The Lighthouse is a 2019 film directed and produced by Robert Eggers, from a screenplay he wrote with his brother Max Eggers. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as turmoiled nineteenth-century lighthouse keepers stranded at a remote New England outpost by a violent storm. The film has defied genre categorization in media, leading to multiple interpretations from critics.

The idea of The Lighthouse originated from a script based on Edgar Allan Poe's incomplete short story "The Light-House", which was written by Max. Eggers researched for source material and developed the plot from a nineteenth-century legend of an accident at a Welsh lighthouse. The Lighthouse draws visually from photography of 1890s New England, maritime-themed French films from the 1930s, and symbolist art. Principal photography took place in Nova Scotia, Canada, beginning in April 2018 and lasting slightly over a month. It was shot in black-and-white, with a nearly-square 1.19:1 aspect ratio to express the lighthouse's vertical orientation and isolation of the characters. Mark Korven developed the film's score, evoking the sounds and mythologies of the sea.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States by A24 on October 18, 2019. It grossed over $18 million, against an $11 million budget, and received critical acclaim, with particular praise for the direction, visuals, and performances of Dafoe and Pattinson. Among its numerous accolades, the film was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 92nd Academy Awards and the 73rd British Academy Film Awards.

Plot

In the 1890s, Ephraim Winslow begins a four-week stint as a "wickie" (lighthouse keeper) on an isolated island off the coast of New England, under the supervision of former sailor Thomas Wake. Winslow discovers a small scrimshaw of a mermaid and keeps it in his jacket. Wake proves to be demanding, and Winslow empties chamber pots, maintains the machinery, carries heavy kerosene tanks up the stairs, and paints the lighthouse. Wake bars Winslow from the lantern room; Winslow discovers Wake disrobes before the light every night. During his stay on the island, Winslow begins to hallucinate sea monsters and logs floating in the sea, and masturbates to the mermaid on the scrimshaw. Winslow is bothered by a one-eyed gull, but Wake warns him against killing it under the superstitious belief that gulls are reincarnated sailors. Wake reveals to Winslow that his previous wickie died after losing his sanity. Winslow tells Wake he's a former timberman from Maine who was stationed in Canada and is now seeking a new trade.

The day before his scheduled departure, Winslow discovers a dead gull fouling the drinking water in the cistern. The one-eyed gull attacks him and he bludgeons it to death. The wind drastically changes and Winslow and Wake spend the night getting drunk during a severe storm that prevents the lighthouse tender from collecting them. As Winslow empties the chamber pots, he discovers the beached body of a mermaid, which waves and howls at him. He flees back to the cottage, where Wake informs him the storm has spoiled their rations. Winslow assumes the tender is merely a day late, but Wake says that they have already been stranded for weeks.

As the storm continues to rage, Winslow and Wake get drunk every night and alternate between moments of intimacy and hostility. One night, Winslow tries unsuccessfully to steal the lantern room keys from Wake and contemplates murdering him. Winslow later sees the one-eyed head of Wake's previous wickie in a lobster trap. Winslow drunkenly confesses to Wake that his real name is Thomas Howard, and he assumed the identity of Ephraim Winslow, a cruel foreman in Canada whom he deliberately allowed to drown during a log drive. Howard has a menacing vision of Wake accusing Howard of "spilling [his] beans" and runs to the dory to try to leave the island. Wake destroys the boat with an axe. Back at their lodgings, Wake claims it was Howard who hacked up the dory, driven mad by his confession.

Howard and Wake run out of alcohol and turn to drinking sweetened turpentine. That night, a giant wave crashes through the wall of their cottage and floods it. In the morning, Howard finds Wake's logbook, in which Wake has criticized him as a drunken and incompetent employee and recommended he be fired without pay. The two men argue, and Howard attacks Wake while hallucinating the mermaid, the real Winslow, and Wake as a Proteus-like figure. Howard beats Wake into submission and takes him to the hole at the base of the lighthouse to bury him alive. Before losing consciousness, Wake describes a "Promethean" punishment that awaits those who look in the lantern, and Howard takes the keys to the lantern room.

Howard goes to get a cigarette, and Wake returns and strikes him with the axe. Howard disarms and kills Wake before ascending the lighthouse. In the lantern room, the Fresnel lens opens to Howard, who reaches in and screams before falling down the lighthouse steps. Howard ends lying up nude on the rocks with a damaged eye as a flock of gulls peck at his exposed organs.

Cast Robert Pattinson as Ephraim Winslow (fake) / Thomas Howard Willem Dafoe as Thomas Wake Valeriia Karaman as the Mermaid Logan Hawkes as Ephraim Winslow (real) Kyla Nicolle as the Woman on the Rocks Shaun Clarke as the Departing Wickie Pierre Richard as the Departing Assistant Wickie Preston Hudson and Jeff Cruts as the Tender Mates

Production Development

The original idea for The Lighthouse was first articulated at a dinner between director Robert Eggers and his younger brother, Max Eggers. Eggers was unhappy with his film industry prospects after the pitching of his first major feature, The Witch (2015), failed to secure funding. Max shared the basic outline of his screenplay, a lighthouse-set ghost tale tentatively titled Burnt Island, based on his interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished short story "The Light-House". Max struggled with his treatment to the extent that progress stalled. Eggers began brainstorming ideas and, with his brother's support, soon began investigating for source material.

