BEFORE: This film's been on my radar for quite a while, there was an Academy screener of it on the shelf at the studio where I used to work part-time during the Before-Times, and I didn't get around to it while I was there, but I kept it on my Someday/Maybe list, and then it turned up on AmazonPrime, so I can finally cross it off the list today. There's still another 15 or 16 films that found their way on to my list via that method, I'm slowly whittling that list down to nothing, because that's something to do.
We're SO close to life returning to something like normal, here in NYC, but I've heard that before. Every few months, I've said "Just two more months, things will get better..." and maybe they have, slowly but surely, but it's been more slow than I would have liked - but looked at from another angle, it's been an incredibly fast recovery. It just doesn't feel like it? More on the pandemic after the film, I think.
Robert Pattinson carries over from "The Devil All the Time" and he'll be here tomorrow, too, for a big film I've been working towards.
THE PLOT: Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious island in the 1890's.
AFTER: Reportedly, this film was based on an unfinished tale titled "The Lighthouse" from Edgar Allan Poe - perhaps the last story he was working on when he died. Told in first-person form as the diary of a new lighthouse keeper, coming to his new assignment and documenting the experience for posterity, the tale begins with the man describing his difficult voyage to the island, relating that he's looking forward to spending some time alone, then imagining that he hears noises in the walls and worrying about whether the lighthouse is safe, and then on Day 4, the diary entry is blank. What happened? Was there something in the walls, or were these just the natural noises that a structure might make during a brisk wind? Did the lighthouse keeper die, or did the author? Was the lighthouse keeper slowly going insane, or was Poe? We'll never know.
Filmmaker Robert Eggers picked up Poe's dropped ball and ran with it - enlisting the help of his brother, Max, to turn this fragment into a two-character story about isolation, madness and umm, let's say "man's inhumanity toward his fellow man". And then by accident they crafted something universal, which is symbolic of what many people have gone through over the past years, being stuck in a confining space with one other person, and having to re-examine their expectations regarding work, relationships and trying to lead a successful life. Reportedly, some people's response to the COVID-19 crisis was to just pack up and move to their vacation home in Montana or wherever, but not everybody had that luxury. For the common human, their home became their office, assuming they were lucky enough to keep their job, but also became their refuge, and some might say also their prison cell. We've all been tested, we've all lived under modified house arrest for over a year, what effect has that had on society, both as individuals and as a whole?
Of course, there's social media and the internet, and movies to stream and Zoom chats and other things that have made life livable - it hasn't all been that terrible. But it's had an effect for sure, I've been working only part-time for the last year, I was on unemployment for a while, I didn't see my parents in person at Christmastime because travel was limited, all because as a group we couldn't get quarantine to work right the first few tries. The theory was great, shut the whole country down for six weeks, let the virus run its course on whoever got infected, and with nobody traveling around and everybody wearing masks, there would be no new infections, and then it would be over. Only it didn't work out that way, because of the people who defiantly didn't follow those rules, combined with people who got infected, didn't know it, and passed it on to somebody else before quarantining. Vaccines are the key, the new solution, and they're working, for the most part, except for the people who once again, are defiantly not following the rules. But at least this time we won't have to shut everything down once again, if you still don't want to follow the rules or don't believe in the vaccine, that's fine, but you're on your own.
Let me get back to the film, where two men have to run a lighthouse together, that's the gig. But even in a two-man system, there's a top dog and an underdog. Mr. Wake is the top dog, he's the boss and he sets the shifts, makes the rules and bosses around the newbie, Mr. Winslow. He also drinks too much, farts a lot and sings sea shanties (remember last year, when those were a viral thing for some reason?). And he spends a lot of time up in the lantern room, which he keeps locked - the two men are supposed to share this duty, but Mr. Wake keeps the chamber locked and doesn't allow Mr. Winslow access. He appears to spend hours just staring into the lens, mesmerized by the light and the heat - that can't be good for his eyes, right? This is the first of many WTF? moments, where we the audience start to wonder what's really going on here.
Mr. Winslow spends his days shoveling coal into the furnaces, maintaining the machinery, cleaning out the cistern, fixing the shingles on the roof, carrying oil up the large staircase, and so on, all while being denied access to the lantern room, while the regulations book clearly states that the two men are supposed to share the lantern duty. One sure way to make somebody want something is to tell him he can't have it. (My suggestion to combat vaccine hesistancy worked along a similar line, part of the problem was that the vaccines became too easy to get. One solution would be to tell people they're only going to be available for a limited time, before we ship the excess to India. Then you may see people scrambling to get their shots, if they think there's a deadline. It doesn't have to be a REAL deadline, just an implied one to create a call to action...)
