The Lightship

I served on the Columbia River lightship and I can say, without a doubt, it was the best duty I had in the Coast Guard. Sometimes monotonous, we did get plenty of fishing and managed to poach a crab pot or two. And getting two weeks off after a month aboard without touching your 30 day annual leave surely made up for the semi-isolated duty that transpired. Also, the ride back and forth to the beach across the Columbias River Bar certainly was worth the price of admission. My lightship was WLV-605 which was homeported at the Coast Guard Bouy Base inside the Ballard Locks. Little enlistedman's bar, I remember poor-boy night; the night before payday when schooners of beer were 25 cents. A Coastie with five bucks in his pocket was popular. I also remember playing a dice game, Ship Captain Crew, for beer. After refit, we would steam up Puget Sound, around Tatoosh Head and down the Washington Coast to station. Boy, I wish I cold turn back the hands of time and have just one more rotation on that Galloping Red Ghost of the Pacific Northwest Coast.

This is one of the great movies from the eighties, however unjustly underestimated and forgotten.

Brandauer plays the captain of the lightship that's constantly anchored at the same place. It's only purpose is to warn other ships for dangerous waters. Robert Duvall enters the scene with his men and his one ambitions. It is also a generation drama about the relation between the lightships captain and his prodigal son.

A brilliantly hermetical story about the thin line between order and chaos, and about relations between people. An excitement that lies not in action but in the trial of strength and the mostly implicit violence, that sometimes breaks out in uncontrolled outbursts.

It also tells the story about the kind of courage that almost looks like cowardice.

Don't miss this one!

Unlike the other commentator, I am not interested in lightships. I didn't even know what a lightship was until I saw this film. However, I am interested by this film. I saw it on BBC 1, a few months ago, in their late night film slot, a slot usually reserved for B Movies.

The Lightship could easily be a B movie, only it stars two great actors, Robert Duval and Klaus Maria Brandauer, putting the actors in what could easily be a conventional thriller scenario. Brandauer is the captain of a lightship, thus a man of law, thus a good guy. Duvall is a mysterious, shady figure who seeks refuge from the sea, possibly a man on the run, thus a bad guy. So a battle between good and bad, order and disorder, is played out.

This actually happens in the film. Not a great film, or even a very good one. But odd. About as odd as finding your grandmother is into S&M. For both men become fascinated with one another, and their respective occupations. To illustrate how odd this is, there is a scene where Brandauer finds Duvall taking a bath in his bedroom. Instead of being taken aback, Brandauer puts his hand in the water, playfully, like a lover, and they talk. They talk a lot in the film. Moreover, the film set a few years after World War II, yet Brandauer is playing a German (in charge of an American boat)and Duvall is a real sweet, gent of a southern lawyer, who is also a dangerous, psychopathic criminal, in charge of a couple of hoodlums.

All this weirdness is not that surprising, after all the director is that Polish guy with the weird (if you're not Polish) name, Skowlimowski, who has directed some strange films in his time.

I didn't like the fact the narration or the eighties-ness about it (ie soundtrack). But the kid was OK.

There isn't much new in this gangsters-take-ship-and-crew-hostage drama, except that it takes place on a floating Light Ship. Having endured 14 months of duty on one of these floating torture chambers myself, I can tell you that nothing this exciting ever took place. All we ever did was bounce up and down and listen to a fog-horn, day and night. Too bad Duvall wasn't out there then, we could have keel-hauled him for making this very inaccurate flick!

Indeed, as my headline says, refreshing. This movie that goes back 37 years as of today is the complete antidote to the hyped up super hero action movies of today. Heroes and villains alike are no indestructible super beings. Just a solid movie with good actors and a plausible story without any unrealistic and illogical happenings. After seeing a couple of the latest "action" movies where the lead characters would put Batman and superman to shame in their ability to survive barrages of bullets and other bone breaking events, it is refreshing to see that before people actually cared about a plausible plot when making a movie that didn't make you feel like an idiot watching it.