Episode review
The Lighthouse (2019) Review
The short version
We both gave it a 9, and I nearly went higher. Chris and I saw The Lighthouse together in the theater in 2019, right before COVID, and I had honestly forgotten how completely insane it is. Two men, one rock, a foghorn that never stops, and no idea what is real by the end. If you want to understand what we mean every week when we talk about actors' faces, this is the movie we would point you to.
How we pitched it
The Lighthouse is a charming workplace drama about two men who take a remote job and discover that nothing improves when you remove society, sunlight and basic emotional stability. Robert Pattinson plays Ephraim Winslow, who arrives on a tiny island expecting honest work and finds himself trapped under Willem Dafoe's Thomas Wake, an old sea dog who looks carved out of driftwood and smells exactly how you would expect from his countless on screen farts. Winslow grows furious that Wake will not let him near the light, which holds either a cosmic truth, madness, or a very powerful bulb. When he finally sees it, the real horror turns out to be taking a job with no HR department.
Going in blind
Chris is obsessed with anything maritime, and he is the one who put this on my radar: black and white, Pattinson and Dafoe, a director coming off The Witch. That was all it took. I went in completely blind, knowing only that it was two guys yelling at each other.
What stood out to Chris right away was the shape of the picture. It is shot nearly square, at a 1.19 to 1 aspect ratio, instead of the widescreen you are used to, and it makes every room feel like it is closing in. Nothing in the marketing told you what kind of movie it was going to be. You might guess a period mystery. It is not that.
Robert Eggers has since made The Northman and Nosferatu, and he reportedly made this for about $11 million. Two big stars, one location, and a director allowed to go completely wild. We want more of this and fewer superhero movies.
The weird starts early
Thirty seconds after Winslow arrives, Wake is relieving himself in the open with a fart for good measure, and Winslow does not react at all. From there, every scene gets weirder than the last.
The moment it hooked me was the first cut to Wake shirtless in the lantern room, staring into the light like he is in a trance. Sitting in that theater, I remember thinking: what is going on here, and this is going to be awesome. It just keeps compounding.
The sound is a character too. The foghorn goes off all the way through, the wind never lets up, and it gives the whole thing an ominous, haunting energy. Chris points to one wordless meal right after an argument, with stressful music and the foghorn blaring, as the moment you can feel something about to break.
The faces
Dafoe was born with an incredible face, and what he does with it here is a masterclass. The eyes bulge the whole time he is talking, the voice is gravel, the accent is perfect, and the old sailor's vocabulary rolls out like he grew up with it. I cannot imagine anyone else in the part. Maybe Nicolas Cage.
Our theory is that Eggers is on the same page as us about faces. He cast Dafoe and told him to go as insane as he wanted. Pattinson is no slouch either: completely believable as an average guy slowly going drunk and crazy. Chris singles out his thousand yard stare when Wake asks how long they have been on this rock. Five weeks? Two days? That look was in the trailer, and it sold us both.
Chris also loves how much of the movie happens around the tiny kitchen table. Their whole relationship plays out there, from feeling each other out, to fighting, to losing it completely, and every setup looks like a photograph. He paused on one shot of Winslow pushing a wheelbarrow past the lighthouse because it looks like an old painting.
The lines
The dialogue is so good. Early on Wake asks if he is a dullard. "No, sir." "Fooled me." Trap door shut.
Chris wrote down Wake's speech about making Winslow pull out every nail and scrub off every speck of rust until they sparkle, and doing it smiling, because Wake says he likes it. The conviction, the vocabulary, the rhythm. How many takes does something like that need?
What makes Wake so unsettling is how bipolar it all is. He barks orders, then gets a reaction and softens into "Tommy, Tommy, Tommy." They are buddies, then they are at each other's throats, then they are drinking buddies again. Chris calls it ultimate gaslighting.
What is real?
When Winslow sneaks up to the lantern room and hears Wake moaning, something slimy drips down and a tentacle slides past. That is where I started questioning reality. Is this the secret, or is he dreaming? One scene he is in bed and the next he is on the stairs, so it could easily be a dream. The line between the two disappears completely after that.
Then the one eyed gull that has been tormenting him shows up, and Winslow beats it to death for a long, long time. I did not know whether to be disturbed or to laugh. And killing a seabird is exactly the kind of thing sailors believed brings bad luck.
Seagulls and geese
That scene started a tangent. I actually like seagulls, because when I see them I am down the shore, and that is the only place in the world I want to be. Chris does not care about seagulls. His enemy is geese, the ones that walk in front of your car and will not move for a person ten times their size. He has thought about pulling a Winslow on one more than once.
