THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Robert Eggers
Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson, Valeriia Karaman
There are parts of "The Lighthouse", especially at the beginning, when you'd almost think you were looking at a silent movie. The location is primitive. The photography is high-contrast black and white. The aspect ratio is nearly square. For the first reel or two, there's no dialogue at all. What's maybe most striking is how much Robert Pattinson, who plays one of the two characters in the piece, resembles the early silent star Robert Harron, while his counterpart, a craggy, bearded Willem Dafoe, could've stepped out of something by Victor Sjöstrom. The two men are lighthouse keepers - "lighties", they call themselves - serving a four-week stint as the sole inhabitants on a remote island off the Atlantic Coast. Both are compulsively anti-social - that's one of the reasons they've washed up on this desolate rock - and as the days grind on, their behavior becomes more erratic, more volatile and more dangerous. Eventually, they both go insane. It's a intense workout for the actors, punctuated by brief moments of comic relief, and the atmosphere's so starkly evoked, you can practically feel the cold spray of the sea cutting into your skin and smell the piss and sweat in the cramped sleeping quarters the two men share. Whether you'd want to watch something like this more than once is an open question, but watch it that once, and you might be glad you did.
