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Now Showing: The Lighthouse (2019)
Lighthouses have always seemed a bit romantic to me. Typically I see them during the summer months at the beach. There are seagulls and waves lapping on the rocks. Climb to the top, and you can look out at the Big Blue and imagine the light cutting through fog thick as pea soup. Being a lighthouse keeper sounds like a great job; turn on the light every night, whistle a sea shanty, and cozy up with a book when the winter storms blow.
Obviously, that is all a fantasy, and doubly so in writer/director Robert Eggers’ gripping 2019 sailor’s tale, The Lighthouse. The film only has two real characters, a young cadet and an old salt in the lighthouse corpse, respectively played with frenetic energy and slurring speech by Robert Pattison and Willem Dafoe. The entire film plays out in and around a lighthouse on an isolated rock far out in the Atlantic. When the young keeper arrives, both men expect it to be a shift that lasts but a few weeks. Yet after an encounter with a scrimshaw mermaid, a lot of drinking, and the murder of a sea bird, they find themselves trapped by a raging storm. Weeks turn to months (or do they?) and sanity begins to curdle.
The film is a tall tale about lighthouse keepers and sea, but it is also a deftly executed rumination on the myth of Prometheus—giver of light—and the overactive subconscious of lonely men. Tentacles, mermaids and illicit sexual fantasies abound, although every action on the island is restricted by the official rules and regulations of lighthouse keeping. Eggers, whose previous film The Witch earned plaudits for both its creepiness and masterful use of 17th century English idiom, leaned heavily on old lighthouse keepers’ logs in writing the script. Pattison and especially Dafoe deliver star turns as they chew their way through arcane speechifying and seafaring dialogue worthy of a Robert Louis Stevenson book.
The Lighthouse could have easily been a slow-moving indie flick that simply showcased two great actors and put its audience to sleep on the way, but it’s not. Gorgeous black and white photography, snappy camera work and editing, and rampant, deranged action propel the film at a breakneck speed, so that it crashes over the viewer like a wave breaking on a reef. At the end, you’ll wonder what you just watched and puzzle over what it meant. And you’ll definitely remember it.
The Lighthouse is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Can Mulan Make it?
I have written several times about the pressure the pandemic has put on theater owners and studios alike. When Trolls: World Tour went straight to streaming and video-on-demand, it seemed like the first death rattle for the cinema chains, and indeed they’ve been losing ground ever since to the studios. Today, though, is the first real test for whether streaming platforms can deliver the same returns for tentpole films as theaters.
When Disney first delayed the release of its live-action version of Mulan, the expectation was still that it would go to theaters. Yet with no end in sight to the pandemic, and the film and its marketing budget mouldering, the Mouse decided to release the film direct to streaming, completely cutting out the theaters. It’s available today for $29.99—on top of what consumers are already paying for Disney Plus. With a production budget of $200 million, Mulan is the most expensive film ever with a female lead, and there’s no way Disney wants to take a haircut on it.
Nevertheless, it will take a lot of digital rentals to make back that budget, much less turn a profit, and this release will be a serious test for the streaming model as a total replacement for theaters. If any movie could succeed in this environment, however, it’s probably this one. For one thing, Disney has tailored Mulan for China, the world’s largest film marketplace (the 1998 animated movie was famously a dud there). Plus it’s a rare, truly four-quadrant, family friendly film, and it is being released at a time when parents are logging a lot of time with their kids, there is a long, hot holiday weekend ahead of us, and most people could not actually go the theater right now, even if they wanted to. I’ll certainly be watching tonight.
Care for a drink?
In honor of Labor Day, why not enjoy a glass of bubbly, the traditional beverage of effete capitalists everywhere? This is somewhat in jest, but in all seriousness, don’t forget to celebrate all of the victories of the labor movement over the past century, with whatever beverage you have at hand. I’ll be toasting the unions, though, with champagne. I recommend the MV Egly-Ouriet “Les Vignes de Vrigny” premier cru, if you can find it. And if not? All you need is bubbles.
Reading List:
Dorothy Parker’s ashes have been on quite the journey. The New Yorker documented their trip.
Finally, someone over at New York Magazine has adequately described all of the ways in which the Big Apple is (not) a fiery hellscape.
Jesse Plemons, one of my favorite character actors, is finally getting a star turn, and he’s got a pithy profile in The Times.