The Lighthouse

The second-best thing about The Lighthouse is that it is a comedy. Not a horror film with jokes in it — a two-hander about a man being driven mad by his colleague's farting, drinking and talking, which happens to end in a Promethean death. Dafoe's Thomas Wake is a sustained bit: the sea-dog monologue, the beard, the grace before dinner, the demand that his lobster be praised. Pattinson plays the straight man badly on purpose, which is the only correct choice.

The best thing about it is the frame. Eggers and Jarin Blaschke shot on 35mm in 1.19:1 — the aspect ratio of early sound cinema — with orthochromatic filtration that makes skies black and skin blotched, and the result is that the image is always too tight. There is nowhere for a second person to stand. Two men in a 1.19:1 frame are always nearly touching, and the film never relieves it.

The horror is about work, not the sea

Everything frightening here comes out of labour and rank. Wake has the logbook, the light and the authority to withhold both. Winslow has the coal, the cistern, the lamp oil and the shovel. The film is at its most tense during chores, because the chores are where the power is, and the mermaid and the gull are embellishments on an argument about a rota.

That reading is not a stretch — Eggers has described wanting a film about two men who hate each other and cannot leave, and it is built on the Smalls Lighthouse incident of 1801, in which one Welsh keeper died and the other kept the body on the gallery for weeks rather than be accused of murder.

Where it divides people

It is deliberately archaic, and if the diction defeats you there is no second gear. The last twenty minutes drop realism in favour of image — the tentacle, the light, the gulls — and a portion of the audience that enjoyed the two-hander will not follow. And it is less frightening than it is dreadful and funny, which disappoints anybody expecting The Witch on a rock.

What it is, unambiguously, is the best-shot film in the index.

The short answer: Winslow kills Wake, takes the key, climbs the tower and looks directly into the light. Whatever he sees blinds him; he falls the length of the stairs and ends on the rocks, alive, with gulls eating his liver as he laughs. The film declines to show what is in the lens.

What is in the light?

The film never tells you, and this is its one real withholding. The shot is Winslow's face, the lens mechanism, and a sound. The readings it supports are that the light is simply a light and the madness is entirely his; that it is a revelation of the kind Wake has been hoarding, which is why he would not share the duty; and that it is nothing, and the joke is that two men destroyed each other over an empty secret. Eggers has been happy to leave all three standing.

Who is Winslow really?

Thomas Howard. The name he gives is stolen: he worked as a timberman in Canada, let a foreman named Ephraim Winslow die — or killed him — and took his identity. He confesses this when drunk, which is also the moment Wake starts calling him Thomas, and from there the two men share a name. That is the film's cleanest structural joke and its bleakest: the two of them may be one man, or two interchangeable ones, and the film does not need to decide.

What happens to Wake?

Winslow beats him, buries him alive in a shallow grave, and Wake climbs out. The final confrontation ends with Winslow striking him down with an axe and taking the key. By then neither man's account of events is reliable and the film has stopped distinguishing between what happened and what Winslow believes happened.

What does the ending mean?

The last image is Prometheus: a man who stole fire from above, chained to a rock, having his liver eaten by birds. The film has been signalling it — the seabird that must not be killed, the light that is not his, the punishment that is specific and endless. Read that way the ending is not ambiguous at all. It is the oldest story about reaching for something that is not yours, told by two filthy men in a square frame.

Scored against the published rubric, here is what the numbers mean.

Reality anchor 084 is the signature. 90 works score lower, which puts this among the most dream-logic films we have scored. Time loses its shape, the relief boat never comes, and the last act abandons continuity entirely.

Tone 042 is the surprise, and it is the honest number. 91 works score lower — meaning this is one of the least bleak films in the index, which contradicts almost every description of it. The film is extremely funny. Both performances are comic performances. It ends badly for everybody and spends most of its runtime being a two-man farce.

Viscera 044 is exactly the median film — 51 works score lower. There is a beating, an axe, a gull, and a great deal of mud. Nothing lingers.

Pace 034 is patient, with 50 works slower. The film has very little plot and a lot of chores.

Era bias 074 reads as modern craft despite the 1890s setting and the 1.19:1 frame, because the film is doing a precise, digital-era imitation of early cinema rather than being of it.

On jump scares: effectively none. The fear is cumulative, social, and mostly about being trapped with somebody.