The Lighthouse
It was alright.
It looks astonishing. The opening sequence is a symphony of greys - to borrow a phrase - but it is the thick, blotting blacks and the searing whites that cut across the screen. In one key sequence Robert Pattinson's face appears to solarise and melt, whiting out so much his mouth and eyes disappear inside the stubborn frame of his face. It is a beautiful and horrible image.
The performances are remarkable and the accents frightening. I like that. New England pirates spitting and bellowing, breaking the sullen silence like sudden squalls. Pattinson's character Tom's work is endless and unrewarded, Dafoe's character Tom farts a lot and lures him into drinking. They dance around one another, pushing, pressing for points of weakness. Pattinson fantasizes about mermaids. Dafoe, protean and terrifying, becomes Neptune or, later on, the Lighthouse itself, standing naked and proud over the prone Pattinson, unearthly light beaming from his eyes, his body a gnarled phallus. This sort of symbolism is laid on with a shovel throughout.
Pattinson, a Beckettian dogsbody chained to the ritual of work with no end, pushing a wheel-barrel full of wet useless coal over a muddy slalom, is jealous of Dafoe's special time with the Lighthouse's lamp, something he is never allowed to share. That and the book where Dafoe jealously writes about his progress will prove to be extremely divisive.
That and a seagull.
I mean if you're looking for the villain of the piece its a bastard seagull. Its bad luck to fuck with a seagull. They are the souls of dead sailors after all. Pattinson more than fucks with a seagull: he turns one into a half stuffed duvet and five pounds of impossibly rank fois gras. In turn the seagull sends the Lighthouse keepers a cruel Eastern wind which means the men's relief never comes. What comes instead is spiraling, murderous insanity.
I'm not sure what's missing. Because this film, jam-packed as it is, is missing something. Weight or gravity or guts, a bit like that sorely abused seagull, it felt like the stuffing was missing. Wadded with the sort of things I like: references to Greek mythology, screeds of Romantic poetry are gobbed out, self conscious nods to the theatre of the absurd and a punch up with a gull (we have history) this film could have been made for me. But the Jungian undertow left very little dragged up on the beach, slim-picking for beachcombers.
I would love to see the screen-play. I'd love to see how much of this was written and how much was extraordinary editing and photography. And I'm so glad this film exists. Even if its not quite there its so nearly there that I have to reward its existence. How unlikely is this film? And how beautiful and ugly.
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| "You could be lifted...lifted..." |
It looks astonishing. The opening sequence is a symphony of greys - to borrow a phrase - but it is the thick, blotting blacks and the searing whites that cut across the screen. In one key sequence Robert Pattinson's face appears to solarise and melt, whiting out so much his mouth and eyes disappear inside the stubborn frame of his face. It is a beautiful and horrible image.
The performances are remarkable and the accents frightening. I like that. New England pirates spitting and bellowing, breaking the sullen silence like sudden squalls. Pattinson's character Tom's work is endless and unrewarded, Dafoe's character Tom farts a lot and lures him into drinking. They dance around one another, pushing, pressing for points of weakness. Pattinson fantasizes about mermaids. Dafoe, protean and terrifying, becomes Neptune or, later on, the Lighthouse itself, standing naked and proud over the prone Pattinson, unearthly light beaming from his eyes, his body a gnarled phallus. This sort of symbolism is laid on with a shovel throughout.
Pattinson, a Beckettian dogsbody chained to the ritual of work with no end, pushing a wheel-barrel full of wet useless coal over a muddy slalom, is jealous of Dafoe's special time with the Lighthouse's lamp, something he is never allowed to share. That and the book where Dafoe jealously writes about his progress will prove to be extremely divisive.
That and a seagull.
I mean if you're looking for the villain of the piece its a bastard seagull. Its bad luck to fuck with a seagull. They are the souls of dead sailors after all. Pattinson more than fucks with a seagull: he turns one into a half stuffed duvet and five pounds of impossibly rank fois gras. In turn the seagull sends the Lighthouse keepers a cruel Eastern wind which means the men's relief never comes. What comes instead is spiraling, murderous insanity.
I'm not sure what's missing. Because this film, jam-packed as it is, is missing something. Weight or gravity or guts, a bit like that sorely abused seagull, it felt like the stuffing was missing. Wadded with the sort of things I like: references to Greek mythology, screeds of Romantic poetry are gobbed out, self conscious nods to the theatre of the absurd and a punch up with a gull (we have history) this film could have been made for me. But the Jungian undertow left very little dragged up on the beach, slim-picking for beachcombers.
I would love to see the screen-play. I'd love to see how much of this was written and how much was extraordinary editing and photography. And I'm so glad this film exists. Even if its not quite there its so nearly there that I have to reward its existence. How unlikely is this film? And how beautiful and ugly.
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