Deborah Ross

Mad but terrific: The Lighthouse reviewed

Visually, aurally and verbally, this film is dazzling

The Lighthouse stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson (and a very nasty seagull) in a gothic thriller set off the coast of Maine in 1890, and it’s terrific. Mad, but terrific. It is gripping, intense, extraordinarily written — someone is accused of smelling like ‘curdled foreskin’ at one point — and is about two fellas thrown together. But unlike most odd-couple scenarios there is no bonding. So get bonding right out of your mind. Instead, they drive each other full-on (and marvellously) insane. It’s a mad film about madness, in short.

The writing is so dazzling it may well blow your mind

It is directed by Robert Eggers (The Witch) and co-written with his brother, Max Eggers, which makes you wonder what they played growing up: let’s play being driven insane on a bleak rock? (Or: let’s play who can most smell of curdled foreskin today?) And it’s startling right from the off. Visually, it’s startling as it’s shot in starkly beautiful black and white, and aurally it is startling too. Foghorns rumble, the wind howls, birds screech, water plinks into a pail, chains clank. It’s not the kind of film where you can ever kick back and relax. (Also, waves crash, rain lashes, clockwork mechanisms groan, clocks tick….)

It opens with the two men, Thomas (Dafoe) and Ephraim (Pattinson), arriving to work a month-long shift at a lighthouse on that bleak rock. Dafoe has never knowingly played anyone who wasn’t creepy and disturbing and his Thomas is feral, bearded and rotten-toothed, a drunk and a farter, and has a bad leg so it’s walk-drag, walk-drag, walk-drag wherever he goes. He wants Ephraim within his power and bullies him. He makes Ephraim do all the drudge work (scrubbing floors, emptying chamber pots, hauling coal) and farts in his face and does not allow him to attend to the light atop the tower because ‘the light is mine’.

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