The Lighthouse
“Should pale death with arrow dread
Make the ocean-cave our bed,
Though no eye of love might see
Where that shrouded grave shall be—
God! Who hear’st the surges roll,
Deign to save the sailor’s soul.”
~ Sailor’s Hymn ~
Let's be honest, this movie is weird. Really really weird. I guess that's clear from the opening shot: a heavy fog. Probably symbolic that you're in for 2 hours of fog, 2 hours of questions without answers, 2 hours of absolute mind boggling craziness.
In short this movie is both appealing and repulsive. A word of advice: Don't be an idiot like me and bring your wife on a date to this flick. Horrible idea. Yes, I'm dumb. Alright lets get into the analysis! Warning: It’s long winded and might not make any sense. But if you watched the Lighthouse you’re used to that, so you’ll probably stick around.
The Story:
The film focuses on two lighthouse keepers, driving each other to insanity. Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) an old man of the sea with a limp, and “Ephraim Winslow” (Robert Pattinson) a rookie wiki, who's looking for a fresh start and to make some money. The two are brought into a clash over one single character: The Light in the lighthouse.
Two things I loved about this movie:
#1 The cinematography: The cinematography is absolutely stunning. If there was one movie to upset 1917 at the 2019 Oscar’s for best cinematography, it was this one. It was shot in a vintage 1.19:1 aspect ratio, black and white film stock, ultra vintage lenses, and a bold camera angles. I can’t say enough how much I loved the cinematography and would’ve paid just to see the cinematography alone. It’s bold and beautifully artistic.
#2 The Setting: Eggers is a master of setting. If you've seen The Witch, then you know this. His greatest strength as a filmmaker is his attention to detail and setting! He boxes his characters into a setting that forces conflict, making the audience feel confined and uncomfortable.
The Analysis:
I can boil the lighthouse down to three components:
#1 Person: It’s About Personhood/Identity. The film is concerned with identity. Initially both men lie about who they are, (referred to in the script as Older and Younger), but in act 2 the storm uncovers their true nature and we find out both men are alike: both are named Thomas, both are lighthouse keepers, both love the light, and both have dark secrets. These dark secrets are exposed in their Dreams.
Why dreams? Why does Eggers use that mechanism? One of the biggest influences for Robert Eggers is clearly Mythology. All the characters are based on mythological characters Tom Wake is based on Proteus, “the old man of the sea.” He was a prophet who could tell the future, and avoid mankind by shape shifting into a sea creature. Tommy Winslow is like prometheus trying to steal the light from the gods. The Mermaid is a sign of destruction. The sea and the light both functioned as gods in mythological tales.
Connected to mythology is Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, who interestingly enough were both heavily influenced by Greek Mythology. Freud and Jung were contemporaries and were the founding fathers of the psychoanalysis in the 20th century. And oddly enough both started as close friends and later had a feud similar to Thomas and Tommy. They used myths in their practice. They relied on ancient stories to describe their patients psychological conditions and would relate what their patients told them to mythological stories. This helped them define human nature and explain people’s true identity.
According to Jung, there are “archetypes” aka concepts or symbols that humanity shares an understanding of. No matter what time or place in history these symbols are found throughout the world. Jung believed archetypes helped us understand people. One of his big archetypes is the shadow. The shadow represents all the parts of a person they don’t like to acknowledge. It is a person’s hidden side. This includes emotions like rage, sexual desire, and survival instincts.
What Robert Eggers is trying to do in Lighthouse is use these building blocks to define man’s identity. That man is complex, and hidden under the complexity are dark secrets, rage, sexual desire, and dominance. Ultimately this toxic masculinity leads to destruction and demise. What is man according to the Lighthouse? A dark and complex being. A being that can appear friendly on the surface and have a cellar full of skeletons.
#2 Power: Early on Tom dominates, Ephraim submits. At the end Ephraim dominates, Tom submits. These two struggle for power. Both their words and their actions. Sometimes its a prophetic curse, sometimes it’s demanding and foul labor, other times its walking someone like a dog, or a slap in the face, and often times it’s an authoritative fart. Towards the latter part of the movie there’s even a dream sequence based on a real painting that shows Thomas’ hypnotic power over Ephraim.
This is another layer of man’s nature. What is man according to the Lighthouse? A dominant creature, that fights for power.
