The Lighthouse's Robert Eggers on his favorite tender moment between Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe
Film Features The Lighthouse
Director Robert Eggers’ first “New England folktale,” The Witch, became an instant genre classic, bringing literal Hell to the idyllic home of a Puritan family in the 1630s. And though his follow-up, The Lighthouse, maintains some of its predecessor’s more horrifying elements—isolation from society, evil birds, a mounting sense of dread—it also offers up a surprising amount of comedy and a bit of a “bromance” between its leads, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. We spent a few minutes with Eggers during the film’s opening weekend to ask him about the sometimes tender, sometimes volatile relationship at the movie’s core. We also touched on the director’s diorama-like approach to storytelling, and how he used the unruly elements of Nova Scotia to his advantage.
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It also offers up a surprising amount of boredom in the first hour, and a surprising amount of incoherence in the second hour. It’s not a horror movie, not a drama, and only occasionally a comedy. It sets up lots and lots of questions that are never answered in any meaningful way, and honestly, just seems to punt at the end (with a laughably silly final shot) because it isn’t sure what to do with itself. Not an allegory, not a mystery, and it doesn’t seem to have much of anything to say, or at least it doesn’t say it very well. The big maguffin is revealed to be . . . nothing. The maguffin is a cop out.Absolute scenery-chewing performances from the leads, and some fun visuals otherwise, but to what end? As 100% tight as the Witch script was, this one is downright shambolic. A serious let-down, nearly as disappointing as Midsommar.
It’s probably just because of the actor connection, but I thought of The Antichrist, and how it had various themes just sort of sprinkled into the mix but definitely not conclusively integrated.But then again, I think The Lighthouse is trying to give a realistic sense of coming unglued, and too much nice and tidy tying-together would work right against that. I can’t imagine it not being sloppy in that regard. The sloppiness feels inherent to the psychological effect they’re going for.
I myself referenced the Antichrist in relation to this movie, for the same reasons you say. A lot being said, though it doesn’t seem to communicate anything in particular.I understand what it was trying to accomplish—showing people losing their marbles—but because the story is not grounded in any meaningful way, it’s impossible to tell if they’re actually losing their marbles, if some supernatural force is in effect, or if the director is simply forcing the insanity on his characters, as if it were a fable or something. At the end it seems to imply the second option, but even then you can’t tell up from down because everything is so bonkers and disconnected. I would also argue that even as a story of mental breakdown, it’s not particularly believable because they go over the edge so quickly and completely. Everything is fine and five minutes later they’re guzzling gasoline in a totally ramshackle, leaking house, it’s almost comical how quickly things tip over into zaniness. It becomes a cartoon in the last 15 minutes. Honestly, I think the script just got away from him. Definitely a solid A+ for effort, but unlike the Witch, which I’ve watched 3 or 4 times and enjoyed it more on each occasion, I don’t think I’ll bother revisiting this one.
God, I love this guy.
I swore he was talking about Robin Williams for some reason. (…it was Rob and Willem.)