The Lighthouse

You'll leave The Lighthouse with a fair few thoughts rattling around your head but I'm pretty certain the main one will be "Huh, I never thought I'd see a close up of a mermaid's vagina on a cinema screen." That's not a spoiler by the way.

Off the coast of New England lay a bare island and on that island was a lighthouse. In that lighthouse were 2 men working as hard as can be. One old, bearded, full of suspicion, stuck in his ways and prone to nudity (Willem Dafoe) and one younger, quieter, shrouded in mystery and partial to onanism (Robert Pattinson). Trapped together for a 4 week shift they're initially wary of each other but loneliness and alcohol have a way of bonding men and soon a combination of both sees them starting to crack.

The teenager in front of me was distressed. You could tell by the way she was squirming as the blood and meat splattered the rocks and the beating kept going on and on and on and on. Her and her fella had definitely picked the wrong film to celebrate a day off because of the teacher's strike. The rest of us were squirming too. Not because of the brutality on display. No, because of the sheer uncertainty about what was going to happen next. The Lighthouse is an absolutely demented watch. It starts off slowly, 2 men doing their work and easing us into the rhythms of life as a wickie, a 19th century term for a lighthouse keeper. Conversation is kept to a minimum with the silence only broken by the lighthouse siren and the unashamed breaking of wind. Things tick over and slowly they start to drink and drink and drink. And then everything falls off a cliff when the younger man, Ephraim, chooses to ignore a solid piece of advice. Traumatic visions. Montages of aquatic horror and masturbation. Images that wouldn't look out of place in a hentai movie. What's real? What's not? Who knows. Our leads don't. Ephraim, constantly on the verge of losing it, the older Thomas, well in the depths of madness. His candle lit sea shanty rants become the stuff of fever dreams, Dafoe's face morphing into something you've only seen in your worst nightmares. It's fucking terrifying. Yet strangely exhilarating.

It does start off slowly and you will be tested by it. It's black and white photography and it's almost square aspect ratio seem like precious affectations on the part of director Robert Eggers but soon enough you'll be caught up in it all. The claustrophobia created by the small screen mirroring what our boys are feeling. The offscreen happenings hidden by the framing making us confused and putting us on edge. The hazy b&w leaving you wondering what's going to pop out of the shadows. It's unsettling and then almost instantly it's chaotic. The mayhem sneaks up on you and around 2/3s of the way through you won't know whether to laugh or recoil in horror. Pattinson and Dafoe sell it brilliantly and both hit such a warped fever pitch of insanity you wonder will you ever be able to look at both the same again. Dafoe does especially memorable work. The last of his big spiels delivered in a moment I don't recall ever having seen before. 

Is The Lighthouse a deceptively simple look at the descent into mental illness exacerbated by loneliness and alcohol or is there something more sinister happening on the island? Eggers never gives us answers, trusting us to take what we want from the story. There'll be a dozen different interpretations of this film but only yours is important. One thing you'll take from it is the understanding that an awful lot of men's problems could be solved if they laid off the drink and learned how to communicate properly. 

In cinemas now. It's truly something else. If you like to leave a film feeling like you've been kicked in the head then this is one for you.