The drinking
Winslow does not drink, and you get the feeling there is a reason. On what is supposed to be his last night, Wake will not take no for an answer. Has there ever been more convincing peer pressure than Willem Dafoe telling you to have a drink? Winslow gives in, and everything goes downhill.
Then the storm hits, the supplies are ruined, and they dig up a crate buried in the yard. It is booze. No explanation. After that the timeline goes. On screen it feels like a day or two, and suddenly Wake says it has been weeks. From then on there is no way to track time at all.
Some of it is genuinely hilarious. They get drunk and scream "what?" at each other for fifteen seconds. They dance, hold each other, look like they are about to kiss, then Winslow shoves Wake off, they both put up their fists, and they both start laughing right before they fight. It might be the funniest scene in the movie.
The sea curse
This is Chris's top scene. Winslow says he does not like Wake's lobster, and Wake gets to his feet and delivers a curse straight out of the old gods of the sea. By Chris's count he does not blink for a minute and seventeen seconds. The lighting turns his face into a demon's. Chris memorizes lines easily, and he still thinks that monologue, in that language, without blinking, is incredibly hard. It was reportedly done in a single continuous take. Then Winslow, sitting in the corner: "Okay. Have it your way."
The reveal
After the fight, Winslow admits he is not Ephraim Winslow at all. He is Thomas Howard, who watched the real Winslow die and took his name. Fun fact from Chris: Thomas Howard was also one of Jesse James' aliases.
From there Wake just gaslights him. You are not on this rock, he says. You are back in Canada, knee deep in snow. Is Wake telling the truth, is Howard losing his mind, or is Wake simply enjoying tormenting a younger man who could easily beat him? It is a Fight Club moment where you have to reinterpret everything you just watched. Chris has seen it five or six times and still cannot figure it out.
When the liquor runs out they drink honey mixed with turpentine, which reminded Chris of Joaquin Phoenix brewing his own hooch in The Master. Then Howard finally snaps, beats Wake, walks him on a leash, and buries him alive. Chris's favorite detail: as Howard shovels dirt onto him, Dafoe keeps delivering his monologue with dirt in his mouth.
That ending
Howard finally reaches the light, opens the lens, has something like a religious experience, and falls down the stairs. Then he is lying naked on the rocks while gulls tear him apart, like Prometheus. When I saw it in the theater, my first instinct was to look around and watch everyone else's faces.
Chris has a theory he admits would be terrible if the movie ever confirmed it: what if the whole thing is Howard dying in the snow in Canada, and his mind built all of this on the way out? We agree the point is that you never find out. Chris is a realism guy and usually wants answers, but here the ambiguity works.
Literally us
I am Wake, because I go on rants about crazy stuff. Chris is Winslow: he hates big birds, he hates people farting around him, and he hates having his work ethic questioned. He is a hard worker.
Why Chris gives it a 9
A basic concept, two speaking parts, about $11 million, and it is a masterpiece. The black and white and the tiny frame make it feel like you found an old reel and put it on a projector. The shots are incredible, the acting is second to none, it is further proof of how good Pattinson is when he takes risks, and it might be Dafoe's best role.
Why I give it a 9
I would go higher. The only thing holding me back is that it might be too weird for some people. It is not too weird for me. It is completely insane, the acting is brilliant, and it is a perfect story about how isolation can drive you mad. Every scene is weirder than the last. It is proof that you do not need a giant budget, just a director allowed to go wild with his vision.
Behind the scenes
A few things we dug up for the episode:
- Pattinson has said Eggers sprayed him with a real fire hose for the storm scenes, and the two leads often stayed in character and avoided each other between takes.
- The black and white film stock needed 15 to 20 times more light than modern color film, so the sets were so bright some of the crew wore sunglasses.
- The story grew out of an unfinished Edgar Allan Poe story and was partly inspired by the Smalls Lighthouse tragedy, where two keepers were trapped by a storm, one died, and the other was said to have gone mad. Chris also recommends reading up on the Flannan Isles mystery, where three keepers vanished with dinner still on the table.
- Pattinson stayed in a hotel with the crew, while Dafoe lived alone in a fisherman's cottage to stay isolated.
Listen to the full episode
Sixty four minutes on The Lighthouse, from the first foghorn to the gulls.
Also on the show: Enemy, There Will Be Blood, Apocalypto. Every episode is on the Regular or Menthol homepage.