Writer-director Robert Eggers follows up his unsettling and atmospheric feature debut The Witch with a similarly mysterious and intense tale of two lighthouse keepers attempting to maintain their sanity on a remote New England island in the 1890s.
Young gun Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) and old timer Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) are partnered up on the island for four weeks to maintain the lighthouse before relief comes.
The rain lashes down, thunder rumbles, seagulls squawk, the foghorn blares. Constantly, the foghorn blares.
Over the first of many supper time scenes, Wake pours Winslow a drink which Winslow refuses, thus setting up the first wedge between the two. Their strange relationship intensifies over the coming days and weeks as Winslow feels put upon, Wake feels Winslow is not pulling his weight. They bond over respective back stories, but clash over their island responsibilities. Winslow is desperate to tend the light and prove himself as a “wickie” but Wake pulls rank keeping the light (and its secrets) for himself.
From here it’s a descent into madness and an exploration of the many states of a fractured mind, as both men begin to question the motive of the other.
The dialogue is peppered with authentic sailor slang and turns of phrase that offer the film a certain dark poetry. These lines are delivered perfectly by Dafoe with his gruff, salty-dog accent, pipe protruding from his mouth askew. Pattinson is equally impressive as Winslow, a man battling not only the here and now on the island, but a dark and devastating past.
The film shares elements with David Lynch’s Eraserhead, not just in its gorgeous 1.19:1 monochrome photography by Jarin Blaschke, but its industrial aesthetic and soundscape. Coal is shovelled, pistons whir, machinery clanks and clatters. One can almost smell the salty sea air and feel the greasy oil under the fingernails, which is almost as black as the film’s humour.
It won’t be for everyone, particularly as the visuals and atmosphere are cranked up toward the climax, but viewers who roll with it will be hooked, line and sinker.
Why Mr. Pink? 