You know sometimes when you get introduced to someone at a party and everyone raves about them like they are some enlightened intellectual, so you naturally assume it might be true. And when you first shake hands they seemed to be well dressed and polite and it's all going great. But the more you talk to them, the more you notice them doing random things with no logic behind them or talking with pretentious words but having no real deep meaning. But you've been told by everyone that they're smart and your brain instinctively tries to reinterpret what it sees to make that true. So, instead you try to convince yourself that it's you who must be wrong. And it's only when they've wandered off and you have a minute to think about the conversation, that you reach a certain inescapable conclusion: that guy was a total idiot! Then the only thing left to do is distract him long enough for you to spike his drinks with turbo laxatives. Well it turns out, it's not just people who can pull these kind of tricks on you, movies are just as good. And what better example than The Lighthouse? A 2019 movie starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Defoe about two men starting their monthly guard of a lighthouse, slowly going insane.

You know analysing this movie is kind of a tricky one, because for start, it does some things expertly well while also failling dramatically at other equally important things. For start, this movie has no plot. It's just an amalgamation of random scenes that might be real or imagined that only serve a certain purpose, to build tension between the characters. You can basically boil it down to: Two men get to a lighthouse, they do random things, they go insane and then the movie ends. That's it. And it's drawn on for an hour and 50 minutes of absolute storytelling boredom! I mean, let's get the good things out of the way first: the acting is phenomenal. Both actors deliver what I believe to be their best performances of their entire careers, oscar nomination worthy performances at least, especially Defoe. The movie from a production point of view looks spectacular, perfectly capturing the sense of claustrophobia and slowly building tension and insanity. Needless to say the movie is in black and white with that old squared aspect ratio. The cinematography is also splendid, perfectly encapsulating the sense of claustrophobia and mental insecurity that the two main leads go through during the movie, also having some gorgeous shots. Also the music is pretty fitting but nothing too special. Which is great because the rest of the movie is a big pile of cinematic rubble. The first and biggest problem of the movie is the plot, or better said, the lack of it. There is nothing interesting going on. And even though I knew what this movie was about, I didn't particularly invested emotion into it, so there were maybe people who had no idea about the purpose of this movie until later in it. By that time however most of them didn't have a clue what happened or what the movie is about or trying to say, because basically nothing happens. The movie is just a collection of random things happening with no purpose or logic behind it. Just like the guy in my intro. I mean, I love movies that are ambiguos. In fact some of my favorite movies are ambiguos. And the movie that best came into my mind while watching this movie was Inception. That is also a movie that is very ambiguos. And over the years many theories have come and gone about the movie, it's ending or it's meaning. And the thing about that movie is that it has clues and hints suggesting a multitude of interpretation. And that's the thing missing here. The clues or the hints. There are basically none. The two men say things and later they say completely different things that are absolutely contradictory with everything they said up until that point. And there are no hints of what is or might be real or not, what is or might be true or not. So basically you don't care about what happens in this movie because either way you would look at this movie, it lacks any clues or hints to support any theorie or interpretation of what's happening. If that's a bad thing or a good thing, it depends I guess on every viewer. Next, another praise I've heard about this film is it's multiple interpretations and that the movie is intentionally vague to ask grandios questions of it's audience. Going back to my previous point. See, being ambiguos about something means you need to show more than one interpretation of a scene or event. There must be clues pointing out that everything in this movie is questionable. But here we see events occur, and then we hear the characters say that the event happened in a totaly different way. Which begs the question: Why? Why should I believe anything they say when clearly the movie shows something completely different. The movie doesn't put in the work to maybe be ambiguos about certain scenes, in such a way that when recontextualized they make sense from both men's points of view, that being their insanity. There's nothing here. It's just that things happen, characters say things and then they argue. That's it. And it feels simplistic and underdeveloped. And it's a shame because the idea of this movie had tremendeous potential, but it is eclipsed by power house performances and good production values. Even the logic in this movie is all over the place. I'm all for movies having weird stuff that happen in order to raise the tension and anticipation, but a movie is basically a world before us. So the audience must know what's possible or not, what rules are in it, what purpose some things have in order to fully get invested. And here is where Lighthouse absolutely crumbles, offering such a poorly developed world that it made me question at times: "What's the point?" Like, two men go into a Lighthouse on a 200 square yards island. I mean, why would anyone place a lighthouse on such a small island in the middle of nowhere? Aren't Lighthouses supposed to be near big ports or big chunks of land to help sailors reach those lands? But here it's in the middle of nowhere, and it isn't like this island holds a miraculously powerful mineral that everybody wants. Well you might say, obviously it's because of the symbolism and the questions it raises to the audiences. To that I say, movie interpretation is subjective, no doubt about that. Everything in any movie can be interpreted whatever you'd like to interpret. But you can't just throw a pair of men onto an island with no purpose whatsoever, have random things happen, and expect that to stir questions in the viewers minds just as it does in your mind. That's not how good entertainment works in my opinion.

Ultimately, The Lighthouse is more of a mix bag, and mostly a bad one. Yeah, it has high production values and the atmosphere is tense and brooding with fantastic performances, but the lack of a logical plot or any rules to govern the place this movie is set in, makes me as a viewer to not get fully invested in it and certainly not see the fantastic deep questions and symbolism this movie had, and just like the guy from my intro the best thing to do is spike his drink and watch him poop himself. 5/10 from me. Oh, and did I mention that there is an annoying foghorn almost every minute of this movie? Oh yeah... foghorn!