(¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.-> A place of depravity. The film? The Lighthouse.
I first watched this 2019 film directed by Robert Eggers during the pandemic. It was a great pandemic watch, making me more paranoid than I already was. The plot is straightforward: in the 1890’s, two lighthouse keepers stranded on a small island lose their shit in an epic and classical way.
Rewatching The Lighthouse for this newsletter reminded me that I really need to get a leak in my roof fixed—such was the level of immersion I experienced. I felt rain going down the back of my neck, giving me chills. The protags, Willem Dafoe’s Thomas and Robert Pattinson’s Thomas, are soaked physically by rain and surf but also with rum and, later, turpentine. They are horrifying and hilarious all at once, which is a difficult trick to pull off. The last time I saw any character as funny and terrible as those in The Lighthouse was Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Plenty of smart people on the internet have said smart and funny things about The Lighthouse, with a favorite being an interview with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke emphasizing that Willem Dafoe’s skin is really quite good, actually--it’s the lens that makes the actors look so weathered. I’ve also read many interpretations of the film, and the better ones are written by people who have seen it more than once. The first watch merely orients the viewer to the visuals, the themes, and the grime.
My experiences with lighthouses are scant, and the ones I have seen in real life have been small and adorable, cute as bugs. You just want to put them in your pocket! I’m most familiar with Woolf’s in To the Lighthouse (majestic), the one in John Carpenter’s The Fog (no-nonsense), the lighthouse in the Anne of Green Gables book Anne’s House of Dreams (twee), and the lighthouse getaway in the HBO show Doll & Em (#goals). The Lighthouse shades this list: this one is shabby, all nonsense, anti-cute, and, to use the parlance of our times, a toxic workplace.
I was aware of the classical allusions on the first watch but during lockdown was too depressed to drag out my copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology and my classics textbooks to read up on Prometheus. No longer! I got down my books and saw how writers classic and Romantic chewed on Prometheus’s liver over the years. I love that in Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, our titan protagonist is chained to Mount Caucasus, which is writ in my mind now as White Mountain. The Lighthouse also takes place on White Mountain, a craggy island with not just one phallus—the lighthouse—but another too in the foghorn that belches ooooooo-errrrrrr throughout the film.
One aspect of the film’s online life I find interesting would be the many people who labelled the film as unclassifiable in terms of genre. The genre is clear: nautical gothic with elements of psychological horror. What I have not seen much of, though, is a sustained exploration of the lighthouse as place-character. It is the titular role of the film, after all.* The film uses the lighthouse thematically, as a symbol of masculinity gone awry and as a place of horror. It alludes to The Shining in a couple of ways—isolation, alcohol, and axes—but the lighthouse is not demonstrative like the Overlook Hotel is. Instead, it remains aloof throughout, never spilling its beans.
On White Mountain, topography is destiny: the outbuildings are just the worst, being at the lowest points on the island. The living quarters are wretched, as is the passage up to the lighthouse. The lantern room atop the lighthouse is the only place worth being and is in fact worth dying for. Lens time is worth hazing, gaslighting, and depravity.
In fact, any beauty in the films is reserved for the lantern. It looks startlingly modern compared to the rest of the equipment, beautiful. No wonder two jerkasses with seasonal affective disorder want to bask in her glow. The only things as clear as the lantern are the bottles of rum, which refract light and reality so that we see barnacles, salt foam, slime, cockle shells, and tentacles.
The Lighthouse stats:
Place namedrop in the title? Oh yes
Is Willem Dafoe unhinged? Yes! And in a way I like much more than this performance
Good, placey b-roll? Glorious use of b-roll. Really emphasizes how small the island is and how bad the weather is—the credits show Eggers used some stock footage. I’d have never known.
Did it feel like being there? Ugh, yes. The grit is palpable. The film also brings in smell quite a bit more than most films, to good effect.
*Another title that would have worked: Drink: The Only Med’cine. Name for the Broadway reimagining? Monkey Pump: The Musical.