The Lighthouse and 1917 - Reviews

Sometimes I end up seeing a couple of films in quick succession, which just happen to have a tentative connecting thread between them. In the case of The Lighthouse and 1917 it is their emphasis on truly using the medium of cinema to tell their stories. One by creating the feeling of cinema of old, enshrouded in claustrophobic darkness, and stark black and white, the other dragging you kicking and screaming through the mud and blood of war, using the illusion of a single take.

The Lighthouse 

The Lighthouse is the second film by director Robert Eggers, his first being what I think is probably my favourite horror film of recent years, The Witch. That too righteously indulged in cinematic flourishes, with a refusal to use an sources of artificial light whilst filming, and reliance on period appropriate dialogue to lose you in a forest of unseen, and a times very seen dangers, driving a puritanical family to madness. It culminated in what I found to be the most terrifying scene in any film I've seen, doing so much with a bit of shadow and voice whispering dark temptations in the ear of our heroine.

Amazingly, The Witch was the directorial debut of Eggers, clearly a director who somehow manages to have the reach and grasp to go way out there with his craft. When I heard that his second film, The Lighthouse, would be another period horror film, shot in black and white, and in 19:16 ratio (used around 1926 to 1932), and would have Lovecraftian elements, I was sold beyond belief.

Then I had to endure the torture of a seemingly never ending release schedule everywhere else but here, before finally seeing it at an outdoor cinema. This only added to the experience, having jet black skies, punctured by the spiking silhouettes of trees abutting the vast screen.

Attempting to unravel the story at the heart of The Lighthouse, is a somewhat thankless task. On paper it reads simple. Two lighthouse keepers (or "wickies" as they are described in the film, presumably a reference to keeping the "wick" of the lighthouse lit, rather than being a vault of internet knowledge), one senior (Willem Dafoe), one junior (Robert Pattinson), go to work tending the lighthouse. But as time goes on more and more absurd, unusual, uncanny, and terrifying things occur. Time seems to become malleable, and when you can't tell how long you've been on an island, and supplies start to run dry, tensions simmer and erupt.

At the end of the film, there seemed to be multiple interpretations but most of them do not come to the surface easily. One key theme revolving around ancient myth is the most apparent and prescient in any interpretation, but even a quick discussion with those who saw it with me revealed that they had picked up on one reading that hadn't occurred to me at all. Undoubtedly the internet is also full of wild theories as to the meaning too. For some, this lack of easy answers may frustrate, and may make the journey to the conclusion seem meaningless.

For me, however, it was all part of the charm and atmosphere, first created by the beautifully desolate cinematography. I didn't realise how black and white can somehow lend more depth to a film rather than take it away. This apparent "draining" of colour is anything but, as the darkness takes on a life of its own, and that void is bolstered by the encroaching aspect ratio. At times the two bleed into one another to give the impression of walls ever closing in. A lighthouse is claustrophobic enough on its own, but when you add in these godly like powers leeching life and space from the cursed rock of the lighthouse, it is only magnified. Add to that a fantastic sound design, fully equipped to discombobulate, the particular highlight being the Inception-like horn of the lighthouse, bellowing more like an eldritch deep sea beast than any beacon of hope. 

And at the centre of this maelstrom are two towering performances by Dafoe and Pattinson. Both wrangling with absurdly wonderful accents (Dafoe in particular comes across like Captain Birdseye took to the drink...hard), the sparring between these two as madness infects is electric. Dafoe as the senior more learned wickie is a firm taskmaster to the apparently quiet and shy Pattinson. Dafoe makes it clear that it is he who is in charge, he who gets to tend to the heart of the lighthouse, the light itself, whereas Pattinson is relegated to Sisyphean menial tasks by day. 

Through this natural tension between master and servant cracks begin to show, both negative and positive. At times they appear to be brothers, singing joyous sea shanties, at other times petty arguments overs cooking boil over into drunken rage and explosive portents of aquatic doom (ending on killer punchline - this film has unexpected comedic beats that land more consistently than most so called comedies). The fact that both actors have been overlooked at  the Oscars (with the only nod being for cinematography which cinematographer Jarin Blaschke) is comparable to Toni Colette being ignored for Hereditary.

