Movie Blurb

The Lighthouse, directed by Robert Eggers, starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson is a richly unique film taking place on a desolate landscape. Shot in 1.91:1 aspect ratio in black and white it is really more like 50 shades of grey, so to speak. To say it is bleak would be to understate the barrenness of the rock on which the Lighthouse is situated. Shooting inside the cramped cottage below the lighthouse where the men live and drink together creates a tense and claustrophobic atmosphere.

The brothers Robert Eggers and Max Eggers, who cowrote the screenplay, seem to channel their inner Herman Melville as they spin out their whale of a tale of two “wickies” spending a four week shift together tending a lighthouse on a desolate rock. “Let’s see if we can make this even more strange,” they seem to be saying to each other as each turn of the screw in the movie gets weirder and weirder as each new scene unfolds. But, as Hunter S. Thompson once said, “As weird as things have been, they still haven’t been weird enough for me.” So, I didn’t mind. I just sat there transfixed. There was mermaid sex, masturbation, a calling up from the deep demons and depraved spirits and a variety of mythological creatures not to mention an angry seagull. It’s bad luck to kill a sea bird, we are warned. Poseidon makes and appearance and at the end (spoiler) we are treated to a Prometheus like figure lying on a rock as seagulls eat out his liver. What does it all mean? Who knows, but it was one helluva ride!