The film The Lighthouse is a 2019 psychological thriller starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two men stuck on an island, manning a lighthouse.
Summary
Two men arrive on an island. Dafoe plays the grizzled old lighthouse keeper. Pattinson plays a sober younger assistant. Dafoe puts Pattinson to work on various tasks. Pattinson finds a wooden mermaid shortly after landing and masturbates to it. Seagulls around the island bother Pattinson. He kills a one-eyed bird. Dafoe complains that it’s bad luck to kill seagulls. The weather changes the day before they are supposed to leave and they get stuck on the island. Pattinson sees a mermaid on the beach and caresses it until it awakens and laughs at him as he runs away.
The men reveal something of their history after they both get drunk. Dafoe tells how the previous keeper went insane and Pattinson reveals he was a lumberjack. Pattinson reveals that he stole the identity of his lumberjack foreman who died in an accident caused by Pattinson. They fight, Pattinson kills Dafoe and ascends to the top of the lighthouse. He falls down the stairs and onto the rocks of the island, where gulls eat his body.
Review
Mumbling and accents bothered me. I got the gist of most of their discussions, but I couldn’t make out a lot of the dialogue which caused confusion. Mumbling was primarily an issue from Dafoe. I noticed inconsistentcy in Pattinson’s accent. There is one scene where Pattinson gives a longer speech. It sounded like he was dubbing the lines and the transition from the scene to the dub was noticeable.
The entire movie is shot in black-and-white with a 1.19:1 aspect ratio. I enjoyed the choice of black-and-white coloring. The lack of color doesn’t hurt the movie. It fits the setting of the late 1800s well. It works really well in a scene where Pattinson looks into the light while covered in blood. The squarish aspect ratio tightens the view and gives a tense feeling of claustrophobia to the movie. I usually find choices like these bothersome, so it was a pleasant surprise.
According to Wikipedia The Lighthouse uses mythology: sailors’ myths about seagulls being reincarnated sailors, dying to seagulls after “stealing” the fire references Prometheus, and Dafoe’s character is modeled after Proteus. I wasn’t half clever enough to pick up on most of these references without having it spelt out and explained, so I don’t feel right going into it, except to say that it works well.
My Movdeez rating for this film is 332 out of 1165 films, or 7.2. It’s a movie that’s hard to watch at times, but it kept my attention and it paid off with some great acting and wonderful visuals.