It’s been a long time since a trailer compelled me so wholly to see a film. Though a bit vague (as all good trailers should be), The Lighthouse trailer promised a call back to H.P. Lovecraft, noir horror, psychological plundering, madness in artful black and white, and a challenging and rare film that relied on character, not plot. Two characters. No more. Part of me wanted to see how far Robert Pattinson had evolved his craft past the Twilight franchise. All of me craved something different from Hollywood.
First, I’ll tell you what this movie isn’t. It isn’t jump-scare-driven thrills or spoon-fed conclusions. It isn’t for those who prefer their Robert Pattinson’s bare ass without a healthy side of disturbing imagery. If you require twist and turns and your criteria for a movie’s success leans heavily on plot, don’t watch this movie. There are enough fart jokes here to inflate a river raft on a boy scout weekend. The Lighthouse is totally dude-centric, the way you’d expect a salty yarn from sailors to be. The masturbatory overtones alone might make some women wish they’d stayed home and caught up on the latest Hallmark Christmas movie. This movie isn’t bright and shiny or swift or any of the things we are accustomed to seeing from Hollywood. Likely, you’ll walk out of the theater thinking WTH did I just watch?
Therein lies the fantastic.
One of the idea seeds for this movie came from a real-life incident in 1801 known as The Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy. But the script also shows influence from Greek tragedy, Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Algernon Blackwood. There is a sharp division between people who hate this move and people who adore it and go to great lengths to talk through their theories. During filming, when the actors approached director Robert Eggers with their theories about what was happening to their characters, Eggers would simply tell them to play out scenes how they believed. The result is an engaging, ambiguous moment in cinema that the moviegoer considers long after the credits run. Days after, in fact.
So what is this movie? It’s deceptive and dark. It scratches abrasively against your sensibilities and dangerously close to that voice inside you that says this isn’t right…humans don’t do this then challenges you in the same thought: yes, they do. The setting is seemingly out of time. Few clues, apart from the common-knowledge dissolution of lighthouse use in general and a bit of throwback to Shakespearean-cadenced speech, indicate that story is set in the 1800s - so much so that it might well have been yesterday that two men with dark secrets were forced into suffocating proximity. Add a shot of alcohol (or enough to float a battleship, really), and it is a delicious unreliable narrator tale.
The shifts came, not from external plot turns, but from inside, my alliances migrating sometimes moment to moment. Hair-trigger tempers and madness turn the dialogue on a dime, totally unpredictable. And the writer in me was beyond elated with the symbolism and foreshadowing and throwbacks to classical literature. The acting is Oscar-caliber. The cinematography was inspired, Hitchcock-esque at times and – dare I say — beautiful for a movie about the descent into the ugliness of human nature.
This movie isn't for everyone. It's an onion that must be peeled back slowly, wrapped in an arty package. But if you love psychological drama like I do, this movie is the gift that keeps giving.
If you see it, I'd love to hear your theories in the comments below. I have my own, but I'd like to minimize spoilers until more people have seen it.
And in a lesser form of madness, I'll be signing The Nature of Shadows: An African Memoir the weekend of November 16-17. Watch social media for details soon.