Darkness. Darkness visible. Light. Barely visible. THE LIGHTHOUSE illuminates. The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.
Welcome to THE LIGHTHOUSE, a kerosene fueled bromance borne of solitude, secrets, suspicion and superstition.
On a far flung rock off of New England, veteran Tom, and rookie wickie, an enigmatic landlubber who goes by the name of Ephraim Winslow, are thrown together to tend the lambent tower that provides safe passage to souls at sea.
Writer director Robert Eggers and his co writer brother Max drew inspiration for the screenplay’s dialogue from the writing of Herman Melville and Sarah Orne Jewett, whose novels were written in dialect based on extensive interviews with seafarers at the end of the 19th century. It elicits an electrifying eloquence, an elocution given meaty evocation in the mouths of Willem Dafoe as Tom and Robert Pattinson as the Winslow lad.
The raw material of Melville’s prose, itself as stormy as the sea it speaks of, finds briny delight in Dafoe’s delivery, the vibrant vernacular, salty banter and shickered sea shanty, a spuming foam of flotsam and jetsam of myriad wrecked metaphors clinging to frail spars of sense.
Pattinson, reticent and compliant at start, slowly sheds his supplicant and subordinate persona, simultaneously shedding secrets that have shattering repercussions. The actor may have started his career in twilight but recent choices, most notably with this one, has brought him into the light, full and bright, a shining talent, a beacon.
THE LIGHTHOUSE is a film about two men brought undone by isolation, desire and paranoia. Their situation is brilliantly augmented by Jarin Blaschke’s Academy Award nominated black and white cinematography shot in the aspect ratio of 1.19:1, an almost square frame favoured by early sound filmmakers. It fosters the cramped, claustrophobic and confined aesthetics of the space and situation.
The devil is in the detail in THE LIGHTHOUSE, and there is much talk of the devil. Before the Fall, Satan was known as Lucifer, meaning light giver.
“The light belongs to me.” says the bedeviled Tom, as the story spirals into a pit of diabolic dimension.