I judge people, especially reviewers, when they say a movie is the scariest movie of the year, and it is not. Maybe I should be judged for not finding it scary at all, but completely predictable. The Lighthouse is a conundrum. It clearly requires a big screen to fully appreciate it. The acting is top notch. It is one of Robert Pattinson’s best performances, and I am not into him AT ALL. Instead he reminded me, and apparently anyone with working eyes and ears, of Daniel Day Lewis from There Will Be Blood so good job for disappearing even if what emerged was an imitation of a better actor. Willem Dafoe chews the scenery magnificently and treats every moment as if he is uttering words that Shakespeare wrote.
If I had paid to see The Lighthouse in the theaters, I would have been so mad and bored. The only reason that I did not see it in theaters is because I knew that Robert Eggers directed it, and I am still mad for seeing The Witch in theaters while also conceding that I may have hated the movie less if the theater experience before seeing the movie was not the worst that I had ever experienced to date, which includes and outranks the time that a man peed in his seat during the movie, and another time that I had a psychological silent standoff with a cursing under his breath patron who considered following me around the theater then thought twice because his kind of madness does not scare me, and the theater is MINE! He left.
I definitely watch too many movies because The Lighthouse is a distilled Cold Skin meets Lovecraftian horror and German Expressionism. The Lighthouse is Brokeback Mountain if the men realized that they were attracted to each other then recoiled and screamed, “Ew!” I am not saying that it is not good if you are unfamiliar with this brand of psychological horror, but it feels so theoretical and not rooted in real life emotion unless maybe you are a man gripped in the fear of toxic masculinity, which I am not, so I find the whole thing much ado about nothing. Cold Skin had a philosophical underpinning to its toxic masculinity, but The Lighthouse is more body horror fundamentalist. It is all about dicks.
If you want to understand The Lighthouse, it is vagina dentata except instead of sex as death because of fear of losing oneself in sexual arousal, it is the vagina as a gaping wound, and the fear of a man becoming a vagina, being penetrated, if he opens himself up to more healthy emotions instead of all relationships being extreme-submission versus domination so any attraction or tenderness gets transformed into a zero sum game . The one with the upper hand is abusive, unapologetic, free to indulge all base desires, and the one on the bottom must submit, do all the shit jobs (literally in this case and the movie’s sense of humor is what makes it watchable) and must restrain from baser desires. Once one gives in to base desires such as drinking alcohol or masturbation, then there is inevitably only room for one person on top. The only acceptable way to enjoy the vagina that is not a vagina is to create a wound, to be violent, instead of penetrating a man with a penis, penetrate him with a weapon. Le petite mort indeed. Eye roll.
If you think that I am being too reductive, then note Pattinson’ character’s protests at being treated like a housewife, Dafoe’s constant compliments, discussion of guilt, the dance scene or literally just watch any or all of the oneiric scenes in which rapid intercutting of masturbation and violence are juxtaposed. Also read Eggers talking about the film, which I did after watching the film. The Lighthouse is an intentional phallic symbol for him. I just do not get why Eggers gets called brilliant for depicting something so basic, and no, I am not missing the allusion to the mutability of identity because I also saw that coming.
I actually thought The Lighthouse worked on two levels though I absolutely do not think that anything supernatural is going on. We have unreliable characters on different levels. Maybe we just have one. I have already mentioned the traditional interpretation of vagina dentata. Often because of fearing loss of control due to overwhelming attraction and disgust at the mechanics of that attraction, bodies, a person can become violent to the person whom he is attracted to (note that I deliberately did not use a gender neutral noun). There is a lot of narcissism endemic in this plot and water. Waves crashing used to be a symbol of sexual consummation in old Hollywood films. The first indoor scene with the two struck me because you cannot see one, and the screen is literally split. At the point of death, there is an idea that time and perception could become distorted for the person that is dying, and so that person constructs a narrative over all the overwhelming sensations experienced during that moment. So is the constructed isolation of being stranded with a person that disgusts you just an elaborate metaphor for the isolation of death and having to finally confront the shortcomings of your life and still being unable to do it? Wait, I think that I am getting a phone call from Jacob’s Ladder.
I did prefer The Lighthouse to The Witch because at least I think that it succeeded as a solid movie-visually, the story—even if it is not my cup of tea, the acting, the soundtrack, but I also do not think that I will haunted by it, and I think that was Eggers’ goal. I am just not into psychological horror, and I can see an unreliable character coming from a mile away. I like the supernatural elements to be just as plausible as the psychological elements. The only reason that I did not walk away disappointed at the lack of supernatural bang for my buck is that I did not expect it, but a younger version of me would have and felt cheated. I feel as if only Ari Aster can walk that tightrope and everyone else, including and especially Eggers, just uses the supernatural to gussy up a movie that would otherwise be a fairly straightforward drama. Give me sci fi with people going nuts in space like Supernova, Event Horizon and Sunshine that manage to deal with the same concepts, but it seems more subtle. It feels too pretentious, constructed and self conscious for me to let go and enjoy it.
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The protagonist also got hurt in the logging accident and reached the shore by the ocean. He is dying and imagines the entire movie that we were watching while seagulls eat his body thus why he is so instinctually hostile to them (or he is a stone cold killer and one of the signs is hurting animals). It also could be an allegory to Greek myths, but I hate allegories, and I do not feel like hating this movie so I am going to let that interpretation go.