Skip to main content

The Lighthouse

A review by Brooks Rich

Using quarantine to catch up on reviews that should have been posted. Here we have a film perfect for quarantine viewing. The Witch director Robert Eggers follows up that masterpiece with this dizzying insane descent into madness, mermaids, and masturbation buoyed by two of the best performances from last year. The Witch was called a New England Folktale. The Lighthouse should be called a New England Fever Dream. 

Two men are assigned with maintaining a lighthouse on a remote island in New England circa 1890. It's hard for me to describe what follows, but Eggers takes us on one of the a truly bizarre and disturbing journey. Eggers is a director that never lets his viewers relax.Like in The Witch, when we're nervous from the second the family leaves the safety of the community, we are tense the second our two characters set foot on the island. That tension doesn't stop until the screen goes to black and it says directed by Robert Eggers. 

The film is stunning. Shot in black and white, it has a strange, ethereal quality. At times it feels like a dream and at times it feels like a terrifying hallucination. Eggers doesn't give his audiences any easy answers and this film is no different. As the characters go insane, we begin to question what is real and what is a product of their terrified imagination. This is not a typical Hollywood film.

The highlight of this film are the performances of Robert Pattinson and Willem Defoe. The two are both playing crazy, but they are going about it crazy. Pattinson is playing a man who is slowly losing both his mind and his grip on reality. Defoe is playing it as a man who is cracking Up after years of seeing all kinds of things on the island. The levels of madness the two men bring play off each other well. 

This is a film for cinephiles. If you are tired of the same old Hollywood shit, then The Lighthouse is for you. Personally everything about it works for me and it's one of my favorites from last year. 

Rating: 5/5 (masterpiece)




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

A retrospective by Brooks Rich Let's kick off the spooky season with a bona fide classic. I love the horror genre, but not much really scares or creeps me out. Most horror films I just watch and enjoy. However, 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' is one of those that really gets under my skin, and not just because the Sawyer family are eating people. The way Tobe Hooper shoots the film gives it an almost documentary feel. If you have never seen 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' you should probably fix that immediately. Do I need to explain what it's about? A group of '70s kids is driving across Texas in a van and runs afoul of the Sawyer family, including the man himself, Leatherface. It's a classic of the horror genre and one of the pioneers of the '70s and '80s horror boom. The film has a reputation for being sickeningly bloody and violent, but that is not true. It's essentially a bloodless film, which makes it even more horrifying. Most of the violence...
Post a Comment
Read more

Forgotten Film Friday: Absolute Power

Clint Eastwood stars as Luther Whitney, a jewel thief who works in the Washington DC area. One night while he is stealing from a mansion he is forced to hide in a secret compartment with a two way mirror. From there he observes a sexual rezendevous with the wife of a powerful man and the President of the United States Alan Richmond (Gene Hackman) Suddenly the president gets aggressive and while defending herself the woman is shot to death by two Secret Service agents. Luther manages to get away with a letter opener the woman stabbed the president with. At first Luther plans to flee the country. But when he is disgusted by a statement the president makes, Luther decides to expose the crime. I miss these kind of films. The nineties was a great time for thrillers exactly like this. They are not the flashiest films but they are also not obsessed with big action scenes. It's all plot and character with them. Sure this plot might be a little out there but Eastwood makes it work. He's...
Post a Comment
Read more

John Candy month: Summer Rental

 A retrospective by Brooks Rich Air traffic controller Jack Chester (John Candy) is given paid time off when he nearly causes two airline disasters. He takes his family down to Florida for a vacation. Hijinks ensue because its '80s comedy and Candy ends up challenging a pompous Richard Crenna to a yacht race to close out the summer.  This is a movie that has been forgotten to time in the grand scheme of Candy's career. Even with Carl Reiner directing it does have the same name recognition as some of Candy's other works. But I think it's a solid entry in his filmography. He plays a great everyman who we have no problem rooting for. The slobs versus snobs relationship he has with Crenna works like a charm and he genuinely seems like a good father and husband. Candy was always great at playing both the everyman and the aloof goofball. Sometimes he'll even play both. His character of Jack Chester in this is a good example of that. At times Jack is the goofy comic relief...
Post a Comment
Read more