The Lighthouse

[Magical Realist]

"Robert Eggers’ hallucinatory new film, The Lighthouse, is about two men getting sick of each other. In terms of plot, that’s all there is to it. But when I say that those two men could be Captain Ahab from Moby Dick and Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood, and that they are trapped in what could be the holiday cottage from Withnail and I, and that their stir-craziness recalls Jack Torrance from The Shining, you’ll get some sense of how exhilaratingly strange and violent their ordeal is.

Set in the late-19th Century, The Lighthouse is Eggers’ second film, following his acclaimed debut, The Witch. Like that film, The Lighthouse balances horror and history: both dramas concern either the supernatural, or the psychological effects of being isolated in a remote, rugged setting. But The Lighthouse is a bolder and more skilful film. Some sequences build to such overwhelming intensity that you grip your seat as if you’re on the deck of a sailing ship during a savage storm. You realise that absolutely anything could happen – that there is nowhere the story won’t go and nothing the actors won’t do...

...It could all be too bizarre and alienating to bear if it weren’t for one crucial factor: The Lighthouse is funny. Eggers balances its nightmarish grimness with humour in the bleak tradition of a British kitchen-sink sitcom, a Beckett play, and the aforementioned Withnail and I. You half-expect Ephraim to bleat, “We’ve gone on lighthouse-keeping duty by mistake!” And what a mistake it was."

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/2019100...lighthouse

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42_UHhpq530

[C C]

Will have to check that one out via whatever manner it eventually wends my way.

[Secular Sanity]

Same here. That looks pretty good.

I backpacked to an old abandoned lighthouse near here. It was called the Alcatraz of lighthouses because it was extremely isolated and difficult to get to, a place where employees were stationed as a punishment for misconduct. Isolation does some strange shit to people.

[Image: Gorda_harrington_blm.jpg]

Since you’re into weird stuff, MR, my son’s friend was telling me about A Dark Song. He said it was about real magic. I haven’t watched it yet but I looked into it and thought it was interesting. It’s based on the Book Of Abramelin, which is linked to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. I never realized that W. B. Yeats was into that kind of stuff. Weird.