Summary:
Two wickies on a post far out at sea begin to experience unusual phenomena.
My Thoughts:
Director Robert Eggers’ debut film, “The Witch”, was an amazingly realized horror film that was disturbing, thought provoking, and eloquently written. In my review for that film, I said I believed it was one of the best horror films of the last decade; I still believe that.
“The Lighthouse” is something else entirely.
From the atmosphere hinted at in the trailers, I expected “The Lighthouse” to be a horror film, and there are some moments in “The Lighthouse” that are undeniably horrific, but, in my opinion, this film defies genre classification by transcending it. “The Lighthouse” is an experience more than it is anything else; I came out of it feeling overwhelmed, as if I’d just watched Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” for the first time. The premise of this film is so simple, yet the way in which the story is told and the way it plays on certain ideas, touches on so many big ideas. The ending is powerfully symbolic, and furthermore, it felt eerily harmonious with the ending Eggers gave us in “The Witch”.
Two days later, I still had yet to write this review because I was still processing it, replaying certain scenes, trying to process the themes. So when the opportunity came to see the film again, I leapt at it. Now, having watched the film twice, and having still spent time trying to process everything I’d seen, I feel correct in saying this film deserves nothing less than Five Stars; this is also one of those films where I feel like every time I watch it I’ll discover something new.
“Why’d ya spill yer beans ta me?”
The questions that this film wrestles with go beyond our understanding as humans: Why are we here? What do I do about past sins and my guilt? What is my relationship to God; how does he view me; is what I am doing enough for him? Am I actually working towards salvation, or is all of this (life in general) for naught? These are the kinds of questions Pattinson’s (“High Life”) character Ephraim Winslow wrestles with as he labors away his days on that craggy, windswept island under the watchful and judgmental eyes of his superior, Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe, “At Eternity’s Gate”).
As I said above, the plot for this film is simple: two men venture out to an isolated lighthouse, where, for four weeks, they hold down the post until relief comes. Wake claims the light for himself, while Winslow is forced to do all the hard labor. As the days roll into weeks, the two find themselves growing more tense. Wake continues to insists on keeping the light for himself and he continually forces Winslow into the hard labor; furthermore, Wake has rules of his own that sometimes contradict the manual given to them by the company, and sometimes Wake’s superstitions seem to play into the decisions he makes.
As we learn the rules of this isolated place, we start to see the island as representative of more than just a post taken by a man looking for work. The island becomes a metaphor for life itself; the light, salvation; and Winslow’s struggle to get towards that light, is man’s struggle towards salvation. Wake, then, becomes the guardian of the light, the guardian of salvation, and as the film goes on, the symbolism behind that salvation intensifies and takes on different meanings. I find Ephraim’s struggle to get to the light can be a literal representation of man’s struggle to understand the idea of righteous salvation and what it means to us, but it also can represent class struggle, or any struggle where one man sets himself above another.
The way that Wake sets himself above Winslow, claiming to know more about the ways of the island and the ways of the light, make him seem like a kind of shaman on the island, one whom is far more familiar with the rules of the world; he has certain prayers before meals, certain rituals before bed. Winslow just follows his lead, thinking that, because Wake is older and more experienced, he clearly knows best. But as the film goes on, and Wake becomes more and more cruel to Winslow, it becomes almost apparent that Wake gets some sort of pleasure out of taunting him. Winslow becomes frustrated, and he breaks one of the carnal rules of the island (killing a seabird). The killing of a bird is forbidden, because, Wake claims, the birds hold the souls of sailors whom lost their lives at sea. Winslow killing the bird sets in motion a storm, or, at least, Winslow believes that the storm was initiated by him killing the bird; in reality, the events may be totally unrelated. As the storm worsens, the wickies’ situation grows more and more dire; tensions rise. The men spend time more drunk than sober, and Winslow begins to hallucinate and see fantastical things what couldn’t possibly be there. Winslow begins to wonder if maybe Wake’s previous second, whom went crazy during the last watch and begin to harbor beliefs that the light held a kind of salvation, might’ve known more than Wake let on. Winslow begins to wonder if perhaps the light does hold some kind of power, and if it does, Winslow muses, why does Wake keep it all to himself?
SPOILERS FOLLOW
In the end, Winslow attacks Wake, steals his key and approaches the light. And when he gets to the light, he finds it so beautiful that he begins laughing hysterically, and he falls back down the ladder into the darkness. The last shot is of Winslow’s broken body being picked apart by gulls on the rocky shore. Is this not the story of Prometheus? A man, searching for light (or knowledge, or salvation) defies the gods and steals fire, only to be punished and thrown back to earth, where he is doomed to have his liver eaten eternally.
For me, this ending was beautiful and horrifying at the same time, and, as I mentioned above, the ending also mirrors the ending in Eggers’ first film “The Witch”. Both films end with the characters achieving something that they had been searching for, and in both films, when the protagonists achieve that what it is that they were after, they begin to laugh hysterically, as if they’ve just learned the secrets of the universe and all has been revealed to them, and they have no idea how to comprehend what it is they’ve been shown.
Verdict:
Really, this film is a simple story that feels almost like a fable, but, like a fable, there’s just so much to unpack beneath the layers. “The Lighthouse” is an absolute marvel, one that I’ll be happy to revisit again and again.
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