The Lighthouse
WithThe Lighthouse , director Robert Eggers gives consultation a follow - up toThe Witchthat is weirder , more creative , and full of breaking wind - and it all careens towards a desirable wild ending . In 2015 , Robert Eggers made a serious splashing with his directorial entry , the diachronic repulsion filmThe Witch . Released by A24 the undermentioned year , the motion-picture show made back ten times its $ 4 million budget and was widely declare to be not only one of the best repugnance films of the yr , but one of the chilling motion picture ever made . Eggers set himself a serious challenge in create a sophomore statute title that would live up to those majestic expectations while being solely its own thing . Fortunately , withThe Lighthouse , he ’s done that and then some .
The Lighthousepremiered in Director ’s Fortnight at the 2019Cannes Film Festival , where it acquire the International Federation of Film Critics prize . Once again distributed byA24 , the movie has racked up mass of vital acclaim , and it remains one of the twelvemonth ’s most delightfully outlandish and endlessly creative picture show . The story follows two lighthouse keepers who are forced to knead together for several weeks at an marooned lighthouse separated from civilization . Thomas Wake ( Willem Dafoe ) is the cranky old - hand who adheres to superstitious notion and drinks heavy . Ephraim Winslow ( Robert Pattinson ) is new to the problem and has little time for its endless plodding or the company of his colleague . It does n’t take long for paranoia , psychotic belief , and an understandable fright of sea gull to recoil in .
Audiences will inevitably be unnerved and captivate by the alluring experience of watchingThe Lighthouse . It ’s a flick whose influence are equal partsDavid Lynch , Tarkovsky , Lovecraft , andMoby Dick . The flick refuses to hold the looker ’s hand and leaves much of its narrative up to interpretation . Here ’s what to know aboutThe Lighthouse , its tearing ending , and some of its strange moment .
What Happened in The Lighthouse
The king of beasts ’s ploughshare of the tension inThe Lighthousecomes from the family relationship between Wake and Winslow , which turns from favorable to sinister on a dime bag . Wake seems slightly off - kilter but largely used to the humdrum of lighthouse keeping , whereas Winslow is easily stir up by what he thought would be a much simpler caper . Slowly , it becomes unmortgaged to Winslow that Wake may have gone mad during their shift if he was n’t already sore to start with . Wake seems godly , even sexually taken up , with the brightness of the lighthouse , which he refuses to lease Winslow near , something that becomes another seed of latent hostility between them .
It is also revealed , during one of many imbibition session , that Winslow is not who he says he is . In reality , he is Thomas Howard , a former lumberjack whose last job ended in a catastrophe involve the genuine Ephraim Winslow that may or may not have been his defect . His lackadaisical relationship with the truth soon reveal to the audience that it may not be Wake who is the gaga one .
Of naturally , neither piece can fully be trusted . Wake ’s own past times seems suspicious and his obsessive stress on Winslow / Howard veers between repulsed and mayhap intimate . The dark before they are set to be picked up and recall home , Wake gets Winslow unreasoning drunk , insure that they miss the ship sent to amass them . Winslow becomes confident Wake is plant him up to be terminate for incompetency , which would mean he would n’t get paid for his oeuvre . awaken does expose gaslighting terms , such as trying to make Winslow doubt how much time has passed , but when the hearing ca n’t be sure who , if anyone , is telling the truth , it ’s easy to become embroiled in that paranoia .
What’s With the Farting?
No auteur is too good for a fart trick , and Robert Eggers gayly motor that point home inThe Lighthouse . Amid the unnerving feeling , the hallucinogenic spring of logic , and the lead ’ descents into madness , Willem Dafoe ’s character is also a chronic farter ( the actor claims that the split between real wind and ones added in post - production is about half and half ) . It ’s one of the thing that drive Winslow round the bend , perhaps even more so than the potential gaslighting and sempiternal donkeywork of his occupation . There may be a deep thematic reason for all the breaking wind , but the main reason they ’re there is that Eggers finds them risible !
The Lighthouseis a very bleak drollery , which differentiates it fromThe Witch . Indeed , it ’s with that first wind that the audience take in this picture is cash in one’s chips in a far stranger direction than egger ’s predecessor ( there are also plenty of references to masturbation , suitably go on the tone low when the occasion calls for it . ) In an interview withVice , Eggers noted how keen he was to jump between ostensibly collide flavor and how farting oddly helped that cognitive process :
“ The movie is vulgar and over - the - top and showy . It ’s on the nose in many ways , but that ’s what we were after . The intention behind The Witch was to be very restrained . I think that story , while it sometimes annoys me , needed to take itself incredibly badly . But with this , we need to be able-bodied to express joy at misery . I liked the idea that you sit down down to ascertain The Lighthouse and you cerebrate , ' F**k , I did n’t have in mind to walk into a Hungarian art house pic , ' and then Willem farts and you ’re like , ' Oh , there ’s Leslie Townes Hope ! ' ”
Image via Universal Pictures, A24
What The Lighthouse’s Ending Means
After Winslow discovers that Wake has been keeping extensive documentation of his apparent misdeeds , the two have their biggest fight yet and thing get strong-arm . During their poke - up , Winslow sees Wake apparently transmute into a ocean - god , utter with tentacles and a automobile horn of precious coral . He seems to have take the shape of Proteus , whom Homer referred to as " Old Man of the Sea " , the son of Poseidon and a frequent feature in poetry by writers like Shakespeare , Wordsworth , and Milton . He ’s also a form - shifter , which fits in well with Wake ’s sudden variety .
Winslow kill inflame with a shovelful and makes his way to the antecedently inaccessible light of the lighthouse that Wake had antecedently forbidden him from approaching . Eggers has admit to being exalt by the works of H.P. Lovecraft , which suggest that the beacon itself could be some sort of gateway to another dimension of evil or an eldritch abomination itself . It could also have been inspired by the Pharos of Alexandria , a lighthouse that was one of the seven wonder of the ancient world . Whatever the case , when Winslow star into the Light Within , he goes sick and seems to burn as he laughs maniacally .
Whatever unimaginable secrets the light had to bring on him , they are never portion out with the audience and his ultimate destiny is leave in definitely equivocal terms . Winslow then awake up raw on the shores with Bronx cheer pecking at his breadbasket , including the one seagull that has taunted him for the intact movie . To continue to the Greek mythology angle of the storey , if Wake is Proteus then it seems that Winslow is Prometheus , the man who stole fire from the gods and was sentenced to have his liver pecked out every Clarence Day as a judgment of conviction . Winslow tried to take the fiery power of the lighthouse for himself , stealing it from its rightful carer and was fitly punished . genus Proteus and Prometheus never met in Greek mythology but they find like engrossing fits forThe Lighthouse , a story about power , generational divides , and the omnipotent force of things that mere humankind can not unfeignedly sound . If Winslow is Prometheus then perhaps the ending is hinting that this is his eternal fate , to live out this monstrous cycle per second over and over again , either as punishment for gazing into the visible radiation or for defeat the real Winslow .
It could all simply be in his head , the smother guilt for kill an innocent man , or perhaps there are supernatural forces at play beyond his control . The accuracy is thatThe Lighthouseis secure enough a film to fit any interpreting the audience run across fit . They could all be true or none of them and it does nothing to load the fascinating experience of being sweep over by Eggers ’s work . All of this equivocalness and the artistic craft behind it is what makesThe Lighthouseone of the twelvemonth ’s best flick .
NEXT : The Lighthouse Review : Pattinson & Dafoe Are Caught in a Bad Bromance
