The Lighthouse

Read Time: 2 minutes, 17 seconds.

You said I shouldn’t have gone
I don’t know I went ahead on anyway
Night time wore to dawn
I found my free will had gone away from me
Behind the masks that pass for faces
Hours are lost in forbidden places

-Meat Puppets, Forbidden Places

Whew, now here we have a movie which rarely comes along, let alone gets made. The Lighthouse qualifies as a cinematic “Event.” Much like the release of Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, “Event” movies are a rare thing.

Set in the 1890’s near New England on a mysterious island outpost, The Lighthouse takes the viewer on a journey to strange places. Forbidden Places.

The black and white cinematography transports you inside this moody island atmosphere. Black and White Movies have a luminosity and dreaminess nearly forgotten in today’s hyper-real, ultra-realistic digital world. This movie feels ancient, and the dense sound design further envelops your senses.

Directed by Robert Eggers, (The VVitch) The Lighthouse was filmed on 35mm black & white film stock, an oddity in our digital age. You can see the difference. This is the real McCoy. This writer can recall seeing several black and white films in the theatre which all left an indelible mark on the psyche:

• Stagecoach (1939)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• Notorious (1946)
• Psycho (1960)
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to stop worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
• Kafka (1991)
• Ed Wood (1994)
• The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) 
• The Lighthouse (2019)

The Lighthouse is a movie for grown-ups. It has a story. Superb acting. Watching Willem Dafoe’s and Robert Pattinson’s characters lose their marbles makes for a master acting class. Dafoe nearly steals the whole show. Pattinson rises to the occasion, he’s fantastic. Inspired casting here.

Within the darkness
Behind the faces
Pioneers of forbidden places

-Meat Puppets, Forbidden Places

It’s challenging to write about a movie and not “spill the beans,” in Lighthouse parlance. The gothic atmosphere, eerie visuals and surrealistic vignettes make for a one of a kind movie experience.  This is not an uplifting tale but rather a cautionary one. A superstitious one. A tale of many things: Circumstances, Demons, The Elements, Ghosts, Hardships, Isolation, Loneliness, Madness…multi-layered levels of the human condition and psyche. Demons are real. Ye Face Them.

-Jakub Rozalski 

Something I wouldn’t have thought
Crept up from behind me now it’s here to stay
Too real although it’s not
Couldn’t have possibly been avoided anyway

-Meat Puppets, Forbidden Places