One story that caught the director's attention in his research was a nineteenth-century myth of an accident at Smalls Lighthouse in Wales, wherein one of two wickies, both named Thomas, died while trapped at the outpost by a destructive storm. That both men were named Thomas, Eggers recalled, persuaded him to create a film with an underlying story of identity. However, Eggers stopped working on The Lighthouse when he found an investor to finance The Witch.

The unexpected success of The Witch elevated Eggers's directing profile. To exploit his newfound credibility, he pushed The Lighthouse, among several other projects, in his negotiations with studio executives. He and Max then resumed their work by exchanging and revising drafts. This coincided with more rigorous research of the period to develop the onscreen world; Eggers sought out photos of 1890s New England, 1930s maritime-themed French films, and symbolist art for visual reference.

The Eggers' study of literature with maritime and surrealist themes influenced the film's dialogue. They looked into the writings of Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H. P. Lovecraft, among others, before coming across the work of Sarah Orne Jewett, a novelist best known for her local color works set in coastal Maine. Her dialect-heavy writing style provided the cadences of the lead characters, rooted in the experiences of her novel characters and real-life farmers, fishermen, and captains she had interviewed. The Eggers also referred to a dissertation on Jewett's use of dialects as guidance for more dramatic conversational scenes.

Another creative force shaping The Lighthouse was the Eggers' theater background. The two men drew from playwrights that influenced their work as young teens, chiefly artists such as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Sam Shepard, whose writings examine male-centric perspectives of existential crises and psychosis.

Casting

The film stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, who approached Eggers independently. Pattinson originally met Eggers to discuss a proposal to portray a Victorian socialite in an unrelated project. This was rejected by Pattinson as he believed the role would fail to challenge his acting ability. His next meeting with Eggers took place once he finished reading The Lighthouse completed script. According to Eggers, during their conversation, Pattinson showed him a clip of an intoxicated man screaming "I am a demon" to express his understanding of the expectations of his role.

Eggers's initial film proposals with Dafoe were also not fruitful. The director used Pattinson's participation in The Lighthouse to convince Dafoe because they already had a rapport. When they met in person to discuss the project, Dafoe recalled that Eggers was plainspoken in the conversation: "There was no discussion. 'This is the way we're going to do this. My way or the highway.' That's very unusual, especially for a two-hander, for a director to say, 'This is the way I see it. Yes or no?

Details about the actors and producers involved emerged in the media by February 2018. At one point, Anya Taylor-Joy pursued Eggers offering to play the mermaid, which Eggers opposed. To prepare for their scenes, each actor employed different techniques at the rehearsals. Dafoe, citing his theater background with the experimental troupe The Wooster Group, drew from his spontaneous acting style in rehearsals, whereas Pattinson planned his rehearsing from the discussion of the script.

Filming

Because the filmmakers could not find a lighthouse suitable for the needs of the production, they constructed a 70-foot (20-meter) makeshift lighthouse on Cape Forchu in Leif Erikson Park in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia. The lighthouse was outfitted with a replica 3rd-order Fresnel lens built by Artworks Florida, a company specializing in reproduction lenses. It was made of plexiglass and had an octopus-like design with eight panels. A24 later auctioned the lens alongside other props from the film for charity, though it failed to sell. Most of the interior scenes were filmed on sets constructed inside a hangar at Yarmouth Airport and in soundstages near Halifax. Another shooting location was a large pool for training emergency responders, which the filmmakers used for shots of and from the ocean. Principal photography began on April 9, 2018, and lasted slightly over schedule at 35 days as a result of unforeseen circumstances on set. Problems were attributed to harsh weather, the lighthouse set's remoteness, and the technical demands of the shoot. Additional photography took place in Pinewood and Brooklyn. The Lighthouse qualified for a $1.673 million tax subsidy from the Nova Scotian government.

The Lighthouse is director of photography Jarin Blaschke's third collaboration with Eggers. Eggers wanted to film in black-and-white with a boxy aspect ratio. They faced opposition from executives seeking a more widespread distribution in theaters, but felt shooting in color would undermine the film's artistic integrity. In pre-production, Eggers planned to shoot the film in 1.33:1 aspect ratio. He reconsidered when Blaschke suggested shooting in 1.19:1 aspect ratio, which was used fleetingly during the film industry's transition to sound, as a joke. They found that the footage better conveyed the lighthouse's vertical orientation, the isolation of the characters, and a sense of confinement when Winslow and Wake are together. The filmmakers cited M (1931), Man of Aran (1934), Pickpocket (1959), In Cold Blood (1967), and the works of Béla Tarr and Ingmar Bergman as significant influences on the film's visual hallmarks.

Cinematography