After watching The Lighthouse, it’s confirmed. Robert Eggers will be a filmmaker I admire, but struggle to connect with. All the elements are there to love this film, and watching it, I see the talent everywhere. But something’s missing, for some reason. At least Eggers confirmed to me that I will never work at a lighthouse. Like, ever.
We’re at the shift transition in a lighthouse guard some time in the past. Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) is the stalwart, having been on the lifehouse for…what seems like decades? The new guy is Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson), fresh from the forest, on his first lighthouse gig. For 4-6 weeks, it’s just the two of them. No one else.
It’s impossible not to be drawn in by The Lighthouse at least a little bit. The movie is shot in black and white, with square shooting, almost as if you’re looking through a ship’s telescope onto the island, peering into a memory of some kind while the ship’s horn repeatedly drones on. The movie exudes gray or black very often, placing the leads onto what might be one of the bleakest places on Earth with no escape in sight. When not hopelessly working during the day, Eggers uses all the shadowing and darkness he can think of at nght, painting his two leads in the shadows as if the darkness threatens to overwhelm their souls on all sides. RPats is long past his twinkling vampire days here. By making him the focal point of the movie, we see the island and his predicament slowly change, becoming more and more menacing and surreal, with Pattinson completely selling the inevitable descent that his character was destined for. Also by making Pattinson the center of the movie, Eggers lets Willem Dafoe really go for it, and boy he does. Sporting a Brad Pitt from Snatch like indecipherable old timey accent, Dafoe is instantly mesmerizing and fascinating, even when he’s farting repeatedly.
And yet, I found myself almost dozing off a couple times. Part of Eggers’s style is slow, deliberate changes that keep some of his more batsh*t movie elements from going off the rails. Slowness is fine to a point, but Eggers liberally flirts with the stillness that the repetitiveness of the days makes The Lighthouse spin its wheels without going anywhere a tad too long. I also wish as the story went on the movie would embrace its tense horror elements more. I wish there were more tracking shots from Ephraim’s point of view to help instill a slow building paranoia for the audience instead of just staring at him loose his mind, which keeps you at arm’s lenghth from connecting with the material. I think Eggers is more interested in a character study of Ephraim than he is scaring the audience, and as such the movie flags when it should be slowly building momentum to its pretty stellar climax.
I might get to a point where I fully connect with a Robert Eggers production, because that guy’s too talented for me to at least not give it a shot. If Parasite is any example, it’s probably only a matter of time. Maybe we just find a way to work Willem Dafoe’s old timey character into a modern day thriller? Have him adpot the goat from The Witch and traverse the countryside, scaring everyone along the way?