‘THE LIGHTHOUSE’ IS WEIRDLY ENTERTAINING
WILLEM DAFOE, LEFT, AND ROBERT PATTINSON STAR IN “THE LIGHTHOUSE.”
A terrific filmmaker, especially since there aren’t very many terrific filmmakers, deserves better than to be compared to his previous accomplishments. In other words, I loved director Robert Eggers’ debut feature, “The Witch” while admiring without quite completely getting the hang or the rhythm of Eggers’ new film, “The Lighthouse.”
It’s nonetheless well worth seeing and sorting through. I’d see it a second time for any number of reasons, including but not limited to the wee high voice Willem Dafoe uses to wheedle a compliment regarding his cooking out of his fellow “wickie,” or lighthouse keeper, or rather lighthouse prisoner, played by Robert Pattinson.
These guys and their facial hair look great in this world, by the way. “The Lighthouse” establishes a simple, straightforward premise and then proceeds to mess with it — and us. Somewhere in New England in the 1890s, wizened old Thomas Wake (Dafoe, chewing himself a new realm of expressive and weirdly subtle hamming) takes on a short-time assistant wickie, for an estimated four-week job.
The last assistant went mad — some “enchantment in the light,” Wake mutters, cryptically, referring to the Fresnel beauties creating wondrous, hypnotic patterns inside the top of the lighthouse.
The new man (Pattinson), who goes by Ephraim Winslow, harbors a dark secret. Wake, too, knows more than he’s telling. Flattering his taciturn second-in-command one minute, berating and humiliating him the next, “The Lighthouse” perches right on the edge of a terrifying unknown, while offering a compact lesson in the art of passive-aggressive mentoring. Wake’s superstitious to an elaborate degree, and when Winslow exhibits his first glaring loss of control, beating a seagull to death in a scarily well-faked scene, Wake takes it as a curse and the beginning of the end.
But of what? Sanity? Sobriety? Working from a script penned with his brother Max, Eggers treats much of “The Lighthouse” as pitchblack comedy.
Shooting on gorgeous, monochromatic 35 millimeter film, Eggers and company confine the storytelling to a boxlike 1.19:1 aspect ratio. The frame size and shape evokes early sound filmmaking. .
The writing, it must be said, settles for more prosaic achievements. As the two men devolve into drink, “spilled beans” and escalating violence, the actors strain at times to activate scenes that are variations on scenes we’ve recently seen. But then, near the end, well, those who already know they’re going to take a chance on this strange, fascinating picture deserve a relatively spoiler-free experience.
That’s not to say the story operates as any sort of conventional ghost story or thriller. But on its own terms, thanks to two fine, committed performances “The Lighthouse” works its own stubborn form of black magic.