Directed by Robert Eggers

Written by Max Eggers and Robert Eggers

Starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe

The Lighthouse is a movie that defies explanation. Whatever comes from viewing it, I’m sure I won’t be able to properly review the experience, except to say that I am sure I have seen the strangest movie of the year. Robert Eggers’ last movie, The Witch, is one of the best horror movies made in recent years, and was the single best film I saw in all of 2016. That movie had a running theme of feminism, and was about a young girl resisting the the chains of society and family, and choosing her own path. The Lighthouse seems to burn heavily with masculinity, injected heavy doses of madness and confused identity. Or maybe it’s about fucking mermaids, I have no fucking idea

The King in Yellow was a book about insanity too, and featured short stories about people who read a play by the same name, and were all driven mad by it. I guess The Lighthouse is about a lighthouse that drives people mad, well two people. Or one person? You see what I mean when I say this movie can’t be explained?

As far as I can tell it’s about two lighthouse keepers looking after a lighthouse for four weeks in the 1900s. I think. Robert Pattinson is the younger, newer keeper, who had previously been a lumberjack. Willem Dafoe is the seasoned vet, who informs Pattinson that the other lightkeeper lost his mind and died. I won’t mention their names.

Much of the movie is the near cryptic conversations these two have among each other. They speak a form of old English. So, like The Witch, you’ll have to listen carefully. I tried my best and I’m sure I missed every other word.

Does it matter? Maybe. Important details are dropped along the way. And though I caught the gist of most scenes, I’m sure I missed key moments by the end. This is a LOT of broken talking. But the movie is filled with crisp imagery too. A lot of it in the mundane and back breaking labor Pattinson undergoes to care for the lighthouse. Dafoe orders him around since he is his subordinate, but relegates looking after the light up top to himself. He takes the night shift, which he claims is the one to fear the most.

There’s a sense of disbelief in the dialogue. And we realize that we have trouble believing what these characters tell each other because they don’t believe it themselves. Both men have hidden pasts, and tell each other differing stories about who they are and what they’ve done. It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not.

All the while mysterious things begin to happen on and around the island they are on. Slowly but surely, they both go insane. Though I would say Pattinson is the beacon of insanity here. You can tell Eggers gave him total freedom to emote madness. Dafoe and him go so bonkers that it is sure to infuriate even the most patient movie goers. Eggers also likes to play out long scenes of dialogue (intentionally repetitive) to pound down these themes. The movie is also trying to drive you mad.

Helping this is a claustrophobic 1.19:1 aspect ratio, with the entire movie being a little black and white box. The team went with naturalistic lighting, sticking a 600w halogen bulb in a kerosene lantern for that whole practical effect in some scenes. The sound design is perfect, which consists of booming and droning sounds from the machines of the lighthouse. And the constant squawking of the birds all around. And the waves. And by the end I felt as I though I had heard every twisted sound on the spectrum in a crucial shot.

Eggers is a student of Kubrick for sure. Both this and The Witch are drenched in Shining references. The lighthouse hits you over and over and OVER with homages to that film. In the scenes, imagery, and even lines spoken. Even the whole premise of the damn thing. What I liked this time was that Eggers has heavily incorporated 2001 in here too. The opening goes for the very same as that space epic. And the incredible importance placed on the musical score and sounds. And I don’t need to tell you that the lighthouse is the monolith.

I like Robert Pattinson. He reminds me of Leonardo Di Caprio and Heath Ledger. He could have remained trapped in the pretty boy role he was doomed to in Twilight, but he persisted like Leo and Heath, working ever harder, and collaborating with the best directors, and ones he always admired. This guy is a true talent. I’m even more excited for his batman.

The Lighthouse has not blown me away like The Witch did. I think I like it, maybe a lot. For most of the movie I was nearly bored, up until that conclusion. There are two moments I thought the movie would end on before it did. The first would have been done in a worse movie. The second is the best moment in the entire movie. But Eggers has it run just a minute or so longer, and I’m fucking puzzled by that decision. And I can’t stop thinking about it. The abrupt and cheery song that hits over the end credits made me smile like no other movie this year, and I know Eggers now to be a huge troll. But he has trolled us in the right way, and not wrongly like Phoenix and Phillips in Joker.

Now look at that, two movies released in the same month as Joker, Parasite and The Lighthouse, that have the courage to delve into similar ideas where the Joker failed to. With Parasite, it mercilessly presented social and class warfare. The Lighthouse has both real and imagined scenarios, and has the guts to not give us any answers. Joker cowardly told it to us all, and what it didn’t wasn’t worth debating anyway.

Though I’m unsure about The Lighthouse overall, its final scenes have commanded me to see it again, if only to see if I really like it or just kinda like it. I’ll tell ya most people are going to despise this movie. My theater tonight had about 20 other people, and most of them were old. Really old. The old couple sitting a few rows in front of me walked out just ahead of me when the credits were done rolling. “That was the worst picture”, the woman remarked. “Probably the worst picture of the century”

Well ma’am, I can’t say I disagree