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Reviews21
CinePete's rating
Two wickies (lighthouse keepers) on a life-denying pile of rocks somewhere off the New England coast become subject to a wild hallucinatory experience, or, should I say, many of them. The mainland is far away, and a storm rises, and all hold on civilized sanity loudly and rapidly disintegrates.
Such is The Lighthouse, with narrow restricted focus on two men in almost endless antagonism. But we don't know who these two men are. The slender backstory comes in bits and pieces, but we never get enough definite knowledge of their characters to either empathize or sympathize with their most singular situation. We look on as in a scientific experiment, detached, uninvolved.
The Lighthouse is fraught with dense obscure symbolism. I thought of Ingmar Bergman's visionary fantasies in the late 1960s -- there is something Nordic, cold, and perplexing in this apparent fable. There are mysteries never solved, a mystical dimension to the actual light that is never explained, a scary mermaid and ravenous seagulls of a quite alarming nature. All narrative logic, time scheme and clearly laid-out plot structure are -- as in a true visionary experience -- pushed aside.
The Lighthouse offers two splendid performances from two very dedicated guys, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. They emit every single line as if they really believed in the material. These are committed performances, and they overpower the entire film. There is a rage deep inside both men that boils up like the sea around them. These inner passions are unfettered, far from mainland reason and thinking -- and they surge in motiveless frenzy for almost two intense hours.
This is an old-salt sea story, half-legend, half-horror and in the imagination of creator Robert Eggers and his cameraman Jarin Blaschke, the basis for a real fireworks of possibilities. It's experimental, and daring -- elaborate black-and-white photography and confined aspect ratio give the film a distinct visual look.
Overall, it's a bit tedious after a while, despite some compelling aspects. For the most part The Lighthouse, is too far out to sea.
Such is The Lighthouse, with narrow restricted focus on two men in almost endless antagonism. But we don't know who these two men are. The slender backstory comes in bits and pieces, but we never get enough definite knowledge of their characters to either empathize or sympathize with their most singular situation. We look on as in a scientific experiment, detached, uninvolved.
The Lighthouse is fraught with dense obscure symbolism. I thought of Ingmar Bergman's visionary fantasies in the late 1960s -- there is something Nordic, cold, and perplexing in this apparent fable. There are mysteries never solved, a mystical dimension to the actual light that is never explained, a scary mermaid and ravenous seagulls of a quite alarming nature. All narrative logic, time scheme and clearly laid-out plot structure are -- as in a true visionary experience -- pushed aside.
The Lighthouse offers two splendid performances from two very dedicated guys, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. They emit every single line as if they really believed in the material. These are committed performances, and they overpower the entire film. There is a rage deep inside both men that boils up like the sea around them. These inner passions are unfettered, far from mainland reason and thinking -- and they surge in motiveless frenzy for almost two intense hours.
This is an old-salt sea story, half-legend, half-horror and in the imagination of creator Robert Eggers and his cameraman Jarin Blaschke, the basis for a real fireworks of possibilities. It's experimental, and daring -- elaborate black-and-white photography and confined aspect ratio give the film a distinct visual look.
Overall, it's a bit tedious after a while, despite some compelling aspects. For the most part The Lighthouse, is too far out to sea.
