The Lighthouse isn’t a horror film. You can ignore all of the nonsense marketing and media blurbs about how scary this movie is, because it isn’t. The Lighthouse is a drama. If you temper your expectations accordingly, this is not an awful movie. It is a marvel of cinematography and has performances that will likely (and deservedly) receive attention during award season. However, with only two characters, a paper-thin plot and a 110-minute running time, this movie will likely test your patience. Much like his last movie, The Witch, director Robert Eggers displays a great eye for historical detail and solid camerawork. However, he again displays an even greater capacity for boring the living shit out of me.
William Dafoe and Robert Pattinson play two lighthouse keepers that are abandoned at their post on an island. As time goes by and they realize that no one is coming for them, they begin to lose their minds. That’s about all there is to it, folks.
Let me get the super nerdy cinema stuff out of the way: This movie looks beautiful. Shot on black & white 35mm film (though projected digitally, unfortunately) using lenses from literally a century ago, the filmmakers have gone to great lengths to make The Lighthouse feel as though it was filmed at the time that the story takes place. Going even further, the movie was shot in the ultra-rare 1.19:1 aspect ratio, a format that has been practically unused since the 1940s. What the fuck is an aspect ratio, you ask? An aspect ratio is the relative size of an image, described as two numbers in the form of width:height. So, an aspect ratio of 1:1 is a square because the width and height are equal. At a ratio of 1.19:1, The Lighthouse is damn near a square and will only fill about half of a movie theater screen. For comparison, if you saw Avengers: Endgame in IMAX it was in a 1.9:1 aspect ratio, meaning it was almost twice as wide as it was high. What the fuck is the point of this? A film with an aspect ratio of 1.9:1 feels claustrophobic as hell, which is perfect for the story being told here. It might seem jarring to modern audiences that are used to wider formats, but I give the filmmakers a lot of credit for using such methods to create a feeling for the movie.
The performances are also excellent, as they damn well better be with only two characters in the entire movie. Both Pattinson and Defoe really nail their escalating insanity while also speaking in weird dialogue that is (apparently) true to the period. I knew that Defoe could do escalating insanity quite well. The man is practically the poster child for it. But I was surprised and impressed by Pattinson, who I had previously only known from Twilight. Turns out that he is actually a real actor, which is nice. Both of them are alternatingly threatening and amusing as they lose their minds, grow suspicious of each other and get increasingly hammered (once the booze runs out, they resort to drinking what seemed to be kerosene). Much is being made about the lengths that the actors went to in order to bring authenticity to the performances and it absolutely comes through on screen.
However, all of the performances and cinematography fail to hide the fact that there is very little story here. The Lighthouse would have been a highly effective short film, somewhere in the neighborhood of 45-60 minutes. There is just not enough material here to fill the running time and I started checking my watch pretty damn early. Further compounding the boredom is the presence of only two characters, which removes any suspense about their survival until the very end. You can only watch these guys get drunk and intensely stare at each other so many times until you just want them to fucking get on with it already.
If you like independent, arthouse-type movies, then you will probably enjoy this. If you are a nerd for cinematography, then you should see this in a theater. However, if you are looking for a scary movie to watch for Halloween, then steer clear of The Lighthouse. But at least it gave me a chance to talk about aspect ratios. That so rarely comes up in conversation.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lighthouse_(2019_film)#/media/File:The_Lighthouse.jpeg
