Watching To Keep The Light reminded me of the experience of instructed learning I received at school as a child. Neither particularly pleasant or unpleasant, it was a mundane, narrative exploration of people and facts, punctuated with dramatic sounding events and conclusions.
This was my experience of this film.
I'm pleased for writer, director, producer and lead actor, Erica Fae, that her academic profile impressed enough people to fund To Keep The Light. It will undoubtedly grant her long tenure in teaching.
Unfortunately, her skills as a virtuoso don't extend to a moving portraiture as an actor. And as a director of this piece, Ingemar Bergman she is not.
She is a measured script writer, clearly an excellent networker, but despite surrounding herself with cinema professionals she turns in a term paper aimed at achieving a safe B grade.
Cinema is about reaching for the stars, sometimes while keeping your feet on the ground. The experience of the images/ background should be visceral and real, and the narrative a journey where the dramatic arc is compelling for the characters and audience.
The background does its job in To Keep The Light, but as textured and atmospheric as the lighthouse and scenery is, it's no substitute for a story and characters that immerse you.
Effective cinema moves us, provokes responses and opinions, to discover something mattered. Nothing matters if the point of the movie isn't the storytelling, but honoring the academic underlay.
My experience was disappointment at (mainly Erica's) unmoving performance and a lack of life or vibrancy in her character. Her acting was, at best, representative, not responsive. And, it were as if she coopted the medium of film to celebrate her love of research and historical facts. Her choosing to put it in cinematic form was a bit like choosing interpretive dance to sing a song.
That's to say, I couldn't see what moved Erica to do all this. Perhaps her strength in, and love of historical research just doesn't translate into breathing life into a story. In all, a cinematic gesture referring to women lighthouse keepers, ends up being subjugated by the pedagogic bent of its creator.
