It’s liberating to watch a movie about a couple of men going hopelessly insane. You exit the theatre (as I did) feeling relieved, exhilarated and satiated. You’re relieved you are not the madmen in the story, exhilarated because you took a wild ride, and satiated because the ride refused to fret about the safety of its passengers (meaning it defies current trends- translation; it’s artful). And the real pay-off of The Lighthouse comes hours after you’ve seen it; when you discover, upon further introspection, how much you actually do have in common with the two leads- and feel you’ve witnessed a genuine cinematic achievent.
The Lighthouse is a fun (and funny) nightmare that rumbles over you like the stormy catastrophe that imperils its central figures. Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) has been sent on a boat to serve a contract job for several weeks on an isolated island under the supervision of a crusty veteran named Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe). The setting is a late 19th century lighthouse. Wake is in charge of this lighthouse and will remind you in an instant in case you forget. Winslow is Wake’s woeful, haunted subordinate. Tensions rapidly build as the men prowl around digging at each other’s psyches and a bitch of a sea storm looms large. By the time this storm hits- both men are vulnerable and ripe for a free-fall into frantic derangement. Wake and Winslow literally dance each other into madness and indulge psychological role reversals (reminiscent of Sam Shepard’s classic play, True West). At one point in the film Wake chases Winslow with an axe (one can’t help thinking of Nicholson in The Shining). Another significant scene involves Winslow bemoaning Wake’s dreadful cooking. Wake, a theatrical, obscene provoker, bullies the story forward with his flatulence and his penchant for sadism. Winslow is nervous, bewildered, works too hard, and suffers from a repressed libido. Winslow is tortured by Wake, bad dreams and nagging sea birds. Robert Pattinson plays the character with a uber-lonesome, doomed sting. Dafoe’s familiar, goading grin punctuates Pattinson’s every grievance. The actors are terrific together and Pattinson manages to keep us watching him while sharing the screen with one of the strongest actors of the last three and a half decades (Dafoe the pro- always delivers).
The movie is essentially about cabin fever (among other things). But it is not a cabin fever drama we’ve seen before. It’s something different. The Lighthouse is pitched higher than other “man goes apeshit” movies. It has brazen impressionistic strokes and it invites you to go gleefully bonkers with its leads (After all- it is just a movie, America- all you Joker fuss-boxes). We’re in the lighthouse with these guys. We’re on the shoreline seeing mermaids (Winslow may have a mermaid fetish). We taste the sea spray and we smell Wake’s pipe smoke. And we wonder who is going to do what to whom- and how soon? Almost everything that occurs in the story seems propped up to threaten Winslow’s already fragile sanity. And the Ahab-like Wake inhabits a misanthropic netherworld between apathy and utility. The men are destined to collide and combust. You anticipate the mess that unfolds and the movie’s final image glows with hard-earned realism.
The picture is wonderfully photographed by Jarin Blaschke as a sea-side, atmospheric period piece in black and white. Robert Eggers (The Witch (2015)) directed the film with true excellence and vision. Eggers also wrote the screenplay with his brother, Max Eggers. The brothers’ dialogue is meaty and witty without being extraneous.
The Lighthouse had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and was released on October 18, 2019. It’s good cinema- very, very good cinema. Go see it and have a grand ole’ time time going a little crazy by the sea.