Review: The Lighthouse
I am a big fan of the occult, the otherworldly and everything a bit strange. So what better way to spend my time than watching Robert Egger’s second feature film ‘The Lighthouse’. Who says chamber pots, tentacles and nightmarish mermaids aren’t romantic?
Set in the early 20th Century on a minute island off the New England coast, the film is a story of madness, isolation and maritime folklore. A melting pot of tension, intrigue and the supernatural all with a healthy sprinkling of revulsion and brilliant dark humour.
The film beaches us on a spit of land with two Thomas’s: Thomas Howard (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas Wake (Wilem Defoe). They are lighthouse keepers who for the next month will be tending to the upkeep of the eponymous lighthouse and the ramshackle dwelling that will accommodate their eventful stay. However, after an enduring storm takes hold, they become stranded with nothing but each other and lots and lots…and lots of drink.
Shot on black and white 35mm film with an aspect ratio of 1.19:1, the punishing, elemental setting and surreal goings on are captured fittingly within this box image- a hypnotising window in into the past. The siren of cinema has you in her grip from the first blast of the wince-inducing foghorn that bleats throughout the film like a crier of doom.
If there is one thing ‘The Lighthouse’ has in abundance it is atmosphere. Eggers himself when speaking about his writing at a BAFTA Guru event remarked- ’…atmosphere is the accumulation of details’ something very evident in this film. From the sets, the costumes, the dialogue and the nautical mythology, it is soaked through with dark, mysterious atmosphere dripping from the damp floorboards and from Thomas Howard’s futile rain coat.
Backstory for the characters is kept at a minimum and anything they do reveal has to be taken with a pinch of sea salt. But, nonetheless, these characters are fascinating. Defoe’s Thomas Wake is the perfect crusty old sea dog who’s acting chops are exercised to biblical proportions in threatening, bombastic monologues. With eyes ablaze Defoe nails the colourful dialect of the time. It is hard to put Pattinson’s Thomas Howard into words in the best kind of way. More than once he provides moments of pure unhinged gold that manage simultaneously to be hilarious yet really quite disturbing.
The detail and conviction of these performances are matched by the director’s meticulous craftsmanship in creating a fully fleshed out world of which the slippery, tentacled mayhem will either delight or disgust. But if you can refrain from jumping overboard I believe you will be dazzled by ‘The Lighthouse’ and its beaming mysteries.
Written by Sophie Dymond
I’m a graduate of film making, a freelance editor and an animal obsessive. Writing is a passion of mine and so are films, so I thought I’d combine the two and see what happens.
I’m a graduate of film making, a freelance editor and an animal obsessive. Writing is a passion of mine and so are films, so I thought I’d combine the two and see what happens.