An immersive and haunting folktale anchored by two exceptional lead performances.

This is a spoiler-free review.

How did this film get made? How did a weird, surreal art film with a microscopic cast get funding, let alone national distribution? No doubt drawing from the success of his atmospheric 2015 horror film The Witch, director Robert Eggers has used the opportunity to craft the kind of daring and complex cinema not often seen in theaters this decade. Those who require linear narratives and neatly packaged messages will likely run aground on the rocky shoals of this film’s peculiar visuals and circuitous plot. A work that will surely launch a thousand “ending explained” YouTube videos, The Lighthouse is an achingly beautiful examination of yearning, guilt, and self-destruction. 

The setup is simple enough: veteran seaman Wake (Willem Dafoe) and rookie jack-of-all-trades Winslow (Robert Pattinson) are tasked with manning the titular lighthouse and adjoining cabin on a small, remote Atlantic island. Winslow is a man of few words and a murky past seeking a fresh start and is eager to learn the lighthouse keeper’s trade. Wake is mysteriously protective of the light itself, seductively locked behind an iron grate only Wake has the key to. Wake exercises his power over Winslow by assigning a never-ending list of maintenance tasks around the island, rarely missing an opportunity to berate or belittle him. Their evening meals provide ample opportunity for Wake to relate sailor’s tall tales and maritime superstitions to an unappreciative Winslow. The weeks pass this way until, almost supernaturally, a storm envelops the island and the boat scheduled to return Winslow to the mainland never arrives. Winslow’s attempt at a fresh start deteriorates at the thought of remaining on the island. Enabled by Wake, he backslides into alcoholism and during their extensive mutual binge sessions the men’s emotional barriers begin to erode. Before long secrets and confessions trickle into the relationship like raindrops through the shack’s derelict roof. Eventually the pair begin to lose all sense of time and their grip on reality becomes more tenuous. Is Winslow really who he says he is? Is Wake? Is there really something to those old wives’ tales and superstitions Wake puts so much stock in? What really happens beyond the locked gate at the top of the lighthouse? 

In a media landscape of ever-expanding casts, a film with exactly two speaking roles feels surprisingly intimate. Pattinson and Dafoe are perfectly matched as the haughty youth and the crackpot eccentric. The two interact with such intensity and tender vulnerability that by the halfway point the idea of polluting their relationship with a third party would feel somehow indecent. 

“Odd choice of profession for one as pretty as ye,” Wake observes about Pattinson’s Winslow. Yet Pattinson’s A-list looks, obscured by a patchy swath of stubble, disappear under the ravages of his character’s deteriorating mental state. Pattinson is essentially the straight man in this nautical odd-couple, and he does a fine job here managing the character’s wild mood swings from standoffish to enraged to helpless. His performance never feels one-note, and the toll of his time on the island can be clearly traced by his drawn features and desolate eyes.

But of course every straight man exists as counterpoint to a dyed-in-the-wool character, and Dafoe’s salty, hardened seafarer Wake is truly a force of nature. Wringing the most out of his naturally rough voice, he takes on a deep Northeastern brogue that falls just shy of pirate cosplay. Add to that a wooden leg (really), affinity for tall tales, and heavy drink, Wake is a storybook figure who could have been ripped from the pages of Melville himself. This is no caricature, however. Wake is a landlubber’s notion of a fairytale seaman filtered through the lens of reality. A swashbuckler who farts in bed and desperately wants you to compliment his cooking. Dafoe does most of the dialogue heavy-lifting in the film, throwing his whole body into the delivery of long, extravagant monologues that are simultaneously beautiful in their verbiage and hilarious in their excess. Chewing on a short pipe with a mouth buried in a thick, wiry beard, the pockmarks and crevices of Dafoe’s severe face catch the shadows so as to appear alternatingly vulnerable and sinister.

The Lighthouse is easily one of the most beautiful films you’ll see this year, if not this decade, and can be ranked among the most beautiful black and white films ever made. Eggers pulls inspiration from films like Eraserhead and the work of Ingmar Bergman while also incorporating elements from The Shining and even Wes Anderson. Filmed in boxy 1.19:1 ratio, the choice simultaneously imparts a feeling of intense claustrophobia while also harking back to the silent era whose deep shadows and rictus expressions often seem nightmarish. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and lighting artist Christian Salazar work together to produce shots of incredible beauty, with blacks as inky as the midnight sea and luminous, ghostly whites. During the film’s most fevered moments Eggers and Blaschke compose stunning tableaus of shocking artistry, arranging the actors into compositions both painterly and unsettling. 

Before you see a single frame of the film, however, you are first assaulted by the eerie, mechanically-edged wail of the island’s foghorn (which remains a regular and oppressive presence throughout). Sound is a character in and of itself in The Lighthouse, and sound designer Mariusz Glabinski’s work here is truly dazzling. The claustrophobia and isolation of the story is deepened by the ever-present crashing of waves, their ferocity at times drowning out everything else. Rain and wind are also a constant presence, threatening to completely envelop the tiny shack. Even a seagull’s cry imparts a sense of impending doom.

All of these elements swirl together to create a film of ever-deepening intensity and complexity, however on the whole the story feels too heavily loaded on the back-end. Eggers takes his time in the first act establishing the routine and monotony of the men’s time on the island which ultimately feels overlong and unnecessary. Similarly, the early stages of Winslow’s madness play out in a perfunctory manner until about the halfway point when he begins to completely unravel. While these early scenes are certainly entertaining and visually distinctive they lack the narrative intricacy of the film’s final twenty minutes. 

But those last twenty minutes! As Winslow truly falls off the deep end, so to speak, the film reaches a fever-pitch of sound and sensation. There are scenes in this film I will remember for the rest of my life, and I have no doubt subsequent viewings will reveal even deeper layers of significance. 

The Lighthouse is a truly astonishing film, in no small part because it feels representative of the type of ambitious and abstract filmmaking rarely seen in the last decade. Gorgeous cinematography and spectacular sound design augment exceptional performances by Dafoe and Pattinson. While perhaps a bit too meticulous in its first half, the plot ultimately builds to a haunting and mind-bending conclusion. Egger’s penchant for claustrophobic folk horror and Lynchian visuals make him one of the most exciting young directors working today, and The Lighthouse is an aggressively and proudly weird beacon in a stormy sea of increasingly homogenized filmmaking.

Pliny the 20-Something also wrote a review for The Lighthouse! Check it out!