Summary:

Beyond the beauty of certain images and the successful interpretations of its protagonists (particularly of Pattinson, a character with more nuances), The Lighthouse is a pretentious and unsuccessful bet from the narrative and dramatic point of view, since it does not achieve grow its exalted characters and convincingly escalate the conflict between them, or, in any case, does not make them interesting.

A film that is nothing more than the sum of its parts and leaves us without understanding what Eggers was up to with it.

Review:

Old lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and his temporary assistant Ephraim Winslow arrive at a remote New England island at the end of the 19th century to operate its lighthouse for four weeks. The coexistence between the two will be conflictive from the start.

Faced with certain films, I sometimes wonder what the director set out to tell or show me. In general, the answer comes spontaneously and I don't even ask myself the question. I understand that, like any artistic product, every film, in one way or another, contains a message and embodies an objective of its author. And I confess that in El Faro I have not found the answers to these questions.

From the beginning, the film poses a severe conflict between a despotic Wake who owns the place and subjects Winslow to harsh and even humiliating maintenance tasks and a Winslow who decides to abide by and understands that those four weeks will have to be spent as best he can. This conflictive relationship (with its ups and downs), obviously accentuated by forced coexistence, absolute isolation and inclement weather, is adorned with elements between dreamlike and fantastic, with a fairly obvious marine symbolism, which supposedly should pay a dramatic crescendo and enrich the description of their characters and their motivations. But no.

The director and co-writer Robert Eggers chose to shoot his film in black and white (perhaps to reinforce the period atmosphere and an expressionist aesthetic) and with a square screen format, thinking that it would return the most oppressive and claustrophobic story. But no.

Dafoe's character is expressed many times with philippic theatricals. The final titles clarify that the dialogues are inspired by texts from that period, from Melville (Wake is an explicitly Melvillian character) and lighthouse keepers' diaries and especially from the work of the novelist and short story writer from the second half of the 19th century Sarah Orno Jewett.

I can't help but relate this film to Antichrist by Lars von Trier (precisely also with Defoe), also a story about the isolation of two people, but the results of which are much more terrifying.

Beyond the beauty of certain images and the successful interpretations of its protagonists (particularly of Pattinson, a character with more nuances), The Lighthouse is a pretentious and unsuccessful bet from the narrative point of view, since it fails to make it grow convincingly its exalted characters and the conflict between them.

A film that is nothing more than the sum of its parts and leaves us, ultimately, without understanding what Eggers was up to with it.