Review of Lighthouse- by Chris Stuckmann

Full text transcript of the review of Lighthouse:

The lighthouse was directed by Robert Eggers, the director of the which film that I loved the stars, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, and as a story of two lighthouse keepers, it’s the eighteen nineties and these two guys are alone on a remote island. And since they only have each other to talk to and they’re both already a little unhinged, they start to go a little mad. This was my most anticipated film for the rest of the year. As I said at the start, I love the which I thought it was an extremely original film that had a very unique vision from somebody who clearly loves filmmaking. And I can say the exact same thing again for the lighthouse. In fact, I like this movie more than the which. Here, Robert Pattinson gives the best performance of his entire career. He starts off as a very quiet person. He doesn’t like to talk a lot. Unfortunately for him, Willem Dafoe character really does. He enjoys a good conversation over dinner. And so after a while, he’s forced to come out of his shell. This is just one of the things that sets the two at odds at first. And watching patents and slowly descend into losing his fucking mind was incredible. Just about every single range of human emotion that you could expect out of someone. He’s showing it all the way from the depths of depravity to pure, insane joy. And Willem Dafoe meets him with such skill. It was glorious. I love Willem Dafoe.

I always have. This is some of his best work. The film is also surprisingly. Fucking hilarious, this isn’t just a horror film, only it has fantasy elements, it has thriller elements as horror elements. A lot of this is very psychological, but Eggers found a way to make it comedic at the same time, in a very dark way. The humor is bleak. But despite being a movie from a twenty four and one that film buffs are very excited to see and talk about outside of the theater and analyze on the Internet, Eggers is not above a fart joke. Which is wonderful. There are some very absurd visuals in this movie, some of them are hilarious and some are horrifying. The movie is excellent at toying with your emotions. I wouldn’t call this a scary film, at least from my perspective. It’s a very tense movie, consistently engaging. Never once was I bored, despite the fact that some movie where two people are just alone on an island and they talk a lot and they experience weird things, never once had an issue with the pacing of this film. It’s also a film that evokes the feeling of its time period with its technical aspects. It was shot on thirty five millimeter film with an aspect ratio of one 19 one, and it’s in black and white. All of this, combined with a costume design and the production design, make this movie feel like it’s set back in the early nineteen hundreds.

Mark Corvin’s score is my favorite I’ve heard so far in twenty nineteen. It’s haunting, loud and bombastic at all the right moments and soft and quiet when you’re supposed to just be chilled, which for me was quite often this movie is gorgeous to look at. The performances are off the charts again. Robert Eggers proves himself to be a director that isn’t just saying, look at me, I’m good at what I’m doing. He finds a way to make his direction seep into the background. It’s so good that you don’t even notice it. Sometimes there’s only a handful of directors out there that are so good at what they do that you stop analyzing what they’re doing with the camera and you just kind of get focused on the film. And Eggers is very quickly joining those ranks with the witch. And this he’s one of my favorite directors working today, especially in horror. I really hope he continues to make horror films because this movie feels wholly original to him. It’s the type of vision that you can’t really see anyone else doing. It’s also the type of film that five people could go and see and all leave with different interpretations. If you like concrete answers, then that will disappoint you. I don’t necessarily need to see a film and be told, here’s what you’re watching and here’s why. And I hope you understand that. Have a good day, because then that film just disappears from your mind really quickly. But a film like The Lighthouse, it eats away at you and makes you want to think about it.

It makes you want to analyze it. I did sit around with my friend afterwards and just talk and talk and talk because we were like, what the fuck? And we came to an understanding of at least what we thought the film meant. And I think if you brush up on your Greek mythology a little bit and think a little deeper in the film beyond Willem Dafoe farts, then you might take away something pretty fucking awesome from the lighthouse without getting into any spoilers. I think the movie has a lot to do with power and our perception of power, especially as men and how we view ourselves and how we should be treated, you know, like what we think we deserve as men. And it’s very interesting to see these two characters in the middle of a power struggle through most of the movie. And Eggers is able to use the visuals in the film and the composition of his shots to communicate this story. If you’re looking for it, I have a feeling the ending is going to confuse a lot of people and perhaps leave them scratching their heads. But like I said, this is not a movie that says, hey, this is what I’m about. It’s a movie that you can look at and make up your own interpretation. And the ambiguity of this movie is what makes it feel special because strip all of the what is it about away? At its core, it’s two guys trapped on an island going mad.

And the movie sort of makes you feel that way with its intense visuals, the score, the performances and the editing, which is fucking perfect. Honestly, the editing is so good it makes you feel like you’re losing your mind because you can’t always make sense of what you’re looking at. But, you know, you fucking love it. A movie like The Lighthouse comes along very rarely because this film is not concerned at all with whatever the trends are of the day. It’s not trying to be anything mainstream and it’s also not trying to be so artsy that it comes off pretentious. As I said, there’s fart jokes in this movie. The movie doesn’t feel like it’s above anyone. It’s just really well crafted, so well crafted that sometimes you don’t even notice. This is easily the best film that I’ve seen so far in twenty nineteen. And it’s a movie that I would like to watch many times, and it’s also a movie that I’m going to give and a plus. I have not given that grade to a new release all year, nor last year. So, yeah, go see the White House, it’s really fucking good. That being said, this is not your normal movie. As I said, answers are few and far between. So some of you might be frustrated by that. I kind of love that. So I hope you guys see it and I hope you love it.

I also want to give a big thank you to the sponsor for this video because they helped me keep the lights on. And that sponsor is Skillshare. Skillshare is a thriving online community filled with educational videos relating to filmmaking, editing, acting. It’s very comprehensive. And I think it’s especially helpful for people who are trying to learn about the film industry, because I found a lot on there that are teaching things that I wish I knew when I was trying to get a movie made. And Skillshare has a class called Writing Character Driven Short Stories. That’s extremely helpful for learning how to do that, as well as a class called Creative Personal Writing. Right, The Real You, which is great for learning how to write stories that are personally impactful to yourself. Skillshare is also really affordable. Their annual subscription is less than ten dollars a month. But because they’re sponsoring this video, you can follow the link in the description below and get two months completely free, which is awesome. So if you’re interested in learning just about anything, but especially for my viewers, directing, writing, acting, things relating to film, there’s so much on Skillshare. So please do check out that link in the description below for a two month free trial. Thank you so much for them for sponsoring. And thank you guys for watching. Look forward to more views very soon. And if you like this, you can click right here and get stuck magnetised.