Through a haze of growing hysteria, fuelled by rampant alcoholism, the film ends on a crescendo. Unlike most horror films who can't wait to show you the heart of darkness, The Lighthouse, like The Witch, saves its most nerve jangling imagery for the end, in a hypnotic one shot that you'll want to look away from but cannot.

1917 

1917 also carries with it a stylistic gambit, that being the illusion of being filmed in one shot. In reality this is not actually what we are seeing, as through a few sly camera movements through shadow or CGI, the edits can be hidden, but apart from one intentional fade to black, Sam Mendes is wanting us to experience the nonstop struggle of two soldiers stuck in the middle of WW1 in 1917.

The story is fairly simple, and linear, which is not to be unexpected in a film who wants to keep you locked on to two characters for its run-time. George MacKay is Lance Corporal William Schofield, who is assigned to help his friend Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) send a warning on foot to the Devonshire Regiment who are destined to lead a doomed charge against what they think is a German retreat. In actual fact, this is a trap set by the Germans who are very much at full strength and lie in wait to wipe out the 1,600 men in the regiment, Blake's brother being one of them.

First and foremost, the question to be asked whenever the conceit of an unbroken take is used must be "Why?" Interestingly, Mendes had dabbled with this in the opening scene of Spectre, where it provided the undeniable cool factor to watching Bond traverse the Day of the Dead carnival before sauntering over rooftops to take aim against his target. Superficial stuff, but when dealing with an action blockbuster like Bond, style can very much exist over substance and get the job done.

Here, it appears the intention is to ground you in the mud, blood, and bones of the conflict. The majority of the landscape that our protagonists wander over is already war-torn. The war has been raging for years and now what our heroes find is the bloody aftermath. So the camera follows the pair in a purgatory like setting, moving from trenches and bunker-like catacombs, complete with monstrous rats, to flaming skeletal infernos of bombed out villages, as well as a reprieve of Mendes' time on Skyfall, with a waterfall drop into the River Styx, here full of bloated corpses.

The combination of the hellish cinematography with one shot illusions forces us to imprint ourselves on our heroes, so when the emotional hits come (and come they did for me, the ending I found to be particular affecting, comparing the the start of the film to its end), you feel them harder. When a life is taken, we are given front row seats to the action that caused it and the chilling aftermath, be it the silhouette of a strangulation, or the slow realisation of death by bullet to the gut, the camera does not waver. It offers no easy looks away, you see death in real time.

However, with the one shot conceit comes the ever present risk that the trick is so apparent that it distracts from the actual action. You being to notice the trick edits, or wonder how on earth they filmed such a sequence. One sequence in the middle stood out in particular for me, where the landscape turned to an inferno, replete with grasping shadows, framing a nail biting chase sequence. I was wowed and immersed for the majority of the scene but also couldn't help but let my mind wander to how on earth they must have filmed it. It is no surprise that Roger Deakins (Skyfall, Blade Runner 2049, Sicario and many many more) is behind the lens.

The score too is also a mixed bag. Thomas Newman provides a pulsing action score that ticks all the right buttons to get the heart beating but perhaps it is too overtly an "action movie score." This may have stuck out more to me than to most people, as again Newman scored the last two Bond films and the score at times sounded awfully reminiscent of them (perhaps this is no criticism at all, for Newman's flourishes probably stand out no more than those of Hans Zimmer or Danny Elfman who again most can recognise on first listen).

Hand in hand with the action score is a complaint that didn't personally ring true for me but friends who saw the film with me raised - that the film potentially doesn't seem interested in providing a grounded retelling of the horrors of war. Instead, you have operatic set pieces, particularly towards the end of the film. This obviously contradicts the brute fact that this war was simply industrial slaughter on a scale that the world had not seen at that point in history. There were none of the lone heroes that this film portrays.

But for me that may be the point. Combining the hellish and underworld like visuals with extreme moments of balletic and theatrical heroism may be how Mendes would like to have this period of history re-imagined as a way of honouring those who fell in that war. Even if the film shoots for such mythic representation of such a grisly conflict, I still felt shaken and drained by the end of the film.

Neither The Lighthouse nor 1917 are films that will be improved by viewing on the small screen. I recommend running out and seeing them as soon as possible.