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The Lighthouse (2019 film)
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Wikipedia article
{{Infobox film
| image = The Lighthouse.jpeg
| alt = Two men, one elderly and one young, stand in front of a lighthouse with stern looks as seagulls fly overhead.
| caption = Theatrical release poster
| director = Robert Eggers
| producer =
| writer =
| starring =
| music = Mark Korven
| cinematography = Jarin Blaschke
| editing = Louise Ford
| studio =
| distributor =
| released =
| runtime = 109 minutes
| country =
| language = English
| budget = $11 million
| gross = $18.3 million
}}
'The Lighthouse' is a 2019 film directed and produced by Robert Eggers, from a screenplay he co-wrote with his brother Max Eggers. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as nineteenth-century wickies (lighthouse keepers) embroiled in psychological turmoil after being marooned at a remote New England outpost by a destructive storm. The film has defied categorization in media, and interpretations of 'The Lighthouse' range from a horror film, a psychological thriller, a survival film, and a character study, among others.
'The Lighthouse' first emerged from Max's re-envisioning of Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished short story of the same name. Robert assisted the development when Max was unable to complete the adaptation of "The Light-House", sourcing the plot from a nineteenth-century myth of a murder at a Welsh lighthouse. 'The Lighthouse' draws visually from photography of 1890s New England, maritime-themed French cinema from the 1930s, and symbolist art. Principal photography took place in Nova Scotia beginning in April 2018 and consumed slightly over a month. It was shot in black-and-white with a nearly square 1.19:1 aspect ratio.
The film premiered at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 18, 2019, by A24. It grossed over $18 million against an $11 million budget and received critical acclaim, with praise for the direction, visuals, and performances of Dafoe and Pattinson. It was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 92nd Academy Awards and 73rd British Academy Film Awards, in addition to numerous nominations and wins at other awards ceremonies. Many say it is one of the best films of 2019 and one of the best of the decade.
Plot
In 1890s New England, Ephraim Winslow serves a contract job as a "wickie" (lighthouse keeper) for a month on a small isolated island off of the coast, under the supervision of the island's longtime keeper, Thomas Wake. In his quarters, Winslow discovers a small scrimshaw of a mermaid and keeps it in his jacket. Wake immediately proves to be very demanding, assigning Winslow increasingly taxing jobs such as emptying chamber pots, painting the lighthouse, and carrying heavy kerosene containers up the stairs, while forbidding him access to the lantern room. Winslow observes that every evening, Wake secretly ascends the lighthouse and disrobes before the light. During his stay on the island, Winslow begins to hallucinate sea monsters and logs floating in the sea, and masturbates to the mermaid on the scrimshaw. He also continues to observe Wake's strange ritual and is bothered by a one-eyed gull that Wake tells him not to kill, as he believes that gulls are reincarnated sailors and killing one would bring bad luck. One evening while dining, Wake reveals to Winslow that his previous wickie died after losing his sanity, while Winslow reveals that he is a former timberman from Canada seeking a new trade.
The day before his scheduled departure, Winslow discovers a dead gull inside the cistern, bloodying its water. Winslow is attacked by the one-eyed gull once more and he brutally kills it in a fit of rage. After this, the wind drastically changes direction and a violent storm hits the island. Winslow and Wake spend the night getting drunk, and the storm rages through the next morning, preventing the relief ferry meant to pick up Winslow from arriving. As Winslow empties the chamber pots, he notices a body washed up on the shore and discovers that it is a mermaid, which awakens and howls at him. He flees back to the cottage, where Wake informs him that the storm has spoiled their rations, and that new ones will not arrive for weeks. The pair unearth a crate at the lighthouse's base that supposedly contains reserve rations, but contains only bottles of gin. In the following days, as the storm continues to rage, Winslow and Wake drink most of the gin, alternating between moments of intimacy and hostility. One night, Winslow tries unsuccessfully to steal the lantern room keys from Wake as he sleeps and contemplates stabbing him. He later encounters a lobster trap containing the one-eyed head of Wake's previous wickie. Winslow confesses to Wake that his real name is Thomas Howard and that he assumed the identity of the real Ephraim Winslow, his foreman who died in an accident Howard purposely neglected to stop. Wake chases Howard down, accusing him of "spilling his beans" before destroying their only dory with an axe. Once incapacitated, however, Wake claims that it was Howard who chased him and destroyed the dory.
