On December 18, 2019, Robert Eggers proposed the excellent The Lighthouse. On the occasion of its recent release on DVD on April 29, let's look back at this amazing film. Robert Eggers became known for his excellent The Witch. An almost experimental horror film that caught the attention of the public. 4 years after this astonishing attempt, the American filmmaker is back with The Lighthouse. Another film that breaks the usual shackles of Hollywood cinema, produced by the distribution company A24, famous for its risk-taking. And The Lihthouse fits perfectly into their catalog. It is a new film, surprising, in black and white, which offers a cinema somewhere between an old school approach, a madness à la David Lynch, and a style also very personal. Worn by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, the feature film is certainly worth seeing.
A confusing exercise in style
The Lighthouse is a true exercise in style. Already, because Robert Eggers chooses to shoot his footage entirely in black and white. He added a square format, which offers a rather unsettling mix. An astonishing aesthetic approach, which tries to reconnect with productions from another time. With this desire to offer a visual style like this, the filmmaker wants to place his story totally out of time. An approach that serves to destroy the spectator's landmarks to place him in the same condition as his protagonists. Like the characters, the audience loses its marks, loses its habits, and places itself in an agonizing context where reality is gradually crumbling. It is in this approach that, sometimes, the filmmaker tries to pay tribute to a very "Lynchean" style, while also borrowing from Tarkovsky. 
And it all works perfectly. The solitude of this island and this isolated marine environment make their effect. Gradually, the two heroes fall into an increasingly dangerous madness. The closed door progresses perfectly, leaving time, space and reality suspended, to rush into the neuroses and desires of the human being. The Lighthouse depicts the harmful effects of prolonged loneliness on the psyche of a human being. Loneliness, and paradoxically, closeness to another individual. A perfectly staged ambivalence. It shows both the progressive hallucinations inherent in the desire for profound change, but also the difficulty of supporting the same interlocutor for whole weeks. The Lighthouse thus presents the acute neuroses of the human being, whether sexual, intellectual or physical. A human being who is both unable to live alone, but also to live with the same and only person.
A radical and complex work
There is much to be said about The Lighthouse, a true psychoanalysis of primary human deviance. The visual and the writing respond constantly, in an impressive mortuary dance. A prodigious intensity, both formal and aesthetic, thanks to a languorous and anxiety-provoking writing. After two hours of film, madness is the culmination of this terrible isolation, this lack of contact, of access to the outside world. A perverse, violent, and radical deliverance. As if the heroes were stuck in their own consciousness, or in some kind of biblical purgatory. A crescendo of pressure, which ends up exploding through a madness of every moment. Robert Eggers thus signs an impressive phantasmagorical sensory experience. 
There is also a treatment of authority. An opposition of generations constantly in provocation. A rising tension that ends up being expressed by violent and sexual fantasies, especially by the character of Robert Pattinson, tired of breaking his teeth on the authoritarian figure. A way of passing the torch, of destroying the established order, to access liberation, represented by a flow of light both divine and at the same time mortal. A sublime, intriguing, and totally perched last sequence, which will be a landmark in the history of cinema. The Lighthouse also owes much to its two performers, emblematic figures of two different generations. Both are unforgettable. Willem Dafoe is inhabited, using his particular physique to offer a destabilizing, almost monstrous approach. As for Robert Pattinson, he is once again very impressive. Once again, he adds a string to the bow of his already varied career. With this film, Robert Eggers places himself as a radical filmmaker. A man who is not afraid to go through with his idea, even if he has to lose part of the audience along the way. In this, he places himself as a strange and unpublished contemporary filmmaker, who must be followed very closely.
The Lighthouse – Trailer:
https://youtu.be/HGQtix20zO8
