Lighthouse
keeping was a heck of a profession. So-called “wickies” shared all of sailors’
common superstitions, but faced unique challenges of isolation, inclement weather,
and potential madness. Recently, filmmakers have discovered how well suited these
lonely outposts are to serve as the settings for horror movies and
psychological thrillers. Rising genre star Robert Eggers and his
co-screenwriter brother Max looked to Edgar Allan Poe’s unfinished short story
and the historical “Smalls Lighthouse” incident as inspiration for The Lighthouse,
which screens during MoMA’s annual Contenders series.
Ephraim
Winslow assumes he will be sharing most of the lightkeeping duties with the
senior keeper, Thomas Wake, but instead the crusty old timer assigns him all
the menial tasks, while hoarding the hands-on light-tending for himself. He
seems perversely attached to the light, even stripping himself naked in its
presence.
In
addition to Wake’s blowhard bullying, Winslow must also fend off a rather mean-spirited
one-eyed seagull. Of course, Wake sternly warns him against harming the nasty
bird, because he shares the old folk belief that seafowl carry the spirits of
dead sailors. The junior lightkeeper is further unnerved by visions of a
seductively sinister mermaid and a tentacle beast worthy of Lovecraftian
fiction. The only thing keeping him sane is the expectation the ferry will
arrive soon to take him back to the mainland—but it doesn’t.
The
Eggers Brothers’ narrative is very much like that of Chris Crow’s The Lighthouse, but the two films are worlds apart stylistically. Crow’s film
is a tight, tense two-hander, but it looks like the classy BBC Films production
that it was. In contrast, Eggers’ Lighthouse is shot in a claustrophobically
tight aspect ratio and lensed in a strikingly stark black-and-white by cinematographer
Jarin Blaschke.
The
resulting film is like watching a fever dream recorded on a vintage
kinetoscope. In terms of tone, some of the best comparative titles might be the
trippier, occult-themes films of Georges Méliès. It looks incredible, but the
Eggerses really couldn’t figure out how to end it, so they just sort of stop
without fully developing a number of their themes.
Nevertheless,
the film provides a showcase for both Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson to go
completely nuts in very different but equally impressive ways. As we would
expect, Dafoe is in his element, chewing the scenery and spewing salty venom as
Wake. The real surprise is Pattinson, who is a live-wire of paranoid, delusional
energy as Winslow (if that is indeed his name). They are terrific barking at
each other one minute and then falling into an uneasy camaraderie the next.
Presumably,
no gulls were harmed in the production of this film. Still, that bird is so
nasty, nobody would have sympathy for it. Either way, you have to give great
credit to the animal handling team. Yet, it is Robert Eggers’ visual
compositions that really make the film what it is. It is definitely worth
seeing, but it just doesn’t have the same knock-out punch ending that made his
breakout debut The Witch so memorable. Recommended for fans of what non-genre
critics have dubbed “elevated horror,” The Lighthouse screens this
coming Monday (12/30) at MoMA, as part of this year’s Contenders.
