THE FILM BRIEF: THE LIGHTHOUSE

The new film The Lighthouse is a striking stylistic exercise. It was shot on black and white film in a square, 1:1 aspect ratio familiar to anyone whose ever shot a TLR camera.

The performances by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are worthy of their place locked in a battle of wills against each other and the sea, isolated on a windswept island.

It draws on legends of the sea and great haunted yarns from the likes of Coleridge and Melville.

What the movie lacks ultimately though is any clarity of story or point. By the end it has spun weirdness potentially beyond the bounds of patience always seeming to promise or imply a deeper kernel of narrative or meaning that it never delivers

If you are in it for two hours of craggy and increasingly unhinged maritime tableau then you’ve landed on the right island. If you are hoping it might deliver an ultimate justification or motivation behind all the terror and torment you’re barking up the wrong lighthouse