⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
9/10
The Lighthouse is an awe-inspiring testament to the silver screen while remaining utterly original. Caught between arthouse and the thriller genre, it crashes through you until you’re hollowed out and chilled to the bone.
From the outset, it’s clear that music and sound, barely distinguishable in The Lighthouse, will be as fundamental to the viewing experience as the visuals. From the unsettling moans of the fog horn to the heart-stopping shrieks of the mermaid, sound plays a crucial role in creating the film’s unsettling tone and amplifying the constant peril experienced by the two lighthouse-keepers, or ‘Wickies’ in 1890s slang.
Like all great films, its premise is simple: slovenly yet silver-tongued Thomas Wake (played by the ever-talented and -terrifying Willem DeFoe) is joined by his new assistant, the secretive, young Ephraim Winslow, Robert Pattinson giving an impressively-disturbing performance of violent psychological deterioration. They are uneasy living companions during their four-week posting at a New England lighthouse when a relentless storm leaves them stranded with dwindling provisions just as they are about to disembark.
At 36-years old, director Robert Eggers brings us his second feature after the acclaimed 2015 film The Witch. Eggers collaborated on the script with his brother, drawing from multiple real-life accounts of 19th-century lighthouse-keepers and fictional sources that include the writing of Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. This extensive research is evident in the details that combine to create the film’s rich and rugged texture, augmented by the dedication to film on real sets and in the brutal weather conditions we see on screen.
There is a strong theatrical essence, almost Beckett-like, in the way that the actors connect with each other and perform dialogue (Eggers was previously a theatre set designer). Yet, it has much more in common with the traditions of cinema, without attempting to imitate any particular film. The academy screen ratio that is adopted (a square format) accentuates the theme of claustrophobia and places the actors closer together when they share the frame.
Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography makes the film’s horror all the more insidious by showing how beauty can be found in the ugliest and darkest of places. The lighting is dramatic, at times bearing stark resemblance to charcoal drawings and at others, film noir classics, without compromising on the realism. From the opening shot, emphasis is placed on visualising emergence and submergence to reflect the characters’ descents into madness. Their gradual loss of sanity is evoked so well that you soon find yourself panicking at the uncertainty of what is true, what is dreamt and what you’re being deceived about.
By the end, you feel as if you’ve been drawn into the formidable waves, having tumbled through them and been lashed against the rocks that lighthouses are built to help people evade. But this is of course the film’s central musing: some things that you try to keep your distance from will find a way of luring you into a fatal obsession with them. By the end of The Lighthouse, horror and awe reverberate through your bones; a cinematic experience strictly for the big screen.
DEEP FOCUS 