Lighthouse
keeping is a quiet, lonely business, but it is fraught with occupational risks.
There is a voluminous history of mysterious and tragic events occurring in
isolated lighthouses that have suddenly inspired a clump of films. Following Chris
Crow’s The Lighthouse, based on the
very real “Small’s Lighthouse Incident,” the mysterious disappearance of the Flannan
Isles light-keepers gets a fictionalized explanation in Kristoffer Nyholm’s The Vanishing (trailer here), which opens today
in New York.
James
Ducat is the garrulous family man. Thomas Marshall is the bitter, guilt-wracked
widower. Donald McArthur is the obnoxious apprentice. The three light-keepers
ought to be able to survive six weeks on the Isle together, but all bets are off
when an unknown sailor and a mystery chest wash up on at the bottom of a coastal
ravine. Naturally, McArthur is sent down to investigate, but he is forced to
kill in self-defense when the unnamed man turns out to be healthier (and
meaner) than he looked.
Even
though Marshall (rightly) fears the chest could be a proverbial Pandora’s box,
they soon discover its contents: a sturdy pair of work boots and several bars of
gold bullion. Obviously, it would be a terrible shame if those boots went to
waste. As for the gold, the three co-workers decide to split it, like the bag
of cash in A Simple Plan. They agree
to wait a full year before cashing in, to avoid suspicion, but they are caught
flat-footed when the dead man’s fellow crew members come looking for him and
his “cargo.”
As
a thriller, The Vanishing is nothing
extraordinary, but it has its merits, starting with Gerard Butler, who does his
best work since Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus
as Ducat. He starts out as quite the hail-fellow chap, but becomes increasingly
unhinged as their situation becomes dire. Peter Mullan is one of the best
thesps in the business, but the salty old Marshall is so solidly in his
wheelhouse, he hardly breaks an acting sweat. Connor Swindells is fittingly
annoying as McArthur, while Danish character actor Søren Malling is all kinds
of leathery and sinister looking as the suspicious skipper.
Nyholm’s
workmanlike helming captures the claustrophobia of the lighthouse, but he allows
the tension to flag from time to time. However, cinematographer Jørgen
Johansson fully capitalizes on the lonely, picturesque vistas of the Outer
Hebrides locale.
The
one-two punch of The Vanishing and
Crow’s Lighthouse should be sufficient
to dissuade most recent grads from considering lighthouse keeping as a career. Maybe
someone will make a film about the notorious Bustard Head lighthouse in
Australia, to really drive home the point. Of course, it is easy to see the
appeal of lighthouse movies to filmmakers: small cast, one set, and the
evocative image of a windswept tower rising above the rocks. The Vanishing has all that, plus Butler
as you have rarely seen him before. It is a completely respectable film, but
viewers can safely wait until it hits subscription-based streaming services. For
eager lighthouse buffs, it opens today (1/4) in New York, at the Cinema Village
and releases day-and-date on iTunes.
