Film by Robert Eggers
The Lighthouse is a 2019 film directed and produced by Robert Eggers, from a screenplay cowritten with his brother Max Eggers. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as turmoiled nineteenth-century lighthouse keepers stranded at a remote New England outpost by a violent storm. The film has defied genre categorization in media, leading to multiple interpretations from critics.
The idea of The Lighthouse first emerged from Max Eggers's re-envisioning of Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished short story of the same name. Robert Eggers assisted the development when Max was unable to complete his adaptation, sourcing the plot from a nineteenth-century legend of an accident at a Welsh lighthouse. The Lighthouse draws visually from photography of 1890s New England, maritime-themed French cinema from the 1930s, and symbolist art. Principal photography took place in Nova Scotia, Canada, beginning in April 2018 and lasting slightly over a month. It was shot in black-and-white, with a nearly-square 1.19:1 aspect ratio. Mark Korven developed the film's score, evoking the sounds and mythologies of the sea.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States by A24 on October 18, 2019. It grossed over $18 million, against an $11 million budget, and received widespread critical acclaim, with particular praise for the direction, visuals, and performances of Dafoe and Pattinson. Among its numerous accolades, the film was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 92nd Academy Awards and the 73rd British Academy Film Awards.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.