The Lighthouse

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Indiewire wrote:‘The Lighthouse’: Robert Pattinson Almost Punched ‘The Witch’ Director Because Filming Was So Physically Demanding
Pattinson stars opposite Willem Dafoe in the next movie from writer-director Robert Eggers.

Not much is known about “The Lighthouse,” the upcoming film from “The Witch” director Robert Eggers, but the involvement of Eggers and actors Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe put it high on the list of the most anticipated indies of 2019. The film is backed by A24, shot on 35mm black-and-white film stock, and described as a “fantasy horror story set in the world of old sea-faring myths.” That’s about all we know for now, although the actors did let it slip the film was rather torturous to make.

Dafoe recently spoke with Pattinson for Interview magazine, and the two co-starts briefly reminisced about making “The Lighthouse.” Dafoe mentioned “the conditions were so harsh” on the movie’s set that the two actors “hardly talked outside of scenes.” Pattinson added the role was so demanding that he “hardly talked to anyone,” period. One scene forced Pattinson to get sprayed with water over and over to the point where it began to sting.

“That’s the closest I’ve come to punching a director,” Pattinson said. “However much I love Robert [Eggers], there was a point where I did five takes walking across the beach, and after a while I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on? I feel like you’re just spraying a fire hose in my face.’ And he was like, ‘I am spraying a fire hose in your face.'”

“It was like some kind of torture,” Pattinson added. “It definitely creates an interesting energy. [Laughs].”

Pattinson said it was clear on set that Dafoe understood Eggers’ script more than he did, so he decided he would try to approach the film on more of a physical level than a cerebral one.

“You clearly weren’t into rehearsal,” Dafoe told Pattinson. “Maybe it was the nature of the role, but I always felt like you wanted to leap in and not work stuff out, as though it was more real to confront it without any pre-knowledge. I was reminded of the old Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier quote, ‘Go.'”
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Pattinson returned the compliment, saying, “I must say that I’ve never seen someone with such a supernatural level of energy as you. I remember watching you and being, like, ‘How are you doing this?'”

“I’ll take that as flattery, but I’ll also return it by saying that your approach was fierce,” Dafoe responded. “You were a warrior.”

“The Lighthouse” is one of two A24 releases Pattinson has set for 2019, the other being Claire Denis’ acclaimed science-fiction movie “High Life.” Dafoe can next be seen on the big screen as Vincent van Gogh in “At Eternity’s Gate,” opening November 16 from CBS Films.
nice circle jerk of an interview. but i'm anxious to learn more about this. the witch was fantastic.

Re: The Lighthouse

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Guardian wrote: The Lighthouse review – Robert Pattinson shines in sublime maritime nightmare
5 out of 5 stars.

For his followup to The Witch, Robert Eggers launches a seriously salty story of two men trapped in a turret: think Steptoe and Son at sea and in hell

Robert Eggers’s gripping nightmare shows two lighthouse-keepers in 19th-century Maine going melancholy mad together: a toxic marriage, a dance of death. It is explosively scary and captivatingly beautiful in cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s fierce monochrome, like a daguerreotype of fear. And the performances from Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson have a sledgehammer punch - Pattinson, in particular, just gets better and better.

There is rare excitement in seeing these two actors butt heads and trade difficult, complex period dialogue with such mastery and flair. And the screenplay by Robert and Max Eggers is a delicious and often outrageous homage to maritime speech and seadog lore, saltier than an underwater sodium chloride factory. Their script is barnacled with resemblances to Coleridge, Shakespeare, Melville - and there’s also some staggeringly cheeky black-comic riffs and gags and the two of them resemble no-one so much as Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett: Steptoe and Son in hell.

Dafoe and Pattinson are Tom Wake and Ephraim Winslow - stern, taciturn men with pipes or bits of cigarette habitually jammed in the corner of their unsmiling mouths, about to start a four-week stretch of duty on a remote, wind-lashed rock to tend the lighthouse there. Tom is the ageing veteran “wickie”, a former able seaman now disabled with a leg injury whose cause is mysterious: he is the senior officer, with sole charge of the light itself, a privilege that makes him petulant and querulous.

Ephraim left his logging job in Canada for this post, and he has the lesser, more arduous and demeaning jobs of maintaining the rotational machinery, gathering firewood, emptying the chamberpots, whitewashing the light-tower, mending and cleaning. From the very first, he is glowering and resentful, furious at Tom’s bantering and baiting - one moment joshing the youngster, the next moment angrily pulling rank with deadly seriousness. Ephraim is annoyed that he is never allowed near the light - and then suspicious and terrified to be told that Tom’s former assistant died of lunacy due to bizarre visions. But is that the whole truth? Ephraim himself has deeply disturbing and intimately erotic visions of a mermaid which cause him to masturbate frantically, despairingly, in the woodshed. Eventually, the loneliness, the frustration and periodic bouts of drunkenness take their toll, and Ephraim in a hysterical rage does something awful which disturbs the balance of the heavens themselves, and Mark Korven’s musical score ratchets up the tension ruthlessly.

What is so exhilarating and refreshing about The Lighthouse is that it declines to reveal whether or not it is a horror film as such, though an early reference to Salem, Massachusetts gives us a flashback to Eggers’s previous film, The Witch (2015). It is not a question of a normal-realist set-up pivoting to supernatural scariness with reliably positioned jump-scares etc. The ostensible normality persists; perhaps something ghostly is going on, or perhaps this is a psychological thriller about delusion. But generic ambiguity is not the point: The Lighthouse keeps hold of us with the sheer muscular intelligence and even theatricality of the performances and the first-class writing. Even Sir Donald Wolfit or Robert Newton could not have got more out of the role of Tom than Willem Dafoe does and Pattinson is mesmeric in his bewilderment and uncertainty.

The two men veer wildly between enmity, comradeship, father-son intimacy, father-son hatred. They get drunk together, they get hungover together, but they are keeping secrets from each other - and Ephraim, excruciatingly aware of his lower status, suspects that Tom’s secret is more important than his, and could kill him.

Apart from everything else, this is a sublime film visually: Eggers and Blaschke imagine a glorious variety of images from this stark and unforgiving place. Very few films can make you scared and excited at the same time. Just like the lighthouse beam, this is dazzling and dangerous.

Re: The Lighthouse

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saw this over the weekend. it looks beautiful, and is brilliantly acted. i don't really know what i watched, though. read a bunch of write-ups and theories, some of which make sense, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me in any way what was happening in this film. i had some thoughts on pieces of it, but as i'm not a classic literature major, i had to search after viewing. similar to how i felt after seeing the killing of a sacred deer. i've seen a few people try to make parallels to the vvitch here, but those feel very thin to me. i won't spoil it, i do recommend you go see it, but don't expect any clear narrative. i need to see it again.

Re: The Lighthouse

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watched this again last night, hilariously almost a year to the day later. i appreciated it quite a bit more upon second viewing, regardless of what subtext or meaning may be hidden in there. my first viewing, i was immediately under the impression we were supposed to identify with pattinson. last night, i purposely tried to identify with dafoe. doing that, it became very clear very early that pattinson was the antagonist here, and had he not been involved, it may have just been a normal assignment. i don't know that that's the correct way to view it, but the point is, this film begs for subsequent viewings. i think someone would be able to watch this many, many times and pick up different things. i still didn't love it nearly as much as the vvitch, but i do dig it.