With no alcohol left, the two begin drinking a concoction of turpentine and honey, while the storm worsens and starts flooding the cottage. The next morning, Howard finds Wake's soiled logbook, in which Wake has criticized him as drunk and incompetent and recommended that he should be sacked without pay. The two men argue, and Howard attacks Wake while hallucinating the mermaid, the real Winslow, and Wake as a Proteus-like figure. Howard beats Wake into submission and takes him to the hole at the base of the lighthouse to bury him alive. Wake curses Howard as he is buried, wishing him a "Promethean fate." Howard takes the keys to the lantern room, but Wake frees himself and strikes Howard with a pickaxe. Howard disarms Wake and kills him, before ascending the lighthouse. In the lantern room, the Fresnel lens opens to Howard, who reaches in and laughs before violently screaming in distortion, then slipping and falling down the lighthouse steps. Sometime later, a barely-living Howard lies naked on the rocks with a damaged eye as a flock of gulls peck at his exposed bowels, with the lighthouse being completely missing from the island.
Cast
* Robert Pattinson as Ephraim Winslow/Thomas Howard
* Willem Dafoe as Thomas Wake
* Valeriia Karamn as the Mermaid
* Logan Hawkes as the real Ephraim Winslow
Production
Development
The original idea of 'The Lighthouse' was first articulated at a dinner between director Robert Eggers and his younger brother, Max Eggers. Robert was unhappy with his film industry prospects after the pitching of his first major feature, 'The Witch' (2015), failed to secure funding. Max shared a basic outline from his screenplay, a lighthouse-set ghost tale as part of an attempted reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished short story "The Light-House". Adapting the short story proved troublesome, halting Max's progress on the script, then under the tentative working title 'Burnt Island'. Robert started musing ideas to bolster the project's conceptualization, and, with his brother's support, soon began investigating for source material.
One story that caught the director's attention in his initial research was a nineteenth-century myth of an incident at Smalls Lighthouse in Wales, wherein one of two wickies, both named Thomas, dies while trapped at their outpost by a destructive storm. That both men were named Thomas, Robert recalled, compelled him to create a film with an underlying story of identity. By the time there was a realized concept, Robert momentarily stopped his commitment to 'The Lighthouse' when he found an investor to finance 'The Witch'.
After 'The Witch' finished its theater rollout, the film's unexpected success elevated Robert's directing profile. To exploit his newfound credibility, he pushed 'The Lighthouse', one of several projects, in his negotiations with studio executives. He and Max then resumed their work by exchanging drafts they revised accordingly. This coincided with more rigorous research of the period to develop the onscreen world: Robert immersed in photos of 1890s New England, 1930s maritime-themed French films, and symbolist art for visual reference. The Eggers' study of literature with maritime and surrealist themes informed 'The Lighthouse' characters' speech. They looked into the writings of Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H. P. Lovecraft, among others, before coming across literature from Sarah Orne Jewett, a novelist best known for her local color works set around the coast of Maine. Her dialect-heavy writing style provided the lead characters' cadences, rooted in the experiences of her own sailor characters and real-life farmers, fishermen and captains she had interviewed. Robert and Max also deferred to a dissertation on Jewett's technique to guide their direction for intense conversational scenes.
The Eggers' theater background was another force shaping 'The Lighthouse' creative direction. The two men sourced elements from playwrights that influenced their work as young teens, chiefly from artists such as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Sam Shepard whose writings examine male-centric perspectives of existential crises and psychosis.
Casting
'The Lighthouse' stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. They both separately approached Eggers to express their enthusiasm for 'The Witch' and their desire to collaborate. Dafoe and Pattinson first met at a party, and Pattinson's participation was used as a selling point in pitches to Dafoe. Their signings were announced separately to the media in February 2018. Robert's initial film proposals with Dafoe were not fruitful. When they met in person to discuss 'The Lighthouse', the director was plainspoken in the conversation. Dafoe recalled, "There was no discussion. 'This is the way we're going to do this. My way or the highway.' That's very unusual, especially for a two-hander, for a director to say, 'This is the way I see it. Yes or no?'"
Pattinson and Robert originally met to negotiate terms for an unrelated project. Pattinson was offered, and passed on portraying a Victorian socialite because he believed the role would fail to challenge his acting ability. His next meeting with Robert took place once he finished reading 'The Lighthouse' completed script. During the conversation, Pattinson showed Eggers a clip of an intoxicated man screaming "I am a demon" to convey this understanding of the director's vision.
To prepare for their respective roles, each actor employed different techniques at the rehearsals. Dafoe was spontaneous in his performance, citing his theater background with the experimental troupe The Wooster Group, whereas Pattinson planned his rehearsing from the discussion of the script.
Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred in Robert's directorial debut 'The Witch', was eager to work with him again and asked if she could play the mermaid. Robert replied that there was not a role for her and she "really should not be this particular mermaid". Taylor-Joy jokingly replied that she could play a seagull instead.
