The Lighthouse (2019) - Film Review

Starring: Robert Pattinson & Willem Dafoe

Screenplay: Robert & Max Eggers

Directed By: Robert Eggers

Certificate: 15

If you have any hipster film buffs in your social circle, chances are 'The Lighthouse' is their favourite film of 2019. On paper that shouldn't be too much of a surprise considering that it was produced and distributed under A24, which automatically and for good reason will get the interest of your average film buff. Plus it's also the second feature film directed by Robert Eggers who gave us the 2016 horror film, 'The Witch' which was received enthusiastically by almost everyone who saw it. Though I was a couple of years late to the party, I did really enjoy 'The Witch' and when 'The Lighthouse' started causing quite a stir, I knew that this was one I wasn't going to miss in theatres. 

Sometime in the late 19th Century, Ephraim Winslow and Thomas Wake serve as lighthouse keepers, or wickies, for a month on a remote island off the coast of New England. Winslow finds Wake to be irritable and demanding, and begins to witness strange things on the island. Night after night he witnesses Wake going up to the lantern room and removing his clothes, and begins to hallucinate sea monsters. But as their time at the lighthouse approaches its end, a drastic change in the wind brings a violent storm to the island and leaves them both trapped there as they descend into insanity. 

One of the first things I feel compelled to praise about 'The Lighthouse' are its technical merits, as any review that doesn't bring it up is going to be incomplete. This was shot in black and white on 35mm film which gives 'The Lighthouse' an almost square aspect ratio. That itself is incredibly rare in the modern film industry, and I don't think I can name a film that's done something similar in many years. But its not just a technical gimmick that got the film an Oscar nod for Best Cinematography - it completely immerses you in the setting. When watching it, it's as though you're genuinely transported back to the late Victoria era and not even the star pull of Robert Pattinson and Willem Defoe break that illusion. It's so good at sucking you into a world so removed and unlike our own that it can be hard to believe that the film was shot in 2018. 'The Lighthouse' is so efficient on practically every level - the score, the omnipresent sound of a foghorn, shot compositions and more all combine to make a film so incredibly thick with atmosphere. I was also staggered to find out that the production team actually constructed a 70ft tall working lighthouse just for the purposes of the film - that's some dedication.

'The Lighthouse', perhaps unavoidably, can end up looking inaccessible - black and white, small cast and the kind of film that's going to have a ton of academic essays written about it in the future dissecting everything it has to say. Perhaps there is some truth to it looking inaccessible, but one thing that you can't really call it is pretentious. Despite bring primarily a psychological horror/thriller, it keeps a sense of humour about itself and isn't above a fart joke. There's a dark sense of humour in there among the moments that are played straight. There's one amazing bit where in the midst of a drunken argument, Walt accuses Winslow of not liking his cooking, and in a grand minute-long speech condemns him to the gods and monsters of the sea, to which Winslow turns around and says alright I do like your lobster. 

Just as I can't undersell the technical merits of 'The Lighthouse', it's hard to adequately convey how incredible both Pattinson and Defoe are here. One review of the film that I saw described the dynamic between the two as like that of Albert and Harold in 'Steptoe & Son' and that it is a very good comparison. While this is perhaps more Winslow's story than it is Wake's, the two turn in some of the best performances of their respective careers. Defoe's character is very much a grizzled sea dog, with the beard, the pipe, the accent, the walking with a limp - he's such an archetype that Winslow even calls him a parody at one point. Pattinson's character meanwhile is the more clean-cut and reserved of the two, and this difference is reflected in the ways that the two lose themselves in their insanity. 

I wouldn't hesitate in calling 'The Lighthouse' one of the strongest depictions of insanity that I've probably ever seen. A crucial part of why that is is because as both characters lose their grip on reality, the audience are pulled along with them until we ourselves are left struggling to decipher what's real and what isn't. For instance, Wake warns Winslow about killing any seagulls for he believes the gulls are reincarnated sailors. But dismissing his superstition, Winslow kills a one-eyed gull that seemed to have been taunting him for days, causing the wind direction to change and bringing a heavy storm to the island, trapping him there with Wake. It's a great example of the old film trick that gets you to ask "What if?". And things only escalate from there, beginning to involve Sirens, sea monsters and more. Wake is also incomprehensibly defensive of the actual light atop the lighthouse, which he strips off his clothes and appears to pleasure himself to every night. Because the film is experienced through the lens of these two completely unreliable narrators, not even things like the progression of time is clear-cut. And watching this in the wake of 2020 is quite a trip. In the wake of a worldwide pandemic and after many people have had to isolate themselves, it adds a whole new and uncomfortably familiar context to watching the film. There are plenty of stretches of long silence and emptiness throughout the film which feel very prescient in the COVID era. 

I wasn't kidding earlier when I said that there are going to be a ton of academic essays written about this film in the years to come. If there's one thing 'The Lighthouse' more than accommodates for, it's the ability to carry out psychoanalytic readings. Robert Eggers has been open about the influence he took from art, mythology and psychoanalytic theory and was familiar with the works of thinkers like Freud and Jung whilst making the film. The film doesn't shy away from its influences and that's a great benefit to it, in fact one shot in here is an overt adaptation of a painting called 'Hypnosis', where a naked Wake appears to stare intensely at Winslow with light beaming out of his eyes. There's a lot of disturbing sexual imagery in this film, which starts innocuously enough with Winslow masturbating to a wooden mermaid figurine, but in his descent into madness, he hallucinates having sex with a screaming mermaid on the shore. It gets to the extent where even the lighthouse itself becomes a symbolic image of an erect penis. And of course, as with anything that remotely involves Freud, there is a lot of Oedipal subtext to read into the film. The relationship between Winslow and Wake almost undeniably resembles the father and son roles of an Oedipus complex. Thing is, 'The Lighthouse' very deliberately leaves itself open to various readings and interpretations. But primarily I'd say that the film is an exploration into the dangerous effects of long-term isolation, as well as an examination of a cracked human psyche - a male psyche in particular. Add to that a wealth of mythology and sailors' legends, especially the images of mermaids and Sirens, and you have a lot of material to unpack. 

And that's my only issue I personally have with 'The Lighthouse' - that because there is so much going on both in and under the skin of the film, I can't help but feel that any discussion about it is going to be half-done. Of course, to an extent there's no such thing as a complete reading of a film, and that's one of the joys of cinema: that there are so many readings to be applied and extrapolated that it means something different to everyone. But I'd better stop here before I let my ramblings get any further away from me. Regardless, 'The Lighthouse' is absolutely Top 10 material and easily one of the best films to come out of 2019 - it deserves every bit of praise it gets and then some.

The Lighthouse

9/10