THE LIGHTHOUSE
THE LIGHTHOUSE I The Witch director Robert Eggers is back with a weather-battered horror…
R-Pattz and Will-Daf lose their minds in the must-see horror of next year.
When my brother [screenwriter] Max said, ‘A ghost story in a lighthouse,’ I pictured Rob [Pattinson] and Willem [Dafoe] at dinner, and that crusty, musty, dusty, cable-knit sweater, salt cod, pipe smoke, facial hair, kerosene lantern…” Director Robert Eggers grins as he recalls the genesis of The Lighthouse, which he co-wrote as he was financing his acclaimed debut, The Witch. “I pictured that, and black-andwhite. That atmosphere couldn’t be articulated in colour.”
Premiering to ecstatic notices in the Directors’ Fortnight section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Eggers’ sophomore movie was dubbed ‘The Shining in a lighthouse’, as two men go stark raving mad on a wind-lashed rock. Tom Wake (Dafoe) is the veteran ‘wickie’ who insists, somewhat mysteriously, on having sole access to the light, while newbie Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson) is tasked with the arduous, menial jobs – scrubbing, mending, emptying chamber pots. At night they bicker, banter, sing, dance, fight, fart and drink like fish. They’re already losing the plot when the grog runs dry and they start necking kerosene.
“Nothing good happens when two men are trapped in a giant phallus,” chuckles Eggers. “I didn’t try to make it
a movie about toxic masculinity, but there it is. As much as I try to lock myself in the past, I am influenced by the world around me, so the zeitgeist seeps in.”
The past that he speaks of is 1890s Maine, with Eggers and his co-writing brother Max immersing themselves in
Melville’s Moby Dick and the writings of Sarah Orne Jewett, a 19th-century, Maine-based author who interviewed sailors, fishermen and farmers in order to write in dialect. It sounds like highfalutin stuff, but for Wake’s salty speech, there were also more accessible influences. “SpongeBob SquarePants and Granddad Dog in Peppa Pig,” laughs Eggers. “We all have a bit of stereotypical pirate that we can lean on.”
Shot in monochrome in the archaic 1.19:1 aspect ratio, The Lighthouse also leans on Ingmar Bergman, GW Pabst and Fritz Lang for its startling visuals, while the production built a 70-foot lighthouse – it shone for 16 miles – on a peninsula on the southern top of Nova Scotia. The roiling sea and atrocious weather informs performances and atmosphere; the entire film feels infused with madness, making the protagonists, and viewers, all the more ready to accept the fantastical elements that start to creep in.
But here’s the big question: are Wake and Ephraim in any way based on the Eggers brothers? Robert cackles. “My approach is research-based, but yeah, for sure, if it’s not personal, it’s not going to be good,” he admits. Another piratical cackle. “But hopefully there’s less homoeroticism in our relationship.”
ETA | 31 JANUARY / THE LIGHTHOUSE OPENS NEXT YEAR.