Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

The Lighthouse Blu-ray Movie Review

Shapeless water.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 10, 2020

Thunder Rock really should have been one of the biggest hits of the 1939-40 Broadway season. It was a production of the legendary Group Theater, then coming off the single biggest smash hit in its entire history, and it in fact reunited Frances Farmer and Luther Adler, the stars of that very sensation, Clifford Odets’ 1937 play Golden Boy (note that the link points to the movie version). The redoubtable Elia Kazan, then still relatively early in his career (he had actually replaced Adler as part of the touring company of Golden Boy), directed the cast (which also included a number of other Group notables like Lee J. Cobb and Morris Carnovsky), and the script was by the noted author and anthropologist (!) Robert Ardrey. Thunder Rock, which previewed under the title Tower of Light, told the story of two lighthouse keepers (or at least one lighthouse keeper and a supplier of goods to that lighthouse), one of whom is increasingly isolationist and prone to “dreaming” (if not outright hallucinating), and the other, who leaves to embark on a quest to better the world. Thunder Rock opened in November 1939, in the wake of the first battles of what would ultimately become World War II, and its message that involvement in conflict is sometimes necessary in order to end conflict was not well received by an American audience which was itself still pretty resolutely isolationist, as it continued to be by and large until Pearl Harbor was attacked around two years later. Thunder Rock may have failed on “this side of the pond”, closing after only about three weeks, but it was a substantial, even legendary, hit in London, becoming a stage symbol of British resistance. Some fans may know Thunder Rock became a somewhat ill regarded British film in 1942 starring Michael Redgrave which made some substantial changes to the original play while perhaps understandably highlighting Ardrey’s thesis that a sanguine reaction to fascism would only spell disaster. Now some 81 years after Robert Ardrey crafted a piece which (in its stage version, anyway) took place in a lighthouse populated by apparitions and with a plot that evoked both a literal and figurative “storm warning”, another Robert, Robert Eggers, arrives with The Lighthouse, a kind of nightmarish “two hander” which is similarly located, and which offers a spooky mood and some outstanding performances, but a “message” that may seem somewhat muddled.

It’s not much of a spoiler to state the Robert Eggers, who made such a splash (sorry) a few years ago with The Witch, populates this story with various mythic subtexts and even imagery. Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe, in a role which could easily bring him an Academy Award nomination in a few days) is a crusty old seaman who is mentoring a novice named Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) in a completely isolated lighthouse somewhere in New England (the film’s crew actually built a lighthouse from scratch in Nova Scotia for the shoot, according to the interesting featurette included on this Blu-ray disc as a supplement). Much as with Eggers’ previous foray into quasi-horror, there’s mood aplenty from the opening fog shrouded scenes which seem to be emerging directly from the filmmaker’s Id, but almost instantly Eggers depicts two characters who are each seemingly hiding something, with some increasing angst accruing.

The reference to Id may indicate that there’s a certain Freudian ambience to The Lighthouse, especially with regard to the power dynamic between the elder Wake and younger Winslow (a draft of the script seen in the featurette simply refers to the characters as “Old” and “Young”), which ultimately has some at least slightly sexual overtones. But the film is filled with other imagery that evokes everything from folklore (visions of a kind of frightening mermaid haunt Ephraim) to Greek mythology (the final moment seems to be a seafaring version of part of the Prometheus story, and indeed Prometheus as the “bringer of light” might be appropriately seen as informing the story from the get go).

The “secrets” which are ultimately revealed about Wake and Winslow have a surface logic, but by the point in the film where they’re doled out, things have gotten so generally gonzo due to the mental imbalance of at least one (and arguably both) of the characters that it’s hard to know exactly what is “the truth” and what isn’t. There’s also a reveal about Ephraim’s name which may indicate that Eggers is really trying to (and I’ll be a bit circumspect here in order not to post any outright spoilers) go what might be termed a “Persona route”. As such, there are probably going to be a whole slew of unanswered questions that various viewers may have as the film comes to its calamitous close, but that said, the film has an undeniably gravitational pull which, like the ferocious tides surrounding the lighthouse in the film, is impossible not to feel.

The Lighthouse Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Lighthouse is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.20:1. Shot on film and obviously framed in an "old school" aspect ratio, The Lighthouse is a stylistic tour de force and and I for one can't imagine cinematographer Jarin Blaschke not being feted with an Academy Award nomination in just a few more days. Blaschke is featured in the supplemental making of piece and goes into some detail with regard to the lenses he chose, and how those choices affected which spectra of light imprinted on celluloid, and he also gets into describing some of the high contrast moments where, for example, inky black waters underlie almost effulgent moonglow. Fine detail is often exceptional, even in some rather dimly lit sections, revealing all sorts of crags and "imperfections" on the faces of the two main characters, while also providing precise renderings of elements like the thick woven sweaters the men wear. I noticed just a couple of very brief flirtations with banding as the actual light in the lighthouse flows out into the darkness, but otherwise this disc offers secure compression and a really nicely organic looking resolution of the grain field.

The Lighthouse Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Lighthouse offers a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that derives considerable surround activity from the glut of ambient environmental effects that are a pretty ubiquitous part of the sound design. Everything from screeching seagulls to the crash of waves echo through the side and rear channels with nice authenticity. The weird thing about this film is it almost plays like a silent a lot of the time, with long stretches going by without much if any dialogue, leaving the soundtrack to be populated with nothing other than ambient environmental effects. That said, dialogue (which is fairly heavy accented with dialect work on the part of both actors) is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout (there are subtitles to help with understanding some of the colloquialisms being utilized). Mark Korven's kind of minimalist score also sounds evocative and full bodied throughout.

The Lighthouse Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer / Director / Producer Robert Eggers


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 5:17)


• The Lighthouse: A Dark and Stormy Tale (1080p; 37:47) is a very interesting piece that delves into some of the subtext of the story while also providing some production information and interstitial interviews (which are almost shocking looking since they're in color).

The Lighthouse Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'd be rather hard pressed to sum up what The Lighthouse "means", but it's one of those films that has indelible impact perhaps due to the very fact that it's often inscrutable. Dafoe and Pattinson are both pretty amazing here (and I'm one who has never really cottoned to Pattinson's acting for some reason), and the entire film is awash (sorry again) in an absolutely palpable mood. Technical merits are first rate, and The Lighthouse comes Highly recommended.