note: spoilers present.
Nothing else matches the phantasmagoria of Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse. Set in a remote lighthouse somewhere off the coast of New England, two men (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) are tasked with taking care of the place. However, as the storm comes and with any chance of relief becoming more remote, madness begins to set in.
The film can be interpreted in different ways: as a retelling of the Promethean myth, where seagulls replace eagles, where light replaces the knowledge of fire. It can be seen as a treatise on loneliness, on our need and capacity to bond, on masculinity, with the lighthouse serving as a phallic beacon to homoerotic tendencies. It can be seen as the capacity of workers to tolerate labor under unjust conditions, with any promises of hope or compensation dashed by the treachery of man, leading to bloody revolution.
Whether the madness is just that, or a function of something bigger and more mysterious, something Lovecraftian in scope, only we can decide. It's a mesmerizing puzzle that begs to be solved, but eludes concrete meaning.
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