Viewing entries tagged
The Lighthouse
I was able to tease out a distinct theme in over half of the movies on my “best of” list this year. The theme is a grandness of scale. A lot of the movies on this list are telling big stories. Either the ambition of the characters or subjects is larger than life, as in number 5, or the cinematic scope of the filmmaker is immense, as in numbers 2, 3, and 4. Or, it’s a little bit of both, as in numbers 1 and 6.
Even the smaller films feel big and important in their own way (numbers 8 and 9).
It started with a Fresnel lens. If you’re wondering what that is, then we have something in common; so did I when I first read the term. For his second feature effort, The Lighthouse, director Robert Eggers knew he wanted the 19th century technology – developed specifically to make lighthouses visible by ships from farther away than was previously possible – as the centerpiece of his film. Just like with his directorial debut, the hypnotic 2015 film The Witch, Eggers was obsessed, and achieved, the most meticulous period accuracy for The Lighthouse. It seems blasphemous to use the word masterpiece so early in his career, but with his painstaking attention to detail, his eye for striking cinematic imagery, and his exploration of the human psyche, that’s just what Eggers has produced with both The Witch and now with The Lighthouse.
Set in the late 1890s and making use of sources like Herman Melville’s writings and actual lighthouse-keepers’ journals for its idiosyncratic dialog, Eggers hasn’t just re-created the time period with The Lighthouse. He’s brought it back from the dead.
