The Lighthouse
Actors Willem Dafoe and Robert
Pattinson play mismatched lighthouse keepers in “The Lighthouse”. A turbulent. disturbing and deeply unsettling
drama about two men isolated and surround by stormy seas who try to maintain
their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the1890s.
In the late 19th century,
Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) is sent on a boat to serve a contract job as
a “wickie” (apprentice) for four weeks on an isolated island under the
supervision of an irritable elderly man named Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe). On
the first day of the job, Winslow notices a hole in his cot. As he digs into
it, he finds a small scrimshaw of a mermaid and stuffs it in his jacket.
Winslow observes Wake going up to the lighthouse's lantern room at night and
stripping naked. Winslow begins experiencing visions and dreams of tentacles in
the lighthouse, tree stumps floating in the water, masturbation to a mermaid doll and distant real life images of the same mermaid doll. And if all this sounds like the beginning of two men going crazy, you
would be 100% right. As over the course of their month long stay we see the
two men in both similar and dissimilar ways descend into utter chaotic madness surrounded
in the dead-center stormy shores of nowhere on earth.
REVIEW: Running 1:50 minutes, there was a lot of Oscar
buzz on this effort by Director Robert Eggers. And while I will give it credit
where it is due as the film is a times mesmerizing to look at. Still to have to
sit and experience the entirety of what seemed and felt like a plot adrift with
equally adrift dialogue that literally left me confused as to what was ever going on.
When it was clear they shared symptom of madness i.e. the two principle characters
screaming at each other for no parent reason just left me terribly frustrated. I felt less that I had walked into a period piece of a film
and more so having entered into some kind of a void totally absent of time, space and reality on any level. I won’t ruin the film’s ending mostly
because I don’t know how to describe what
it was or meant.
I tried really hard not to be
bored by this film……………….but bored I was “Aaaarrrrgggghhhh, Ahoy, Me Hearties!”…………….What
did I just say”…..Aaah not to worry. I am not going mad................I think? What time is it? Where's my rubber ducky? Its time for my music lesson with the seagulls. I need to eat some wood.
1.75 Stars
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