In The Lighthouse, it’s the 1890s and Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Winslow (Robert Pattinson) are two lighthouse keepers isolated on a New England island. The operative word is “isolated”, because it’s a long time between relief and supply boats, so these guys only have themselves and the gulls for company for weeks on end.
Wake is in charge, which means that he can command Winslow to perform all the tasks. I get the whole chain of command thing, but Wake is a first class jerk, and he unnecessarily makes every moment of Winslow’s life insufferably hard and humiliating. On the surface, not much goes on in The Lighthouse. But a psychological typhoon is brewing, as Winslow’s misery and desperation compounds. The hardship and the annoyances are enough to drive many a person mad, and, as Winslow starts to decompensate, we start expecting something extreme to happen.
Director and co-writer Robert Eggers seems to be aiming at a trippy 21st century take on Gothic Horror, but he fails at basic storytelling. The problem with The Lighthouse is that we don’t really care about these two characters enough to endure the slog. Then, the bleak ending doesn’t justify sitting through the first 90 minutes of bleakness.
I am far more likely than most movie viewers to embrace a slow burn. Here, the “slow” is glacial, and the “burn” seems powered by the hot plate in a 1970s studio apartment.
Willem Dafoe channels Robert Newton from the 1950 Treasure Island to give us the full Long John Silver. It’s an, ahem, unrestrained performance by one of our best screen actors. Dafoe does have one marvelously entertaining dialogue when Wake tags Winslow with a curse from Neptune himself.
Pattinson is the lead here, and he does an excellent job going mad. I admit that I didn’t use to take Pattinson seriously, because of the material, when his career was launched in the Twilight series. But he proves here, as in The Lost City of Z, that he is the real deal.
Because The Lighthouse has an original and artsy look, it’s gotten extra points from many critics. But watching it is an ordeal, no matter how many hallucinatory mermaids there are. I was wondering whether I would go crazy before Pattinson’s Winslow.