The Lighthouse

A sea the color of crude oil and the light of the lighthouse like the Divine Light. A crushing atmosphere of bullying, lies and madness. A great screenplay with psychologically unstable characters in the main roles, who move the action along with drunken spouting and gradual confiding in each other as they come face to face with starving to death. Teh farting Dafoe delivers an acting masterclass and the masturbating Pattinson is his star pupil who isn’t afraid of taking things to extremes. The mermaid hallucinations and being buried alive are moments of the year. Aye, lad! (2019-12-30)

Proteus and Prometheus in the shadow of Poe and his Maelstroms, gradually pulling in those with demons in their souls? Or the pages of Melville, Stevenson, Lovecraft, Beckett, and Pinter, drenched in salty sea foam? Or, as the authors of the "weird tale" themselves claim, a story that Freud and Jung would furiously munch popcorn over? Perhaps it’s just two lighthouse keepers with cabin fever, alternating between masculine and feminine roles, getting drunk on honey and turpentine, and masturbating over the magic of the Fresnel lens? Who knows what we actually witnessed. After all, 130 years have passed, and the maritime message from New England has been handed down so many times that the truth now only barely intersects with a good story. It’s striking, among other things, in how the protagonists achieve extreme physical expression through different acting methods (such as Pattinson’s masturbation over mermaids and sea fruits, or Dafoe’s curse with bulging eyes that leaves no doubt about his culinary skills). In any case, it’s a solid splash of a film, with its genre ambiguity adding to its charm. (2024-09-04)

A very empty exhibition of a talented machine to build a thick atmosphere; you can’t deny its depiction of period realism and the intentionally obsolete formal approaches (static shots, details, expressive acting, precise geometric composition), but it has absolutely nothing to offer the viewer seeking a meaningfully organised narration or some sort of distinctive process. The Witch headed somewhere and tied a loop around the viewer, who had set certain expectations, but The Lighthouse is self absorbed from the first to the last scene and never changes its nature and the pressure on the audience – and though in itself this isn’t annoying, it’s certainly not remarkable or in any way as subversive as Eggers wants it to be. 60% (2020-01-18)

The Lighthouse is undoubtedly a remarkable experience. A film composed of black and white shots in the classic aspect ratio, full of magical realism turning into naturalism. Even its language is different, and the script is inspired by the language of real 19th-century sailors and the unfinished short story by E. A. Poe. The result is certainly worthy of attention, but it is open to debate whether pure naturalism would be a more appropriate form. (2022-03-19)

Just like in his The Witch, the director relishes creating the right atmosphere, but his film is very inapproachable; he makes every effort to spoil your viewing experience. The actors in the leading roles (Dafoe and Pattison) deliver superb performances, moreover in black and white, in a spooky, morbid environment with a hidden evil like from Lovecraft. I like all of this, but the inapproachability of the film makes it hard to give it better than average rating. It is, however, definitely a unique experience. (2020-01-30)