Folk Horror Season: The Lighthouse (Dir Robert Eggers 1h49m, 2019)
Such a traveller is Robert Eggers, and such a film is The Lighthouse, a dark and often eldritch mariner's tale that runs the gamut from Lovecraft to Melville to Beckett in its depiction of two lighthouse keepers (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) slowly losing their grip on reality. Robert Eggers is as close as American Folk Horror cinema has to a poster-boy: since arriving on the scene with The VVitch (2015), a sublimely dark slice of New England folk horror in which a newly arrived 17th Century Puritan family encounter demonic forces beyond their control. Eggers's film, making $40 million on a budget of $4 million, thus turning a small independent distribution company named A24 into a household name
Since The VVitch, Eggers has made two films, The Lighthouse and the Viking Saga-inspired, The Northman (2019), with an adaption of Nosferatu, heavily inspired by F. W. Murnau's 1922 original, releasing later this winter. All of his films largely feature the same central cast, Dafoe appearing in all but The VVitch, all are shot by cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke (notable for his work on M Night Shyamalan's enjoyable Knock at the Cabin), and all three of his currently released films consider dreams and stories, and the thin line between good and evil, and the place of folklore in both themes.
The Lighthouse begins simply, with the arrival of our two protagonists, the film's two souls who will spend a month on the rock; the film is dominated by the sea. The film's black and white style resembling a a Daguerrotype with a heavy emphasis on red and yellows-indeed, behind the film's stark visual style is intricate research, expensive filtering lenses and a return to 35mm film, not to mention a purpose-built 70ft lighthouse. In a single, if meticulous choice, the film calls up, and further explores, German Expressionism, nautical woodcuts and paintings, and the photography of the latter half of the 19th Century.
In some sequences, as the film grows stranger and more dreamlike, the use of black and white, an ink black sea giving up disturbing visions and visitations, is particularly effective, whilst the claustrophobic indoor scenes, shot at night have heavy shadowing, largely lit from below. In the following sequence, the film depicts the struggle to come, the adversarial battle that will take place, between the island's two inhabitants. Unlike the men they are relieving, our two protagonists do not acknowledge each other, landing ashore independently. They are, in short, strangers, the younger, Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson), soon put to work on menial tasks by the domineering Thomas Wake (Dafoe), who jealously protects the lamp room.
Wake, for his part, is a perfect foil to Ephraim; at points, he is a harsh taskmaster, heavily lit from below, or towering into shot, whilst at other points Dafoe is almost kindly, their meals at the end of the day the one break in the hostilities, and, once they become isolated on the island and in the lighthouse, closer still. Yet at other points, Wake is otherworldly; Dafoe's best moment may be the bellowing speech, half Ahab, half Posiedon, beautifully lit from below, as Wake almost transforms, the features of Dafoe becoming possessed, his language dripping with nautical allusions. As the days increase, soon blurring into each other, their isolation becomes more and more oppressive. Winslow's grip on sanity begins to slip, where these nautical allusions and the disturbing visions floating in from sea and from within Winslow's mind overwhelm him.
From there the film slowly descends into strange and often disturbing visuals; shapes moving in the night sea give way to the form of a mermaid (Valeriia Karaman), whose seaweed-wrapped helpless form is that of a predator, Winslow recoiling and fleeing. This haunting, and often Lovecraftian imagery of tentacles, and barnacles and the crashing waves haunt the film, but more than this, it is the unsettling psychosexual elements that prowl the edges of this film. Early on, Winslow is disturbed by the figure of a naked Wake before the lamp that he jealously guards, whilst, later, as the isolation of the island grows, so the tension between the two men does, and, as this isolation presses in, and they turn to drink to control their fears-at least in the case of Winslow. The film's two main figures, despite their initial antagonism and deepening paranoia, are thrown closer..
It is here that Eggers' work arrives at something resembling the work of Samuel Beckett; like Waiting for Godot many of the night scenes are, undeniably, funny, the pairs' dysfunction as amusing as it is a dark descent into the human psyche. Like Vladimir and Estragon, Wake and Ephrahim are two men yoked together awaiting something-an allegory for everything from God to purpose, echoed in the men in the lighthouse's entrapment; what they are waiting for, and what awaits them is less clear, but it is no less disturbing.
It is this sense of isolation, both plumbed for its comedic depths, and the slipping sanity of its protagonists, that makes The Lighthouse a superb entry in horror, and specifically folk horror cinema; whether farce, thriller, as their entrapment on the island slowly saps their sanity, or horror movie, two men haunted by a power or an intelligence beyond their comprehension, The Lighthouse remains a landmark in modern horror cinema.
Rating: Must See
The Lighthouse is available via streaming on AppleTV, and on DVD and BluRay from Warner Bros in the UK and via streaming on Amazon Prime, and on DVD from the A24 Shop, in the USA
Next week, we arrive in Iceland for our final folk horror film of the season, Lamb
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