Susan Granger’s review of “The Lighthouse” (A24)
There’s an odd phenomenon involving young leading men like Daniel Radcliffe (“Harry Potter”) and Robert Pattinson (“Twilight”) who follow popular acclaim with some strange, absurdist fantasy.
Daniel Radcliffe played a pliable corpse in “Swiss Army Man,” while Robert Pattinson is a lighthouse keeper who goes crazy on a desolate New England island in the 1890s.
His strange, sinister story begins – and ends – in dense fog as inexperienced Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson) arrives to assist old-salt Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) maintain a lighthouse off the coast of Maine. Known as a “wickie,” newbie Winslow contracted to work there for four weeks.
At dinner, loquacious Wake ominously reveals that Winslow’s predecessor went insane and died. And when he first lies down on his cot, Winslow notices a hole in the mattress containing a small scrimshaw of a mermaid. Her image will come to haunt him as days/nights pass.
Wake demands that younger, stronger Winslow perform the most arduous tasks: shoveling coal, carrying heavy kerosene containers and cleaning chamber pots. Yet only Wake is allowed to tend the precious Fresnel lens with its tiny concave mirrors.
When Winslow is tormented by a one-eyed seagull, Wake warns him that it’s bad luck to kill sea birds because they’re reincarnated sailors.
Weeks pass and the day before his tenure is to end, taciturn Winslow releases his rage on the hapless bird. Sure enough, that afternoon the wind changes direction and a ferocious nor’easter batters the island.
The next morning, the expected ferry from the mainland does not arrive, although the body of a mermaid (Valeriia Karaman) washes up on the beach. Because the food supply is limited, there’s rationing and the men are drunk most of the time.
Filmmaker Robert Eggers (“The Witch”), who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max Eggers, obviously envisioned it as a psychological horror story, filming in atmospheric black-and-white on Leif Ericson Park in Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia, Canada.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Lighthouse” is a turgid 2 – a miserable, homoerotic dirge.
