By: Keaton Marcus

PREFACE:

Robert Eggers’ sophomore effort, The Lighthouse, is one of my favorite movies of all-time and I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while now. Generally, I wish to focus on its symbolism and general aesthetics used to reel in audiences for an insane, but ultimately rewarding time.

PREMISE:

The Lighthouse centers on two lighthouse keepers, Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson), whose isolation on an unnamed island off the coast of New England builds to a strange, humorous, and rocky relationship, one beset by the tumultuous waves of folk legends, confessions, and madness.

THE STYLE/AESTHETIC:

One thing that Eggers has nailed in both The Witch and The Lighthouse is the highly-stylized period look that is so appealing to viewers. Unlike the typical 4:3 aspect ratio, this film uses the unconventional 1.19:1 ratio, which is almost never used nowadays and was most commonly known to be for early sound films. I had to do a little research for this, but this movie isn’t just shot in black-and-white, it’s legitimate. It was shot on Kodak Double X 35mm stock, which is one of their two black-and-white stocks. Before people criticize this movie as simply a gimmick that many other films use today, think about this. Most of the time, when a modern-day movie is in black-and-white, it’s initially shot in color before being graded. An example of this would be Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha. Additionally, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke used a custom cyan filter to emulate the orthochromatic film, which was a popular technique in the late 19th and early 20th century. This film even blocks all of the reds to make all the blood look black, so the orthochromatic emulation makes it so audiences can notice every single imperfection and detail on an actor’s face. Not only did Blaschke use turn-of-the-century filters, but he also shot on classic camera lenses, using Baltar lenses, which were popular in the 1930s. However, he used an older lens from the early 20th century for some of the more surrealist shots and an old zoom lens despite not knowing where it was originally from.

THE PERIOD ACCURACY:

Eggers and Blaschke were absolutely rigorous in their attention to period detail. Apart from the aesthetic being completely legitimate, the costumes, the lighthouse (which they built the entirety of), and even the dialogue. In fact, the screenplay is probably the most important detail in terms of accuracy. Like in The Witch, the attention-to-detail in this aspect was crucial, and Eggers nailed it in both films. However, there’s a major difference between the two. In his directorial debut, he lifted whole paragraphs and conversations from old texts, but in The Lighthouse, he and his brother Max had to construct entire conversations from an old dialect. I’d even go as far as to say that his second film is even more impressive in its ambitions than the first, and possibly one of the most creative movies of all-time. As their primary source, they actually used Sarah Orne Jewett’s book The Mate of the Daylight for Thomas Wake dialogue due to parts of it featuring interviews with real-life figures like Willem Dafoe’s character in this vernacular. In contrast to this, Robert Pattinson’s dialogue was actually inspired by Maine farmers of the same era. Overall, just the authenticity alone is enough to call this a masterpiece. Eggers is a master at filmmaking, and everything here is pretty much pitch-perfect. There is an accurate set, characters, and dialogues to immerse audiences in a new world. That’s what cinema is all about, isn’t it? I watched this on a phone at one in the morning on the first-time viewing this (apologies, David Lynch), and I was enthralled and immersed by every second of this.

BLENDING DREAMS AND REALITY:

Another thing that really stood out during this film was the distinctions between surrealism and reality. Initially, Eggers tried everything in his power to make a sharp difference to what’s imaginary and real, but as the film goes on, he slowly and absorbingly blends them together. I’d say he does it even more effectively than Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, does it? To make things feel crazier, he also uses contradictions and gas-lighting, perhaps making audiences go a little mad themselves. Thomas Wake changes his story about how his leg became gimpy, shifting from blaming it on an injury to blaming it on scurvy. He also asked Pattinson’s character why he chased him with an ax directly after we saw him chasing Howard with an ax. Following this, Dafoe even bludgeons Pattinson with that same ax before burying him. One of the primary things that I adore about this film is the fact that it doesn’t tell audiences what to think or what to interpret about the film. Instead, it leaves viewers to come up with several different ideas, theories, or concepts. This is definitely a rare thing nowadays, and simply one of the aspects that makes this film masterful.

THOMAS AND THOMAS ARE ONE AND THE SAME:

Continuing off of my point on the fact that audiences weren’t told what to think, let’s take a look at my history with the movie. On the first viewing, I looked it at in a completely basic fashion. A darker fairy tale of two men isolated on a lighthouse driving each other to insanity. However, that ending changes everything. It concludes with Pattinson’s character staring into the light before falling down the stairs, conveying that there is some sort of hypnotic enchantment in the light. This made me ponder and theorize about the film more than before, and I began to think that Pattinson and Dafoe’s characters were the same, and Wake is simply a projection of Howard. On the second viewing, it became more of a meditation on the vast distance between heaven and hell, in which Wake is blocking Howard from the light, or heaven. Remember when Wake made the claim that there is a dead sailor’s soul in every sea bird? Or when Wake couldn’t remember the time that they’ve been there? You can argue that this would come from heavy drinking and overall craziness, but it also works in the sense that these two are stuck in purgatory, or in-between heaven and hell. Furthermore, it also does seem like Wake is solely there to torture Howard into eventual insanity. They begin painting the lighthouse but don’t finish it, which makes him inventory the silverware and even scrub the floor multiple times without actual reason to. This is all happening while he continuously bars him from looking into the light. In the end, when Thomas eventually gets to look into the light, there’s this brilliant effect used to make it seem like it’s ripping his soul out.

OVERALL:

In conclusion, The Lighthouse could be seen as a simple story of two men going mad, and it works just fine that way. But the real magic of this movie is when you start to delve deeper. It begins to invalidate people criticizing this film for being Oscar-bait or having no tangible story. It has a complex one that requires you to think and not just focus on the surface. However, there are lots to love on that glorious surface too! The cinematography, editing, performances, and attention-to-detail are all immaculate. This film is one of the greatest movies ever made in my opinion, and I hope it continues to do as well as it can in my cinematography tournament.