No light in the darkness
Robert Eggers’s follow-up to The Witch, inspired by a real-life tale of isolation and madness at sea, is another not-quite horror movie, as well as a stubbornly opaque and bodily fluid-filled head-scratcher
The Lighthouse
Dir Robert Eggers, Canada/US 2019
On UK release from 31 Jan
This is the second feature by director Robert Eggers, following his well-received debut The Witch, a slow-moving, oblique period psychological drama. It has been said the distributors erred in marketing The Witch as a horror film, and if that’s true, then they’ve repeated the mistake. The film has already garnered many plaudits and was rapturously received at the London Film Festival; but despite high hopes, I left the cinema disappointed.
It tells the story of grizzled lighthouse keeper Tom (Willem Dafoe) and his assistant Ephraim (Robert Pattinson), who arrive on a bleak rocky island to tend the lighthouse there. Their quarters are ramshackle, but the lighthouse is scrupulously well maintained. As the days go by, Tom and Ephraim’s relationship goes from antagonistic to something approaching friendship, mostly fuelled by marathon drinking sessions. But the alcohol also seems to induce in Ephraim feelings of paranoia and nightmarish visions. When, after four weeks, their scheduled relief doesn’t arrive, the situation quickly begins to unravel.
I wouldn’t describe The Lighthouse as a horror film. It contains horror elements, but I don’t think its primary purpose is to frighten you. Similarly, it isn’t a thriller. If pressed, I’d call it a psychological drama – dealing as it does with themes of isolation, latent violence, inability to communicate, and deception. In that sense, it’s more like something by Harold Pinter, but with added tentacles.
The film has clearly been made with great skill and intelligence, there’s plenty to mull over after the credits have rolled, and the two lead performances (which are, more or less, the only performances) are an object lesson in commitment; it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there are Oscar nominations in February. But this is one of those cases where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
There are three major problems for me. First, it’s way, way too long at a shade under two hours. For a film which has no plot to speak of, that’s an extraordinary length of time. Secondly, and this compounds the first, it is deliberately paced (polite film critic speak for slow) and repetitive. There are umpteen scenes of Tom and Ephraim arguing the toss over dinner or getting smashed and singing sea shanties. There are umpteen scenes of pissing, farting and onanism that seem to reflect a great desire on the director’s part to rub the viewer’s nose in filth. (In this respect it is rivalled only by Hard to Be a God, reviewed in these pages some years ago.) There are several speeches, mainly by Tom, that seem endless. Of course, it could be argued that the repetition is to provide contrast to the chaos that follows, but this is labouring the point.
Which brings me to the third and biggest problem: what is that point? I have no problem with ambiguity in cinema, but this is almost impenetrably opaque. A lot of what is on screen appears to means nothing to anyone but the director, and I wondered whether he was at all interested in communicating it to the viewer. To me, it seemed a jarring combination of several Greek myths, primarily Sisyphus and Prometheus, and Waiting for Godot. Is the film an allegory of a war between a god and a titan? Or is it a kind of purgatory, where one character is being judged by the other before being directed to his final destination? Your guess is as good as mine.
Daniel King
★★★★★
American Gods: Season 2
Created by Bryan Fuller, US 2019 Studiocanal, £15.99/£12.99
The first season of American Gods was reviewed favourably in FT last year (FT367:69), so this second season was eagerly anticipated.
For the unitiated, the plot can be boiled down to this: old world gods, led by Odin, brought to America by their immigrant followers, have seen their powers wane as new gods – Media, Technology, Money – increasingly monopolise faith and belief. Fearing their ultimate destruction, Odin is preparing for a final reckoning with these new deities by travelling around the US enlisting the aid of as many of the old gods as he can.
The second season begins with the gathering of the old gods at Odin’s request – a get-together interrupted by a shocking assassination. Initially weakened, Odin’s alliance is nevertheless galvanised when the other gods – including new characters such as Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction – realise the peril they are in and the necessity of working together.
The strengths of the first season were its epic narrative, intelligent script, top notch cast and fascinating exploration of ancient cultures, religions and myths. Some of those strengths are also evident in the second season but, crucially, not all.
Beset by production
It’s like something by Harold Pinter, but with added tentacles
difficulties, American Gods lost its show-runners not once but twice, had budgetary issues, cut the number of episodes, shed important cast members, notably Gillian Anderson, and endured all manner of rewrites. There was friction between the network and the production company. It seems that most of those involved in the show had lost faith in the whole project.
Unfortunately, these problems are reflected on screen, particularly in the dialogue. It veered towards the oblique in season one but stayed just on the right side of pretentiousness; in season two it does not. So much of the dialogue is whispered or recited slowly in order to imbue it with a significance it just doesn’t have, that at times it’s laughable. Some of the characters seem to speak exclusively in riddles or feeble aphorisms, to the extent that you feel you’re not so much receiving wisdom direct from a deity as being assaulted by a mountain of banal ‘inspirational’ quotes. In a doomed attempt to make up for the script quality, some of the cast overact like mad, which makes matters even worse.
However, there are some stand-out moments amid the mediocrity. The development of the Mad Sweeney character (a foul-mouthed leprechaun) is a treat, and the scenes between him and Laura the revenant are among the season’s highlights. The carousel sequence in the opening episode is stunning, as we see the old gods in their true colours and finery. The sequence where Odin bids farewell to his faithful ‘steed’ Betty (a black 1966 Cadillac) by leaving it on the tracks ahead of a speeding train is stirring stuff, even more so as the credits roll over a recording of Leadbelly singing ‘Black Betty’ – a genuine synthesis of myth, music and visuals.
