Mythology, impulses, symbolisms, sea monsters: Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse enters the Netflix streaming catalogue. The perfect opportunity to (re)see the instant cult – nightmarish – with Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe.
There’s little to get around it: movie theaters, at least in Italy, aren’t having a good time. Several factors should be considered, but it seems that not much more can be expected from the whole sector, except in rare cases. And it is certain that distribution will gradually be more and more careful, choosing what and when to distribute, taking into consideration the obligatory quota of Italian films. A very quick preamble, worthy of being deepened, to summarize: in this sense, streaming can help distribute those titles that have not found space on the big screen. The latest example? The Lighthouse Of Robert Eggers. In truth, in 2020, it had already arrived digitally, in TVOD format, and a little quietly (it was May 2020, the pandemic, the “stay at home”, and so on…). While it is true that the pay-per-view release almost never has the same wave of SVOD (the classic subscription that allows you to see everything), getting lost in large but not too supported catalogues.
Therefore, the opportunity is now unrepeatable: The Lighthouse is available on Netflix, and with it the entire brilliant vision of an author who revolutionized the horror genre. We could say that the film is an expressionist nightmare, the post-modern deconstruction of Murnau, Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene. However, before descending into the smell of guano and kerosene, the exit of The Lighthouse on Netflix is yet another excuse to highlight our dispassionate endorsement of A24, that production-distribution that is changing the face of contemporary cinema. Already because more than the seven Oscars won by Everything, Everywhere All at Oncethe distribution company founded in 2012 has always been a forerunner of new narrative flows, focusing on the individuality and freedom of authors and directors.
Da The Witch a The Lighthouse
As in the case of Robert Eggers, one of the most representative names of the Firm. Before The Lighthousepresented at Cannes, A24 had already distributed its (crazy) debut, namely The Witch with Anya Taylor-Joy, on balance one of the very first horror films in which the elevated style (atmosphere, environments, tones) has supplanted the more frank monstrosity or fear. The next step will then be the amazing black and white of The Lighthouse which, in addition to quoting Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, opens up to numerous interpretations, both visual and (above all) narrative: psychoanalysis, mythology, the complexity of sexuality. All, in fact, enclosed in a disturbing lighthouse, erected on an island off the coast of New England.
It’s the late 1800s, and young Ephraim Winslow, played by a bony Robert Pattinsonis in charge of flanking, for a month, the livid and angry caretaker, Thomas Wake, with the Mephistophelean face of Willem Dafoe. But, due to an angry storm that shows no signs of subsiding, the time of coexistence ends up getting longer. With it, visions and impulses, anxieties and claustrophobia. And the film, consequently, will end up climbing inexorably to a higher level, up to the highest point of the lighthouse: the photographic work of Jarin Blaschke is exceptional, enclosed in the 1.91:1 format, and the sound sector is exceptional, starting from music by Mark Korven.
The Lighthouse, the review: madness and fear of the unknown for Robert Eggers
Sea monsters and psychoanalysis
The technique and scenographic intent, the construction of a restless dream lashed by the call of a siren, to symbolize the wild impulse of the id, kept at bay by the super-ego. On this interpretation, free from any objective dogma, Ephraim represents the superego, Thomas the id, the general context is presumably the ego. Already because, by the same admission of Robert Eggers, who wrote the story together with his brother Max, The Lighthouse was markedly influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud: thought – and therefore the image – which moves according to the unconscious, and sexual – and therefore erotic – instincts as the engine of human behavior, structured between mind, body and impulses . And then it is sexuality, combined with mythology, the obsession suggested by the film’s imaginative screenplay. The lighthouse itself is an explicit phallic reference, as well as sexual fantasies and gradually nuanced androphilia, exploding with the physical upper hand of Robert Pattinson against Willem Dafoe.
The Lighthouse: the movie ending explained
In between, between the fury of the sea and the stench of turpentine, the seafaring archetypes and classical mythology: the Myth of Prometheus, the old Thomas Wake represented as Proteus, marine deity, inspired by the work The sea monster by Albrecht Durer. In turn, the many mixtures – linguistic and visual – lead to symbolism (another reference for Eggers was Sascha Schneider and the painting Hypnosis), inserted in the dreamy and unreal moods coming from the revisiting of the unfinished story by Edgar Allan Poe. Nevertheless, and considering the infinite interpretations, as said by Eggers, “The Lighthouse is not a film that offers answers, rather it asks questions”. This is to say: viewing on Netflix should be as free as possible from any frills or prejudices, leaving the film with full powers over our most intimate perceptions. After all, it’s just a nightmare. Or not?
