The narrative is partially influenced by an incident that took place at Smalls Lighthouse off the coast of Wales in the 18th century, but Eggers only uses this event as a historical foundation to build upon. Frustrations mount, bizarre dreams start to bleed into reality, and Wake and Winslow are set on a collision course over who gets to control the lighthouse. He covets the lighthouse like a wife, and as Winslow notices early on during his time on the island, Wake does strange things in the lighthouse at night. While the men are supposed to share duties, Wake refuses Winslow entry to the top of the lighthouse, instead ordering him to do the menial tasks of keeping up their residence on the island. Winslow is a first-time wickie (a lighthouse keeper) trying to make money by taking on the difficult work. Wake is a veteran keeper who has spent more than a decade working the lighthouse on a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean. In the most literal sense, The Lighthouse is the story of two lighthouse keepers: Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Winslow (Robert Pattinson). Like the best blends of arthouse and genre filmmaking, The Lighthouse confounds and dazzles, both through its narrative and its artistry. This formal approach destabilizes you as you watch it it places you onto slippery ground as to the reality of what you’re seeing, not unlike how the young lighthouse keeper at the film’s centre is placed onto slippery rocks while tending the island lighthouse. Most notably, Eggers utilizes a foghorn drone that repeats at frequent intervals throughout the entirety of the film. Its sound design is even more overwhelming that its visual approach. It is boldly conceived, with black-and-white cinematography, a full frame aspect ratio, and a distortion on the lens that replicates the impurities of early film (similar to a film by Canadian auteur Guy Maddin). Like that seminal midnight movie, Robert Eggers’ new film defies convention while mining the uncanny space between dreams and real life that can makes cinema so potent to experience. In a sense, it’s a horror film, but only in the sense that David Lynch’s Eraserhead is a horror film. The Lighthouse is a bizarre, uncategorizable film about madness and isolation.
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