The season ends with the story unfinished. My fervent hope is that over the next few months the money men and the creative team are able to unite behind a vision for what should be the third and final season, because despite its weaknesses, the series deserves it.
Daniel King
★★★★★
On the Trail of… Champ
Dir Aleksandar Petakov, US 2018 Small Town Monsters, $19.99 (DVD)
FT readers will be familiar with ‘Champ’, an alleged creature or group of creatures occupying the waters of Lake Champlain, a large freshwater body sitting between the northern border of Vermont and upstate New York, and fondly referred to as ‘America’s Loch Ness’. Small Town Monsters, which has made a number of serviceable documentaries on various cryptozoological and fortean subjects in and around the US (Mothman, Boggy Creek, the Flatwoods Monster) has produced an interesting, if workmanlike, overview of the phenomenon, its history, and its effect on the local community.
The filmmakers are careful to point out that given the lengthy timespan involved – which includes sightings among the Native Abenaki and Iroquois populations, those made by 19th century European explorers, and others in later American history (including the famous 1977 sighting and photograph by Sandra Mansi) – credible accounts of creature sightings (which number just over
300 in total), are, as with its famous Scottish counterpart, relatively rare. Yet, despite this, the possible existence of the creature has had a profound effect on the local community, from providing predictable opportunities for economic exploitation – Champ is a mascot for everything from local businesses to baseball teams – to sparking the imagination of amateur researchers, biologists, and historians.
Constructed as a fiveepisode mini-series, on the surface Champ is something of a departure from the Small Town Monsters format, though it otherwise repeats the style and mood of previous entries. While on the whole nicely assembled, the episode divisions are largely arbitrary, with the early ones addressing the history of a phenomenon and later ones addressing the effect of the lake monster on local folklore and culture. The documentary features interviews with living eyewitnesses and independent researchers Scott Mardis, William Dranginis, and Katy Elizabeth; their interviews are balanced with cautionary evaluations by sceptics, giving the documentary a refreshingly exhaustive and objective tone. Though Champ doesn’t break any new ground in either content or style, it remains an enjoyable foray into fortean cinema, and is certainly worth a look. As an added bonus, the DVD’s cover art by Vermont-based artist Stephen Bissette – also briefly interviewed – is phenomenal. Eric Hoffman
★★★★★
High Life
Dir Claire Denis, UK/France 2018 Thunderbird, £12.99 (Blu-ray)
Spaceship 7, crewed by former prisoners, is on a mission to investigate the possibilities of using a black hole as a new energy source. At some stage things have gone horribly wrong and now only Monte (Robert Pattinson) and Willow (Scarlett Lindsey), a very noisy 14-monthold baby, occupy the vessel.
Through flashbacks we slowly discover how the other members of the motley crew met their fate. First to go is Captain Chandra (Lars Eidinger) who suffers a stroke and is ‘mercifully’ killed off by Dibs (Juliette Binoche). She quickly starts a self-imposed reproduction project, perhaps as a penance for murdering her husband and children back on Earth. Sexual intercourse between crew members is banned, so she collects semen from the male members of the crew, who masturbate in the small compartment they call ‘the box.’ Due to exposure to high-levels of cosmic radiation, the semen samples prove useless when Dibs inseminates the female crew members. Elektra (Gloria Obianyo), the only astronaut who does get pregnant, dies along with her newborn baby.
Dibs becomes increasingly keen to obtain the ‘strong genes’ that Monte carries, but he refuses to go into the box and rejects her sexual advances.
Sexual frustration also gets to Ettore (Ewan Mitchell) who tries to rape Boyse (Mia Goth) but is finally beaten away by Monte. Dibs gives additional sedatives to the crew to keep them from raping and/or killing each other, and also uses drugs to knock out Monte so that she can stealthily collect his semen.
All this rape, murder and at least a couple of suicides is pretty dramatic, but the action unfolds at a slow pace, as if through an hallucinogenic haze. In contrast to violence and death, there are some touching moments, like those between Monte and the baby Willow (when she finally stops crying) as he feeds and nurtures her in the ailing spaceship.
Frustratingly, we only get odd clues and glimpses of the motives and character of the crew who have swapped prison on Earth for this one-way journey to who knows where. There are Biblical connotations – the ship’s garden might represent the Garden of Eden, which would make Dibs Eve and Monte Adam. Dibs also represents the mad scientist, a female version of Dr Frankenstein, recklessly trying to create life at all costs. Director Claire Denis states that Dibs is akin to the Greek mythological figure Medea, who kills her children and is skilful at manipulating men, and that Monte relates to a figure like Percival in Arthurian legend; perhaps the black hole is the Holy Grail.
Denis creates echoes of the masterpieces of SF cinema like 2001 and Solaris; in particular, the opening shots of the spaceship’s beautiful garden are reminiscent of the eco-domes in Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running. Unlike them, or glossy Hollywood SF, High Life does not celebrate technology; indeed the spacecraft is a sparse industrial shell. There are no laser-zapping pyrotechnics or flashy sound effects either – at best the odd bleep of a doorway opening and some nice views of outer space.
Overall, this is a complex, multi-layered and sometimes confusing exposition of the human condition that draws you mercilessly into the narrative like a powerful black hole.
Nigel Watson
★★★★★