I'd Really Love To Be Alone Without All The Ache And Pain

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The Lighthouse tells the story of two Lighthouse keepers being trapped together on their small island in the late 19th Century. It stars Willem Dafoe as the old hand and Robert Pattinson as the new boy there to be told what to do. It's also batshit fucking insane. In an interview, Willem Dafoe said that the film is about what happens when two men are stuck together in a giant cock-shaped building and allowed to go mad. So to say that it's a look at what happens when masculinity is allowed to fester would be an understatement. But imagine The Shining if there are fewer rooms to hide in and both people are Jack Nicholson and you're not too far off what this film is like. I fully understand the situation too by the way. My mate and I had to wait in the house for a delivery from the post-man once and the insanity and boredom had started to get to us straight away. “How long do you think we'd have to be locked in a room with each other before we went mad and started fucking?” I asked my friend. “Hmm”, he pondered, “I'd say at least a couple of days”. A couple of days? I was thinking more about how many years?! We were two men voluntarily sitting in a building that has television and wi-fi and yet my friend was still only one day away from offering up his arse-hole for fucking rations.

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The Lighthouse doesn't peak with Dafoe and Pattinson bumming each other stupid though, with that being an arguably more logical conclusion. I mean, the fucking movie starts with Pattinson wanking one out to a statue of a mermaid and so we're already into a somewhat weird world to begin with. I heard a thing once that claimed that old sailors use to confuse manatees for mermaids because of how horny and mad they were going at sea. But have you seen a manatee? I saw some at SeaWorld when I was a kid and it really doesn't seem likely to me that a mermaid would bob slowly near the surface of the water whilst eating a whole fucking cabbage? As the film goes on, and Pattinson starts to go crazier, he appears to find a mermaid washed up on the beach. Or does he? It's hard to know what's real, what's imagined, and who is imagining it. Although I've seen so much porn over the last few decades that I think I'm more likely to see a mermaid and confuse it with a malnourished fucking sea-cow than the other way around. Especially now that I'm in my thirties. These days getting a boner requires a level of concentration and meditation that would have previously had me reaching enlightenment. I know that we're supposed to think that the characters here are all desperate and mentally falling apart. But when I saw Pattinson knocking one out to a small statue whilst hiding from Willem Dafoe in a barn I was in absolute fucking awe of his abilities. 

I was also in awe of both Dafoe and Pattinson's abilities as actors during this movie although I suppose that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Firstly they're both usually brilliant in everything they do. I haven't seen Twilight but I did see Pattinson have his prostate checked in a David Cronenberg film and so I know people wrongly think he's dull but he's always seemed like a freak to me. But secondly, if you told me that you were making a movie about a crusty old sea-dog and a younger man that touches himself to images of women who are half-fish, they're the two men I'd instantly think of. At one point Dafoe is required to lose his shit and deliver a monologue in which he rants and raves and it's fucking incredible. Pattinson's character told him that his cooking was shit and Dafoe's character responds to this criticism by calling on Neptune to choke Pattinson to the point that it's engorging his organs until he turns blue and bloated with bulge and brine and can scream no more. Again, I understand this completely. I've invented a food-thing called the Noodly-Naan and if I ever make it for you and you don't like it then I'll burn your fucking house to the fucking ground. I suppose this hex that Dafoe puts on Pattinson would explain how he can still attain a boner too even though Pattinson is actually older than I am. I feel like I'm too young for viagra but if somebody wants to call on Neptune to engorge my organs then I'm fully here for it. 

In many ways, this film bears some resemblance to the old story of Bluebeard if you know it? It's about a rich guy whose wives keep going randomly missing. So he goes to a local family and picks one of their girls to marry next and apparently they're all just fine with that. If I can't afford a fucking Wham! bar then I'll get turned away from a shop for suggesting the barter system as an alternative but apparently, this prick is just wandering into peoples houses and fully helping himself to their fucking family. Admittedly I was pointing at my dick when I suggested the barter system but I'd be surprised if Bluebeard wasn't making that same gesture when picking his new fucking wife. So he drags her back to his castle and tells her that she can go wherever she wants as long as she stays out of this one particular room. Because he picked a nosey bitch, that's, of course, the room that she heads straight for which is where she discovers the chopped up bodies of all of his missing wives. It's kind of like that time my friend in primary school was told by his Mum not to look in her wardrobe. Obviously, that's where he assumed his Christmas presents were hidden and so went rooting around only to find that it was actually where she kept her dildo. Although, as I said to him at the time, “that could just be what she thinks you want for Christmas”. Anyway, the point is that Robert Pattinson is the new wife in this story and Willem Dafoe is the mad husband that's banned her from going to the top of the lighthouse. 

This film also has echoes of Darren Aronofsky's mother! with both movies beginning as a new recruit joins what feels like a recurring routine of escalating insanity. mother! and this film also shows one person being forced to maintain a building whilst the other obsesses over its jewel-like heart. But perhaps the movie The Lighthouse reminded me the most of was David Lynch's Eraserhead. Both movies feel dreamlike in terms of their logic and take place in a stark black and white world which is made even more uneasy by it's haunting, industrial soundscape. Both films are filled with equally disturbing images too whether it be the weird monster baby-thing in Eraserhead or Willem Dafoe's naked body here. Every time I close my eyes I see him naked now. The image has burnt itself onto my soul. If I thought it was hard to get a boner before then I think I'm going to need therapy to achieve it from this point on. The Lighthouse has been directed by The Witch director Robert Eggers and co-written by both him and his brother. It has the same hypnotic feel as The Witch too with an attention to detail regarding their nightmarish worlds resulting in an insanely immersive experience. The Lighthouse is definitely a lot more claustrophobic having been shot with a 1.19:1 aspect ratio which gives it a boxy look to it. It's like watching the film through a well-chiselled glory hole but with a lower risk of you being poked in the face by a dick. Depending on your choice of cinema of course. 

The whole movie seems to have a thing about alcoholism too which is interesting. Dafoe's bullying boss is constantly chugging away on the island's liqueur whilst Pattinson's character initially refuses to drink. Once Pattinson has a change of heart the power dynamic starts to alter as though they both begin to regress to a more primeval state. It's like watching a hen-do stagger down the road after the pubs have closed in Birkenhead but with the film stinking slightly less of the sea. In case you don't know Birkenhead then it's just a shithole town near me. It's not by the sea. That was a reference the hen-do's smelly vaginas. Is Dafoe constantly gaslighting Pattinson and turning him mad or is Pattinson already mad with most of what we see happening in his head? Either way, the drinking really ramps things up and they go from fighting to homo-erotically slow-dancing with one another and then back to chasing each other with axes. One way or another it seems that there's always a threatening chopper involved in their relationship. Apparently, there's a shit load of stuff involving Greek myths with Pattinson's character being like Prometheus as he steals fire from the Gods. But mostly what I got is that I should be drunk before attempting a shift at work from now on. I saw an interview for this movie in which Pattinson and its director were asked “I don't understand what the fuck is happening here?”, to which Pattinson responded, “dumb-ass”. Well, I didn't understand what the fuck is happening here either. But after two hours of watching two co-workers scream into each other face with pure murderous rage I don't think I've ever related to a film more. Thanks for reading, motherfuckers, and see you next time.