Unsettling reality
‘He believed there was some enchantment in the light […] salvation said he.’
(The Lighthouse, 22:55)
It is unlucky to kill a seabird. Even if it taunts you, even if it follows you, even if it frustrates you – do not kill a seabird.
Folklore are lessons : myths of witches dancing through the woods, evil stepsisters so obsessed with beauty they will mutilate themselves, girls in red confronting the wolf that stalks them. All these fairy tales, myths and proverbs serve to warn and inspire, derived from cultural beliefs passed through generations through the art of storytelling.
Folklore can be enchanting, magical and mysterious but these fables are always entrenched in the uncanny. There is a horror in the little mermaid dissolving into seafoam or the wrath of Greek gods as they transform a woman’s hair into petrifying snakes. Folklore is a truth about humanity and facing that truth can be altering.
The Lighthouse, a fantastical horror movie that takes themes from Greek myth, directed by Robert Eggers (The Witch , Northman, Nosferatu), follows actor Willem Defoe – Thomas Wake – an elder light keeper, and his new partner Ephraim Winslow as they descend into delirium and madness during the isolation of their labour. The black and white cinematography creates a sense of purgatory, mostly silent and voided scenes broken by the all-surrounding groan of a foghorn or the lone scream of wind which disturbs the audience and the characters alike. The unearthly foghorn is a malicious presence, almost dangerous as it reminds Winslow of the complete absence of civilisation, and how only company being the unsettling Wake, whose past with maddened light keepers place mistrust in Winslow. The Lighthouse is a horror about isolation, the characters descending further into insanity and hallucinatory rage as more days pass marooned on a rock. A lighthouse should be a guide through the storm, a safe place from the turmoil of the open ocean, yet this folklore twists it into an eternal and endless torment.
Robert Eggers uses folklore and the supernatural to elevate his work and their horror, tales of merfolk surrounding and infiltrating the lighthouse and the magic in the light escalating the fears of human nature in the film.
Eggers uses a seabird to taunt Winslow, its presence accompanied by increasingly real and suffocating hallucinations that disorient the order of his mind, elevating the danger he begins to feel in the presence of Wake. These hallucinations are mystical and unexplainable, Wake’s odd nature becoming even more threatening as it becomes linked to the odd occurrences on the island. The possible presence of magic and the unknown isolates Winslow and confuses the audience, every experience or scene untrustworthy.
Using the folktale warning to not kill a seabird, a myth that many sailors lived by, he showed the clear decline of Winslow. Once the bird died we knew he was doomed.
The Lighthouse and folklore focus on symbolism. Eggers uses the mythology of Prometheus to create foundations for his narrative, Greek mythology usually showcasing the wrath of gods and the powerlessness of humanity.
Prometheus had an affinity for humanity, he stole fire to gift to humans in order to protect them from Zeus’ wrath. Yet he was punished for this, nailed to a mountain and feasted upon each day of imprisonment by an eagle who ate his ‘immortal liver’. Winslow’s fate is much the same in the last haunting frame of the film, a madman alone and eaten alive, consumed by the fears his mind either created or was infested by.
Both Prometheus and Winslow are tethered to light. In Greek myth it is a show of devotion, fire giving humans a choice between good and evil, something powerful that could change or destroy them. Winslow desires the light because it will save him yet he cannot be saved once he commits terrible acts to obtain the light.
Using Greek myth Eggers mystifies his narrative, Winslow is a man faced with an unstable reality, a desire to obtain truth in the light yet when he finally faces the light, faces salvation, he cannot take it and falls from the lighthouse, symbolically showing his demise.
The Lighthouse explores how the uncanny disorientates reality, symbols of trust like the light and the safety of a lighthouse in the vast darkness of the ocean becoming distorted. Star Robert Pattinson asked the director “Is this even happening?”, and Eggers’ response : “You have to decide that for yourself.”
Folklore horror has an allure about it that attracts and disturbs its audiences, myths and fables hold truths about humanity’s experiences and the world. The light creates madmen. Birds can be beasts. Lighthouses can be threatening.
The Lighthouse uses the uncanny to show the true nature of being, Eggers makes an intentional choice to not reveal the truth behind the enchantments he makes in the film. As an audience we watch the characters decline, from the moment they’re in the beam of the lighthouse their true natures are crawling out of their shells. We question whether they descended into insanity because they actually were being haunted by malevolent sea creatures, if there actually was magic in the light or whether we are just watching two mad men becoming more mad.
Siena Kemble-Smith