Filming
Principal photography began on April 9, 2018, in Canada. Filming finished slightly over schedule, at approximately 35 days, as a result of unforeseen circumstances on set. Jarin Blaschke was contracted as the director of photography in his third collaboration with Robert. Shooting officially commenced in Cape Forchu, a fishing village in southern Nova Scotia. Because the filmmakers found no lighthouse suitable for the needs of the production, they constructed a 70-foot (20-meter) lighthouse set for their base of operations. Elsewhere regionally, the production filmed scenes at Leif Erikson Park, inside a hangar at Yarmouth Airport, and soundstages near Halifax for interior shoots. 'The Lighthouse' filming became a difficult undertaking as a combination of remote location, technical caveats of the camerawork, and harsh climate precipitated a stressful work environment.
Robert had already envisioned shooting 'The Lighthouse' in black-and-white, with a boxy aspect ratio, before drafting of the script. Although he and Blaschke faced resistance from studio executives hoping to maximize the film's commercial prospects, the two men were adamant and did not want to shoot in color because they feared undermining the artistic integrity of their work. Robert at first asserted the use of 1.33:1 format aspect ratio, believing it sufficiently captured confined sets and the lighthouse's vertical orientation, then reconsidered when Blaschke suggested 1.19:1 aspect ratio, imaging used fleetingly in the film industry's transition to sound, as an alternative (albeit in jest). After further analysis of period films for inspiration, chiefly the German thriller 'M' (1931), Blaschke determined that the 1.19:1 format endowed footage with a greater sense of confinement, while amplifying the physical isolation of the characters in their environment.
Blaschke shot 'The Lighthouse' on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 cameras equipped with vintage Bausch and Lomb Baltar lenses. Occasionally, to capture flashback sequences or scenes of heightened conflict, specialized lenses refurbished by Panavision were used. The onscreen universe was given a highly saturated visual palette evocative of orthochromatic film. Creating the spectrum of textures with a sufficient antique quality was one of Blaschke's initial responsibilities during the pre-production. He developed a process of testing the utility of digital footage in color negative film stock, first with Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 film, before selecting Eastman Double-X 5222 stock based on the composition produced. Blaschke resumed the testing after securing the Baltar lenses for the shoot, this time with an arrangement of shortpass filtersa class of scientific optical filtersand photographic filters most sensitive to blue-green and ultraviolet light. The specifications were so unusual that it required the manufacture of custom sets of filters by Schneider Kreuznach, a costly, month-long endeavor. Blaschke recalled, "I sketched a desired spectrograph on graph paper, indicating a complete elimination of all light beyond 570 nanometers [mid-yellow] while allowing all shorter wavelengths to pass freely. At that point, I was unsure of the true light loss and I was pretty nervous about it." Post-production editing of 'The Lighthouse' occurred simultaneously at the FotoKem film laboratories in Burbank, California.
Themes
Style
'The Lighthouse' genre was described by critics such as Manohla Dargis of 'The New York Times' as a horror film and Lee Marshall of 'Screen Daily' as a psychological thriller. Other critics, such as Owen Gleiberman of 'Variety' stated that the film was one that could not be pigeonholed, declaring that "you may feel in your bones that you're watching a supernatural shocker [...] Are we seeing a slice of survival, a horror film, or a study in slow-brewing mutual insanity? How about all of the above?" Michael Phillips of 'The Chicago Tribune' echoed these statements, noting that the film's plot did not operate "as any sort of conventional ghost story, or thriller, or anything".Psychoanalysis
Eggers said the film's sub-text was influenced by Sigmund Freud, and hoped that "it's a movie where both Jung and Freud would be furiously eating their popcorn". According to Pattinson, the phallic imagery of the lighthouse is explicit, as Eggers described it as an erect penis in the script. The film was meant to include "a very juvenile shot of a lighthouse moving like an erect penis and a match-cut to Pattinson's actual erect penis", although this cut was removed upon request by financiers. Winslow displays an Oedipal fixation on his boss, Wake, given his simultaneous fear and admiration of him. Pattinson commented on the father/son dynamic in the film, stating "I was pretty conscious of how I wanted the relationship to come across. In a lot of ways, he sort of wants a daddy." As the film progresses, Winslow is increasingly "looking for Willem [Dafoe]'s validation" both as a boss and as a father figure.Mythology
' ( 14931503) by Albrecht DrerEggers was inspired by sailors' myths and classical mythology. After finally obtaining the light, and the knowledge of what is in the light, Howard falls to his death down the stairs of the lighthouse and his organs are plucked out by seagulls, invoking the myth of Prometheus. Wake was modeled on Proteus, a "prophecy-telling ocean god who serves Poseidon." Not only is he later shown with tentacles and sea creatures stuck to his body, but "he also makes that uncannily accurate prediction for how Ephraim will die at the end of the movie." Albrecht Drer's engraving 'The Sea Monster' inspired Wake's appearance: Eggers said "The Proteus figure that is more clearly nautical is somewhat based on a sea monster by Drer, who carries a tortoise shell shield."
