Canada/US | 2019 | Directed by Robert Eggers
Logline: Near the end of the 19th century two lighthouse keepers find their temperaments and sanity pushed to the limits.
Taking inspiration from a real event in which two lighthouse keepers became trapped on their station during a storm in 1801, with one dying and the other going mad, Eggers re-worked a contemporary ghost story idea of his brother Max’s into a tale about the two conflicted seamen, “Nothing good can happen when two men are trapped alone in a giant phallus.”
Indeed, The Lighthouse is a study of masculinity and its degradation, taking further tonal influence from the literary works of Robert Louis Stevenson and Herman Melville. But it exists in its own murky chamber of secrets, a decidedly claustrophobic and desperate situation. And as the waves crash, and the seagull squawks, a siren calls through the mist …
Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) are two wickies, forced to spend several weeks attending the demands of a small lighthouse on the coast of New England. Wake is the grouchy old salty dog, whilst Winslow is the young rookie, green around the gills. They get on okay at the beginning, each man doing his appointed job, though Winslow is itching to man the actual light, which is strictly Wake’s territory, and Wake makes sure Winslow knows this by parading around the top balcony buck naked undercover of the moon.
The darker corners of the men’s personalities soon begin to ooze through their greasy pores, especially after Winslow is coerced into getting on the sauce with his boss. The boozy brine shed inhibitions and agitates the cabin fever, and it isn’t long before the two men are dancing around the table hurling sea shanties and eventually wrestling on the rotting floorboards, while a storm rages, preventing their departure.
Early on Winslow finds a mermaid figurine, and later a fleshly encounter which fuels his own sexual vexation. Wake spouts sailor’s diatribes a la Milton and makes harsh demands on his subordinate, and takes offence when Winslow bad mouths the old dog’s cooking, “Ye fond of me lobster, ain’t ye?” The traditionally-embedded gender roles are challenged, man-handled, transmogrified. Yes, a kind of supernatural Lovecraftian element loiters in the creaking cracks, whilst the tentacles of classic Greek mythology - think the fate of Prometheus - probe and wrap themselves around the men and the delicate spires of their desires.
The Lighthouse is a tenebrous and dysfunctional fantasy of male bravado and fragility, deliberately framed in a vintage box - a very narrow view indeed, just 1.19:1 - in high contrast monochrome. It’s easily the most appropriate and effective use of this ratio and cinematography I’ve seen used by a contemporary director. With a deeply broody score and sound design, Eggers has marinaded a queer oneirodynia that will linger long in the mind. Frustrating and rewarding, as ambiguous and elusive as a pirate’s treasure map, filled with imagery and symbolism sensual and grotesque.
There is fascination and horror in equal measure as the two men’s homoerotic paths swell in and around each other, the screws of truth unraveling and the tangled fishing net of lies fueling their undoing. I can’t help myself but uncork an analogy such as the following … The Lighthouse is a potent nightcap for the more acquired tastes, especially those who relish the rich and complex Islay whiskies, savouring the peat and iodine, the dark medicine of the sea, elixirs for troubled souls, and a lot tastier than mixing coal oil and honey.