them on the island beyond their scheduled departure, and when relief doesn’t arrive, their grip on reality starts to slip, blurring the line between reality and delusion, finally culminating in an explosive climax.

A folk tale deeply rooted in tradition, ultimately the film’s greatest appeal might be how it manages to sustain ambiguity surrounding what’s actually happening. Are there supernatural forces, possibly Lovecraftian horrors at work? Is one character skilfully manipulating the other? Or are both men simply descending into isolation-induced madness? All interpretations seem possible. Disorientation is Robert Eggers’ goal, and while the director may proffer sly hints here and there, he never capitulates to narrative simplicity. The erosion of sanity is so incremental that you almost don’t realise it’s happened. Eggers bombards the audience with striking, staggering, surreal imagery, as intoxicating and visceral as a sweat-soaked, psychosexual fever dream. Such visuals are presented bluntly and largely without any obvious narrative reason. Reality and fantasy begin to blend imperceptibly. There are moments where you’ll have no idea what you’re watching. Other times it feels like an endurance test - like you’ve been stranded on the island with Wake and Winslow, with little chance of rescue.

Both Dafoe and Pattinson are exceptional as they steadily deconstruct their seemingly simple personalities as sanity ebbs away. The two actors generate a combustible chemistry.

Shot in striking black-and-white with an unusual 1.19:1 aspect ratio that creates an almost square frame, and becomes a prison for the characters and the audience alike. Claustrophobic and disorientating, the aspect ratio feels like a deliberate creative constraint that paradoxically liberates Eggers. Jarin Blaschke’s camera does an astonishing job in conjuring a bleak nightmare out of time, with the dense black-and-white grain of 35mm capturing every shadow and contour, transforming ordinary, everyday objects into mythical iconography, and lending the film a sense of early 20th century expressionist horror. Blaschke received an Academy Award nomination for Best Achievement in Cinematography in 2020 for The Lighthouse.

Following Eggers’ debut feature, The Witch, The Lighthouse represents the director’s most experimental and stylistic work to date. But Eggers’ deliberately alienating style and narrative ambiguity, combined with relentless, unconventional prose and pedestrian pace, result in a film that is more intellectually stimulating than emotionally engaging.