The two men have different sleeping schedules, as a job requirement - there must always be someone awake, in case of technical problems with the light, which obviously would present a danger to any ships in the night. Perhaps it's the fact that my wife and I have different sleeping schedules that allows me to make the mental leap here to the average relationship - two people who live together, work at different times, sleep at different times, and only see each other for a couple hours each day, to eat a meal together and catch up before the whole cycle starts over again. It's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation - if a couple spends every waking moment together, let's say they work together and live together, they're going to burn out faster, right? But if their time together is more limited, the relationship may last longer overall, they're less likely to get sick of each other, but they've spent less time together in the long run. There's no easy solution. Then, think about all the people who work as nurses, firemen, police, with their irregular schedules, overnight shifts, and emergencies, that's all got to be tough on relationships, right? It's a wonder that any relationship survives.
Again, I've strayed too far, let me get back to the film. Wake is finally successful in getting Winslow to join him in drink, the reasoning being that we're all alone in this world, times are tough, jobs are tough, relationships don't last, and the only refuge is the drink. There's some logic to that, but it's also the start of so many downward spirals - still, they've got to do something to pass the time, so drinking it is. And thus, perhaps, begins the descent into madness. Winslow begins having dreams about mermaids washing ashore on the island, he thinks he sees a giant tentacle up in the lantern room, and he starts engaging in other bad habits, triggered by a shapely little piece of whittled art that perhaps a previous wickie carved.
Wake makes him mop the floors again and again, and Winslow starts to defy authority, leading to bigger arguments between the two men.
Then things get really weird - time seems to fragment, perhaps, and there's talk of the four-week working term being over the next day, and then in the next scene Wake says the tender's not due at the island for another week, and they'll have to ration their food, because the salt cod got damp somehow. Then reality itself seems to fragment, and even the men's names change, which causes some doubt in the audience over whether these men are really who they say they are, or if the story we've been watching isn't even the real one. And always, always, the screeching seagulls and that incessantly loud foghorn. Why, it's enough to drive anyone mad, and I see now what you did there. We are all fragile creatures, and it's a wonder that anybody gets through life alive. Oh, right, they don't. I guess the best that you can do, the best that any of us can do, is have a drink, go a little mad sometimes, and try not to kill your boss.
(EDIT: Reading the plot summary on Wikipedia has cleared up a lot of confusion. There's a valid reason why the tender didn't arrive, only my brain didn't put two and two together, landing on "time-fragmentation" as the answer, but it's not. There's another valid reason why one man's name changes, but I missed that one, too. Reality didn't fragment, not at that point in the story, anyway.)
This is quite meaningful for the times we're living in. At some point everything shifted in unexpected ways, for nearly everyone. Seven years ago, I was working part-time, three days a week, and I was happy and getting by. Then I worked full-time (2 part-time jobs together) for five years, and I was stressed and tired, but I had a bit more money and somewhere to go every weekday. Now I'm back to part-time, three days a week, the way I was before, and I'm miserable. I can't wait to get back to full-time and have a bit more cash, my wife's been great about paying bills because she works full-time, but I feel a bit like a freeloader in my own house. In the past six months I've applied for every part-time job I could find, like bookstores during the holiday season, then movie theaters when they started to re-open, then ice-cream stores in anticipation of summer, and everything else I could find listed on LinkedIn or Indeed that I think I could do. I've received zero job offers, zero phone calls - I did have one interview in person at the m&m's Store, and one zoom interview for an ice-cream shop, but that's it.
I'm still at home four days a week, and I'm going stir crazy. Thankfully my savings account isn't being depleted at a large rate, and after cutting my expenses WAY back, I've only needed to dip into it a couple times. The movies keep me focused, but getting another part-time job sure would help - it's very difficult to find another job in film production that isn't full-time, which would require me to leave the job I have, just to get another one. RIght now, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, its tough to get myself motivated, even just to make lunch or take a shower. But keeping an orderly schedule is important, so I'm going to go make lunch now, then later I'll shave and shower, I promise. Otherwise I'm going to start hearing noises in the walls, and before long I may start to see tentacles moving across the floor...
I think I might even be selling this film short, just by using it as a pandemic metaphor. Others have found references to mythology (Prometheus, mermaids, Oedipus) and the psychological works of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud (again, Oedipus). Perhaps there's even a homo-erotic subtext, but that's going to happen any time a film has just two main male characters who have to share a space. Other interpretations are possible, and as always, your mileage may vary.
Also starring Willem Dafoe (last seen in "The Reckoning"), Valeriia Karaman, Logan Hawkes, Kyla Nicolle, Shaun Clarke, Pierre Richard.
RATING: 6 out of 10 floating logs
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