The Lighthouse Review
The Lighthouse is directed by Robert Eggers (The Witch), and in it, two men are stuck in a lighthouse and slowly lose their shit. To grossly oversimplify, The Lighthouse is The Shining but in a lighthouse with a lot references to some Greek mythology. It's a very challenging film to sit through, similar to 2017's Mother!, which is also a very atmospheric and stylized allegory. It's shot in 35mm in 1.19:1 with very dim and naturalistic lighting with an abstract score from Mark Korven. It moves at a slow, hypnotic pace and is punctuated by shocking imagery and fart jokes lifted by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson's transcendent performances. It's a weird one and it's very unique but I don't think I was into it for the most part.
The movie seems to want to get you in the same mindset as its characters -that being stuck in one location doing monotonous lighthouse maintenance work and that it does that very well. At times it reminded me of Béla Tarr's style of filmmaking where everything is also shot in black and white and people exist in a shitty environment. But unlike Tarr, who's movies are always a breeze for me to sit through and to unpack despite some of their runtimes, The Lighthouse's pacing felt like a chore (which I guess was a point) but I don't really have much interest in that. The experience gets more interesting when being unpacked with some of its references but I eventually felt little need to ever want to think about it again.
Sadly, The Lighthouse isn't a movie that I liked too much. It's down to personal preference. If you're interested in one of 2019's weirdest and grittiest then your visit to The Lighthouse will be a more welcoming one than it was for me.