Lighthouse is weird and wonderful
Pattinson and Dafoe team up to make strangest movie experience of the year
Early on in The Lighthouse, a wildeyed Willem Dafoe slaps Robert Pattinson across the face and, in an old-timey downeast Maine accent, barks the indelible warning, “Bad luck to kill a seabird!”
The scene, which lands somewhere in the middle of the film’s range of outlandishness, sets the tone for a hypnotic tale of lighthouse keepers who drive each other mad on a remote island in 1890s New England. In his second feature, director Robert Eggers embraces folksy horror similar to that of his 2015 debut, The Witch, but this time employs language as darkly comedic as it is sinister and surreal.
A bushy-bearded Dafoe, 64, and mustachioed Pattinson, 33, form a striking pair whose differences, particularly in their acting techniques, only enhance the friction between their characters.
“The tension worked well on set,” says Eggers, 36. “Rob wanted to keep things buttoned up and locked up, and wanted to surprise me and Willem and himself on set. Willem was just ‘Go-go-go-go-go
Gadget’ Willem all the time. But that’s the character dynamic. As the director, you don’t need to be a sadistic, Kubrickian manipulator to try to tease these tensions out — in fact, I just want everyone to be as comfortable and happy as they can be — but the camera sees the truth.”
Loosely inspired by the real-life undoing of two Welsh men — an 1801 incident now referred to as “the tragedy of Smalls Lighthouse” — the film transports audiences to the past with its black-and-white imagery and shot through lenses designed in the early 20th century. Eggers worked with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke to fulfil the vision he had when his brother Max, with whom he wrote the script, mentioned years ago that he had been working on a ghost story set in a lighthouse.
There’s a specific “kind of bleakness and extreme texture that is achieved only with black and white,” Eggers said, explaining how the boxy aspect ratio, reminiscent of the early sound era, was helpful for framing tall objects like the tower and “also very good for meaty close-ups of two of the greatest faces that have ever been born.”
Dafoe and Pattinson share an electric chemistry that carries the film, given that they’re the only characters we ever encounter (with the exception of brief appearances by Valeriia Karaman’s shrieking mermaid and a very aggressive seagull). Their path to doom is hinted at from the start, when Thomas Wake (Dafoe), a brutish man who has been on the rock for so long that he describes himself as “damn near married to this here light,” informs his new apprentice, Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson), that Winslow’s predecessor died after raving about sirens and some sort of “enchantment” in the tower’s light.
Both actors said they were cast in the two-hander after, beguiled by The Witch, they reached out to Eggers and pledged to work with the rising indie director.
Dafoe was especially drawn to the specificity of Eggers’ vision, he said, as “one of the strongest things a director can do is make the world detailed and articulate and deep ... so when you enter it, it’s much more easy to pretend.” His character delivers the bulk of the film’s dialogue in long-winded speeches to Winslow, who conversely declares that he “ain’t much for talkin’.”
They shot mostly in Cape Forchu, a small fishing community with rough conditions that shaped the actors’ performances in ways they couldn’t predict. (Some of the 35-day shoot also took place on sound stages in Halifax, about a three-hour drive away.)
“We chose that location because it was punishing and had terrible weather and would give us what we needed for the story, and it delivered on that,” Eggers said.
Pattinson initially noticed the film’s “strikingly strange script,” which spends a good amount of time in an even-paced, dour zone and switches to a “turbocharged surrealist thing” in its final act. Winslow opens up as the film progresses and reveals himself to be a man on the run from his tragic past.
Critics have praised Dafoe and Pattinson, who seem perfectly suited to their roles in a film that is equal parts melodramatic and absurd — a casting success story Eggers said he cannot explain beyond calling it a hunch.
“They’re both actors who like to take risks, who like to do strange, challenging work, who like to seek out auteurs and wannabe auteurs like myself and really stretch themselves,” he said.