Forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea.
Okay, well, I’ve been putting this one off because I think I can safely say that I have never been as absolutely baffled by a movie in the immediate aftermath of watching it as I was by this one. It kind of feels downright historic to me, like this is the way people felt walking out of 2001 back when it first came out. I walked out of the theater as literally speechless as I’ve ever been walking out of a theater; I just got to my car and just set there in my seat, staring at nothing, for a solid minute before I could even start the car. As time has passed, I’ve achieved a level of clarity with the movie that I’m okay with; I certainly would never say that I “understand” it. I’m frankly still up in the air as to what “really” happens in the movie, ie. what as an audience member I’m supposed to take as literal and what is purely figurative and/or what is happening entirely in the fevered brain of Winslow, Robert Pattinson’s troubled, possibly completely psychotic character. At a certain point, I genuinely believed that there was only one shot in the movie that “literally” happens and that everything else is happening in the mind of one of the main characters. I still think that’s possible, but it’s not my personal favorite interpretation. But just the fact that this movie has given me the ability to have more than one interpretation on the level of the “facts” of the movie, to say nothing of the myriad of interpretations I have as far as what it all “means,” is one of the reasons I love this movie as much as I do. Obviously, I’m not going to get into ANY of that stuff in this review because I think everyone should see this movie knowing as little as possible; I’d managed to avoid the trailer, so I knew only the barest bones and I’m glad. It’s a weird movie and the moment to moment experience of having no idea what was actually happening or what was about to happen was one of the most dazzling I’ve ever had watching a movie.
Eggers really is operating on a level here that’s . . . just breathtaking. The way in which he conjures the period when the story takes place right down to the details isn’t surprising because, well, he did the same thing in The Witch, but it’s still remarkable. But the way he conjures an atmosphere by using every tool at his disposal as a filmmaker is astounding and this is the kind of movie that really makes me think that a word like “auteur” is necessary to differentiate even very good directors from directors like Eggers (if there even are any others) who really are making movies on a different level. On that other level with him are his lead actors; Eggers has found a couple of artists in Dafoe & Pattinson that are willing to go with him and their performances are so perfect moment to moment and also so absolutely fearless that they kind of make EVERY OTHER performance this year look like small potatoes. It isn’t that this is the “best” acting of the year; they’re so far out there, I almost feel like saying this is the only acting I’ve seen this year. Dafoe has a monologue at one point that just knocks the doors right off the theater and Pattinson’s second to last scene, his climactic moment in the titular lighthouse, is acting at the level of aneurysm. Both of those moments are moments that you think no actor could really live up to in terms of the extreme prose of the one and the extreme situation of the other, but Dafoe & Pattinson do it. But I’ve managed to talk longer than I thought I could given that I didn’t want to say a single word about the plot or the characters or the themes, so let’s wrap up. The Lighthouse is my favorite film I’ve seen all year so far and Eggers is probably now my favorite working director or at least the director that I am the most fascinated with, which, yeah, I think those are the same thing the longer I think about it. Eggers is up to something; this movie is as weird as any movie I’ve ever seen that actually worked. Yes, I’ve seen weirder movies, but they were all weird for the sake of weirdness and didn’t ultimately hold together for me, not the way this movie does. Eggers is a true visionary and he has the courage to go wherever that vision takes him and, as much as The Witch knocked me out, The Lighthouse goes even further and to even more dazzling and breath-taking effect. The Lighthouse is cinema right out there on the edge of the world. And I don’t know about you, but I’m going. 4 stars.
tl;dr – weird, incredibly striking movie is great cinema out on the edge; Eggers solidifies his status as a true master and the performances on display live up to the material. 4 stars.