The Lighthouse is a 2019 psychological thriller film directed and produced by Robert Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max Eggers. An international co-production of the United States and Canada, the film was shot in black-and-white with a nearly square 1.19:1 aspect ratio. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two lighthouse keepers who start to lose their sanity when a storm strands them on the remote island where they are stationed.
According to Eggers, although the final story bears little resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe’s fragment “The Light-House”, the film began as an attempt by his brother Max Eggers to create a contemporary take on the Poe story. When the project stalled, Eggers offered to work with his brother and the project evolved into a period thriller with the Poe elements largely removed. Dafoe and Pattinson were cast as the lead characters in February 2018. Principal photography began on April 9, 2018, and lasted a total of 34 days in Leif Erikson Park in Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia, Canada, and inside a hangar at Yarmouth Airport in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.
The film had its world premiere at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival on May 19, and was theatrically released on October 18, 2019, by A24. The film was praised for its technical aspects (notably the cinematography and production design), Eggers’ screenplay and direction, and the performances of the leads. It was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 92nd Academy Awards and 73rd British Academy Film Awards.
Plot
In the late 19th century, Ephraim Winslow serves a contract job as a wickie for a month on an isolated island off the coast of New England, under the supervision of an irritable elderly man named Thomas Wake. In his quarters, Winslow discovers a small scrimshaw of a mermaid and keeps it in his jacket. Wake immediately proves to be very demanding, assigning Winslow increasingly taxing jobs such as emptying their chamber pots, painting the lighthouse, and carrying heavy kerosene containers up the stairs, all the while forbidding him access to the lantern room; Winslow observes that every evening, Wake secretly ascends the lighthouse and disrobes before the light. During his stay on the island, Winslow begins to hallucinate sea monsters and logs floating in the sea, and masturbates to the mermaid on the scrimshaw. He also continues to observe Wake’s strange ritual and is bothered by a one-eyed gull that Wake tells him not to kill, as he is superstitious that gulls are reincarnated sailors. One evening while dining, Wake reveals to Winslow that his previous wickie died after losing his sanity, while Winslow reveals that he is a former timberman from Canada seeking a new trade.
The day before his scheduled departure, Winslow discovers a dead gull inside the cistern, bloodying its water. Winslow is again attacked by the one-eyed gull and he brutally kills it in anger. The wind drastically changes direction and a violent storm hits the island. Winslow and Wake spend the night getting drunk, and the storm rages through the next morning, preventing the relief ferry from arriving. As Winslow empties the chamber pots, he notices a body washed up on the shore and discovers that it is a mermaid, which awakens and howls at him. He flees back to the cottage, where Wake informs him that the storm has spoiled their rations, and that new ones will not arrive for weeks. The pair unearth a crate at the lighthouse’s base that supposedly contains reserve rations, but they only find more alcohol. In the following days, while the storm shows no sign of calming, Winslow and Wake continue to drink, alternating between moments of intimacy and hostility. One night, Winslow tries unsuccessfully to steal the lantern room keys from Wake as he sleeps. He later hallucinates a lobster trap containing the one-eyed head of Wake’s previous wickie. Winslow confesses to Wake that his real name is Thomas Howard and that he assumed the identity of Ephraim Winslow, his foreman who died in an accident Howard purposefully neglected to stop. Wake chases Howard down, accusing him of “spilling his beans” and destroying their only dory with an axe; once incapacitated, however, Wake claims that it was Howard who chased him and destroyed the dory.
With no alcohol left, the two begin drinking a concoction of turpentine and honey, while the storm worsens and starts flooding the cottage. The next morning, Howard finds Wake’s logbook, in which Wake has written a critical report of Howard’s performance and recommended he be sacked without pay. Upon Howard’s confrontation, Wake berates Howard, and Howard attacks Wake while hallucinating the mermaid, the real Winslow, and Wake as a Proteus-like figure. Howard beats Wake into submission and takes him to the hole at the base of the lighthouse to bury him alive. Wake curses Howard as he is buried, wishing him a “Promethean fate.” Howard takes the keys to the lantern room, but Wake frees himself and strikes Howard with the axe. Howard disarms Wake and kills him before ascending the lighthouse. In the lantern room, the Fresnel lens opens to Howard, who reaches in and violently screams in distortion before slipping and falling down the lighthouse steps. Some time later, a barely-living Howard lies naked on the rocks with a damaged eye as a flock of gulls peck at his exposed bowels.
Cast
Robert Pattinson as Ephraim Winslow/Thomas Howard
Willem Dafoe as Thomas Wake
Valeriia Karamän as the Mermaid
Logan Hawkes as Ephraim Winslow
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