Director: Robert Eggers | Year: 2019 | Starring: Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson
I watched The Lighthouse alone on a slow Tuesday and it left me restless. Eggers shot it in grainy black and white, in a square frame that feels like a door closing. Two men tend a lamp on a rock in the Atlantic. That is the whole plot. Everything else is weather, liquor, and the slow erosion of two minds.
The island is a third character
The foghorn alone deserves a credit. It sounds through almost the entire film, this low drone that never quite leaves your ears. Then there are the gulls, the rain, the wind scraping against stone. The sound design does the work that music usually does, only it never lets you relax. By the second week on the island I understood why men in this setting start talking to the machinery. There is nothing else to talk to.
The film is shot in a near-square 1.19:1 frame, like an old photograph that refuses to widen.
Two performances eating each other
Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe go at each other like weather fronts. Dafoe's Wake speaks in old sailor curses and then turns soft in a way that feels more dangerous. Pattinson's Winslow is all clenched jaw until the clench gives out. My favorite scenes are the drunk ones, not because they are funny, but because alcohol is the only time these two stop performing for each other and accidentally tell the truth.
Verdict
The ending is a nightmare told straight, and it felt earned. Madness here is not a twist. It is the natural weather of the place. Some films are built to be rewatched for clues. This one I rewatch for the fog.
Rating: 9/10
Watch the official trailer:
Images: poster via Wikipedia; stills via Collider, No Film School, Instituto Moreira Salles. All images property of A24.