Eggers explains his mythological inspiration for the film: it's "partially because Herman Melville|[Herman] Melville goes there and partially because of I'm sure our unhealthy Jungian leanings you get into classical mythology in this movie."
Sexuality
'The Lighthouse' contains explicit depictions of male sexuality and primarily depicts two men alone in close quarters on an island. But when asked whether the film was "a love story", Robert Eggers replied:
Sexual fantasy and masturbation are recurring themes in the film. For Dafoe, the androphilia in the film is blatant, but it is also used to explore what it means to be a man: "They have a sense of guilt, of wrong [...] it's got existential roots [...] about masculinity and domination and submission." After beating Wake into submission, Howard assumes a dominant role, calling Wake "dog" and dragging him on a leash. Commenting on this scene, Pattinson said "there's definitely a take where we were literally trying to pull each other's pants down. It literally almost looked like foreplay."
The film's mythological and artistic influences underscore its eroticism. Eggers acknowledged the visual influence of symbolist artists Sascha Schneider and Jean Delville, whose "mythic paintings in a homoerotic style," he said, "[became] perfect candidates as imagery that's going to work itself into the script." The composition of a shot in the film was consciously adapted from Schneider's 'Hypnosis'.
Release
'The Lighthouse' had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight section on May 19, 2019. It was also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Atlantic Film Festival in September 2019. The film was distributed by A24 in North America and by Focus Features internationally. It was released on October 18, 2019.
Reception
Box office
'The Lighthouse' grossed $10.9 million in the United States and $7.5 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $18.3 million.In its limited opening weekend on October 18, the film grossed $419,764 from eight theaters, for an average of $52,471 per venue. In its second weekend the film expanded to 586 theaters, grossing $3.75 million, eighth at the box office. The following weekend, the film expanded to 978 theaters, falling 34.7% to $2 million and finishing 13th.
Critical response
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critics' consensus reads, "A gripping story brilliantly filmed and led by a pair of powerhouse performances, 'The Lighthouse' further establishes Robert Eggers as a filmmaker of exceptional talent." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 52 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."Owen Gleiberman of 'Variety' called the film "darkly exciting" and "made with extraordinary skill," commenting that "the movie, building on 'The Witch', proves that Robert Eggers possesses something more than impeccable genre skill. He has the ability to lock you into the fever of what's happening onscreen." Robbie Collin of 'The Daily Telegraph' gave the film a perfect score, calling Dafoe's performance "astounding" and comparing Pattinson's to that of Daniel Day-Lewis in 'There Will Be Blood', commenting, "that's no comparison to make lightly, but everything about 'The Lighthouse' lands with a crash. It's cinema to make your head and soul ring."
Writing for 'The Guardian', Peter Bradshaw also praised the performances of Dafoe and Pattinson, in addition to the screenplay stating "Their script is barnacled with resemblances to Coleridge, Shakespeare, Melville and there's also some staggeringly cheeky black-comic riffs and gags and the two of them resemble no-one so much as Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett: Steptoe and Son in hell." From 'The New York Times', Manohla Dargis gave positive remarks to the character development, production design, acting, and themes. From the 'Chicago Tribune', Michael Phillips gave a mostly positive review where he recommended the film to readers, compared it to 'The Odd Couple' (1968) and 'The Dumb Waiter' (1957), and lauded the cinematography while giving the feature three stars out of five.
While 'The Sydney Morning Herald' said its attempts at suspense were not successful, the 'San Francisco Chronicle' mentioned that everything in 'The Lighthouse' was well-made to the point that it was brought down due to its screenplay. 'The Guardian's Simran Hans gave it two stars out of five and said the performances felt more like an "experiment than conducive to eliciting meaning." For 'Slate', Dana Stevens summarized by stating that "'The Lighthouse' is at its strongest when it resembles the dark comedy of a Samuel Beckett|[Samuel] Beckett play, complete with earthy scatological humor [but] the film sometimes seems funny in a different way [...] in spite of the filmmakers' intentions. Its effect on movie audiences is less spiritually corrupting [but] I found myself identifying with the stranded seafarers: I desperately wanted to get out."
Accolades
References
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