OVP: The Lighthouse (2019)

Film: The Lighthouse (2019)
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe
Director: Robert Eggers
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Sophomore efforts can be a challenge, particularly when your first film was critically-lauded.  Robert Eggers' The VVitch was at once instantly iconic (you can buy "Black Phillip" Funko dolls if you wish to live deliciously) and a mesmerizing film.  It was also the sort of movie that likely stays in your head for years, rumbling around as a truly great idea with a twist ending that shocks the audience.  How, precisely, do you follow up a clear passion project with something equally challenging and provocative?  This has been a question mark for several filmmakers this year, including Ari Aster & Jordan Peele, and today we'll discuss a third notable "horror film" sophomore effort of 2019, The Lighthouse, a film that takes the motif of The VVitch and then continually challenges us as an audience in a way that makes you forget the lessons you learned from Eggers' original picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) This film is an acting duet between Robert Pattinson as Ephraim Winslow and Willem Dafoe as Thomas Wake (they are the only two actors in the picture with speaking parts).  They are tasked with manning a lighthouse deep off the coast of somewhere (presumably North America, but we'll get to this in a second), with Wake as the one in command and Ephraim doing most of the menial chores, never getting to actually man the lighthouse.  What is initially supposed to be a four-week stint turns into a time indeterminate, as no boat shows up to relieve the two men of their duties and they are essentially stranded at sea, their rations depleting, and slowly even their booze, to the point where they mix kerosene with spirits to continue a drunken haze, as they seem to only be able to stand each other while in some state of inebriation.  Eventually secrets start to come out-Ephraim is really Thomas Howard, as Ephraim Winslow was a young man whose death he had declined to prevent, and whose life he then overtook, and it's revealed that despite a friendliness between the two men, Wake has been secretly recommending that Winslow not be paid for his efforts, citing him for insubordination and drunkenness on the job (even though it was Wake who forced Winslow to partake in the alcohol).  The film's closing scenes are of the men violently attacking each other, with Howard killing Wake in pursuit of looking into the light in the lighthouse, and seemingly going mad from what he sees (though it's possible he'd already reached that point by the time he stared into the abyss).  The film ends with Howard dead and naked on a beach, seagulls feasting on his intestines.

There's a lot more to this film I could get into, quite frankly-the film is brimming with plot and detail, which is a fascinating juxtaposition to the bleak and empty island that the lighthouse inhabits.  The film uses a lot of metaphor (other authors have noted the film borrowing from Greek mythology, particularly the legend of Prometheus giving fire to man), and it's hard not to see some of the clear parables about man's fight with one's self.  There is no indication of life off of this lighthouse, and the fact that both men eventually share the same name lends credence to the idea that they are in fact the same person, fighting different sides of themselves.  I personally wonder if this is a case of "they were dead the whole time," with the Lighthouse serving as some version of hell for the real Thomas Howard's inaction to save the real Ephraim Winslow, forever haunted by the false ambitions he held in life (in the form of Thomas Wade).  It's hard to fold in the mermaids, predatory gulls, and tentacled Willem Dafoe into this vision, though, and this might be my biggest problem with The Lighthouse-while it's breathtaking to behold, it's also packed with too many ideas.  This was also a problem with Ari Aster's Midsommar (though weirdly not Jordan Peele's Us, which had a brilliantly clear through line running through its plot), and perhaps it would hold up on repeat viewings, but I feel like some of the illusions were just there to keep us flabbergasted, rather than to aid the film.

The movie is shocking enough when it just comes to the two lead performances, as Dafoe & Pattinson give excellent work in this duet.  The performances are not particularly glamorous (Dafoe's character's flatulence is a recurring theme, as is Pattinson's character's habitual masterbation), with Dafoe sporting an unkempt beard and Pattinson's natural beauty hidden under a veneer of soot and sweat, but they still find a strange eroticism.  It's not clear if the two want to kill each other or just fuck by the end of the film, but it's probably some combination of the two.  Pattinson, derided for so long as just "that guy from Twilight" should shut up pretty much filmgoer who claims he can't act here in the same way Kristen Stewart did in Clouds of Sils Maria, bringing a tortured soul out, though not always needing his humanity.  Dafoe, who has been consistently dazzling his whole career, but particularly the last few years, lends a cartoonish bellow to his character that so easily could have become overacting, but instead is just manic & terrifying.  He gets the flashier role, but it's also going to be the one people remember from The Lighthouse, his haunting glare as he throws out Shakespearean-style soliloquies, casting all (including the audience) into the unforgiving deep.