#3 Possession: Lastly man is a person focused on possession. This all centers around Light. The light is at the top of the lighthouse, emphasizing it’s lofty position. Both men are obsessed with the light. They share the same goal, to have intimacy with the light. In the script Thomas even refers to the light as a woman, his wife, and even calls her by name in a very unsettling night encounter. He is THE KEEPER of the light, sealing it off from Winslow, like forbidden fruit that only he can handle. He obsessively locks the gate behind him and sneaks off in the the night to have bizarre ecstasy like encounters with the light. Ephraim is obsessed with getting to the light and will do whatever it takes to have his encounter with the light.
It’s not clear what the light symbolizes: Is it intimacy with a god? Is it higher knowledge? Is it Obesession? Probably all of the above. But one thing is clear both men are possessed with possessing the light.
At the end of the day Eggers paints a skewed, Picasso type picture of mankind with the Lighthouse. He misses who man is. You can’t build an understanding of mankind based on Myths. What are Myths? A manifestation of mankind’s quest for meaning apart from God. They’re made up stories intended to give us purpose. Myths aren’t true (1 Timothy 1:4; 2 Timothy 4:4; Titus 1:14) and are actually opposed to the true picture of who God is and who man is. If you try to root your understanding of mankind in fairy tales you’re building on a bad foundation.
Now here’s what’s absolutely fascinating about The Lighthouse. I’m not the best writer so I’ll try to be clear. God made man to know Him and have a relationship with Him. But in sin mankind turned its back on God and now lives alienated from God.
The Bible claims there’s no such thing as atheists. That everyone knows there’s a God and knows enough about Him to hate Him (Romans 1:16-21). And in mankind’s hatred for God they suppress truth about God.
Now what happens if you suppress something that is true? Think of it this way Whats the most annoying song you’ve ever heard? Maybe It’s A Small World. You get that annoying song in your head and what happens when you try to get rid of it? You can’t! So here’s what human beings do, they have all these things they know about God, they’re born with it, and they try to suppress it, and suppress it. But every time you try to suppress which means to deliberately try to forget, every time they do that you bring it back into memory.
So back to Romans 1. We have wired into us the recognition, as degraded as it may be, of qualities that characterize God. These qualities include: Truth, beauty, perfection, justice, creativity, and happiness, that He is a being to be loved and feared. Those truths don’t go away when they’re suppressed. So what happens with truth that’s suppressed? It comes back up, it returns, not in perfect clarity, It’s truth altered, marred, perverted but it comes back, it reemerges, it bubbles back up to the surface. Suppressed truth reemerges in culture, and in various forms, like art, movies, music, athletics, etc. There’s flavors of truth in these things. And for that reason it’s highly appealing to humans hungering for meaning but desiring to avoid the ultimate source of truth.
Back to The Lighthouse. What truth has reemerged? The Light. God created physical Light to sustain His creation in His world (Genesis 1:3). But Light is much more than that: it’s a symbol of goodness, it’s a symbol of Bible knowledge aka truth, it’s a symbol of living a godly life as opposed to a life opposed to God (John 3:16-21), it’s even a symbol of God’s nature (1 John 1:4). Interestingly the light in the lighthouse is both physical and symbolic. It’s both intimate/personal, and intangible. It’s attractive and fearful. It’s hard to access and brings great joy. It’s a marred version of the Biblical truth about the Light, God’s light, God’s truth, God’s person. A suppressed version that has reemerged in a twisted way.
This is why I find movies fascinating, because fragments of the truth reemerge to the surface. The end of the Lighthouse has incredibly haunting scene. Probably the scariest scene in any movie I saw in 2019. It’s Robert Patterson’s character looking at the light. It’s about 15 seconds long. He looks ecstatic at first, but then it changes. I’m not sure how he manages it but it’s one of the most horrific screams I’ve ever heard. Paired with the overexposed image of his face both the image and sound are most haunting. He ends up at the end with both eyes burned out of their socket.
In the end there will be one light that shines brightly through eternity. Not the light of the sun, but the light of the Son. “And there shall no longer be any night; and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them; and they shall reign forever and ever” Revelation 22:5. Jesus said some are like moths and run to this light, while others are like cockroaches and flee from the light (John 3:16-21). To some this light is horrific. To others it is pure joy.