♥♥♥♥♥♥
+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year
+ Best B/W Movie of the Year + Best Poster of the Year + Best Psychological Thriller of the Year
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| Two halves of two men before the titular lighthouse on this tense B/W poster for Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse |
A sobering ex-forest worker younger man arrives at a tiny rock island off the New England coast sometime at the end of the 19th century, where he is to work as a wicker at the important lighthouse under the direction of an older, curmudgeon ex-seaman.
The Lighthouse is written by Max Eggers (The Tell-Tale Heart (2008, short), production assistant) and master New Hampshirite filmmaker, his brother, co-writer/co-producer/director Robert Eggers (The Witch (2015)), whose 2nd film it is.
Robert Pattinson (Good Time (2017)) and Willem Dafoe (Edges of the Lord (2001)) both give fully immersed, great performances as the two very different men on the island, master class in acting I and II, they could be described.
Unusually shot in a near-square format on B/W film by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke (Fray (2012)), the film is ripe with eye-popping visuals that never seem to transgress the practically possible with overt uses of CGI. Much of the story and its visuals have symbolic connotations that enhance the mystery and attraction of the film for viewers sensible to them; but The Lighthouse is as compelling and fascinating seen as a straightly concrete tale SPOILER of two men on an island who gradually lose their minds due to dire circumstances.
The film has little music, and its soundscape is dominated by a surreal, deep humming seemingly created by machinery on the isle. In tone the film plays us with complex affinities: Several sequences are dialog reliant, and especially Dafoe's character's authentic local sailor's vocabulary and grammar is a joy as delivered by the seasoned veteran. There's much humor and a genuinely good time to be had, surprisingly, surrounded by the extreme ardors and rancid squalor of two men who descend in drink on a deserted island. Incredibly these hilarious bickering and chum-making scenes also often lapse into truly terrifying scenes of mystery, menace and deep-seated existential dread.
It is all told with assured, tight editing in a film of scenes and images that get lodged in the audiences' memories like a strange, unnerving 19th century novel. - What does it all mean? This review, like the film, will leave it up to each viewer to discern for himself.
Related posts:
Rogert Eggers: 2019 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The Witch (2015) - Eggers' unsettling period-set debut creep-out
Cost: 4 mil. $
Box office: 18 mil. $ and counting
= Big hit (returned 4.5 times its cost)
[The Lighthouse premiered 19 May (Cannes Film Festival, out of competition) and runs 109 minutes. Max Eggers wanted to adapt Edgar Allan Poe's The Light-House (1849), but found it difficult and collaborated with his brother to make the film, which has almost no resemblance to Poe's story. It is instead inspired by the 1801 Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy, which you can read about here. A shot in the script of Pattinson's actual erect penis was removed at the request of the financiers. A 20-meter working lighthouse was erected for the film. Shooting took place in 34 days in Nova Scotia from April - May 2018. The film opened #15 to a 427k $ first weekend in 8 theaters in North America, were it peaked at #8 and in 978 theaters (different weeks), grossing 10.8 mil. $ (60 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 1.6 mil. $ (8.9 %) and Mexico with 950k $ (5.3 %). The release was badly hurt by the cinema-closing Corona Crisis. The film was nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar, lost to Roger Deakins for 1917. The film was also nominated for a BAFTA, a prize in Cannes, 2/5 Independent Spirit award nominations and countless other honors. Eggers returns with Viking movie The Northman (pre-production), again with Dafoe. Pattinson returned in The King (2019); Dafoe in Tommaso (2019). The Lighthouse is certified fresh at 90 % with an 8.04/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Lighthouse?
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