BY ELLA WHITE ’22
If you’ve heard anything about “The Lighthouse” it’s probably just the premise: two men work in a lighthouse together and slowly drive each other insane. And there’s masturbation. Lots of masturbation.
That is, essentially, the movie. The two characters Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe), hardly talk until 20 minutes into the movie and are the only people seen on camera the entire film.
The movie is in black and white, filmed through lenses designed in the early 20th century. Beautiful shots show a solitary island and close-ups of the two lighthouse caretakers, Winslow and Wake, one flinching and the other staring hard at the camera.
Photos courtesy of Wikipedia
In the beginning, the movie is simple and quiet; Winslow does chores, Wake tends the lighthouse. There is little dialogue, and when the characters do speak, they do so softly, barely louder than the noise of the waves and the foghorn and the seagulls.
The movie changes and takes on a different tone as the characters slowly begin to go insane. In fact, the movie moves so gradually into chaos that the audience feels that they, alongside Winslow and Wake, are slipping into madness. There is more dialogue, but it becomes even more unintelligible because of the mangled voices and the incoherent sentences that characterize Winslow’s dialogue.
Pattinson told the New York Times that “the most fun part of doing movies is that you can explore the more grotesque or naughty sides of your psyche in a somewhat safe environment.”
Pattinson has recently fed fantastical stories to the press. In October, he told Variety that he once played the piano so fiercely at a high school talent show that there was blood all over and the next students had to play the piano with his blood on it. Another time, he told a reporter that he’d seen a clown explode at the circus as a young child — a story he later announced was made up.
Between scenes where he bludgeons a bird to death and others where he has repeated sexual fantasies about a mermaid, Pattinson would be hard pressed to find a more grotesque role.
Amidst the horror and faint gore, Winslow and Wake change from barely speaking to slow dancing in the dark and falling asleep in each other’s arms.
Their relationship remains complicated. When the men get too close, they push away again, fighting and screaming. When the fighting and screaming is too intense, they forgive each other and move close together again.
The audience might question if the two men are in love, but there is little evidence to argue for or against this theory with how little the movie gives away.
This tactic works best for the movie. The relationship between Winslow and Wake is too complicated for them to sit down and talk it out, and the characters certainly aren’t the types to be thinking critically about their relationships with each other. Most conversations between them seemed like a desperate competition for survival.
Moments where the audience questions the relationship of the characters are better for lack of proof. If Winslow and Wake had kissed, it would seem false and insincere. If there hadn’t been any romantic tension, on the other hand, the movie would have ignored the extreme stress and complication of the situation they were in.
Either way, as Dafoe told the Los Angeles Times, “People see what they want to see.”