The Lighthouse
Short description
The Lighthouse is set in the 1890s on a small, isolated island off the coast of New England, where two lighthouse keepers arrive for a four-week shift. Thomas Wake is the older, experienced keeper, and Ephraim Winslow is his younger assistant. Wake keeps the light in the tower to himself and assigns Winslow the heavy labour, and the two men clash as the weeks pass. Heavy drinking, isolation and strange occurrences on the island blur what is real, and when a storm prevents the relief boat from reaching them, their time together extends far beyond what either expected.
Robert Eggers directed the film and wrote the screenplay with Max Eggers, following his debut feature The Witch and preceding The Northman and Nosferatu. Robert Pattinson plays Winslow and Willem Dafoe plays Wake, with Valeriia Karaman appearing as a mermaid and Logan Hawkes as Ephraim Winslow. Jay Van Hoy, Eggers and Youree Henley produced the film, which was made for about 11 million dollars and took roughly 18 million dollars worldwide.
Reception has been strong across measures. On IMDb it holds 7.4 out of 10 from around 300,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.5 out of 10 from a much smaller base of about 5,800 votes. A critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 397 reviews places it above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Due to the humidity, the filming equipment frequently malfunctioned. Robert Pattinson had to enter the sea 25 times because the lens kept fogging up.
- In the original screenplay, Thomas Wake was supposed to have a glass eye, a prosthetic leg, and be missing three fingers. However, this was ultimately changed because Eggers believed audiences might mistakenly interpret Wake as a pirate.
- Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe took dance lessons while preparing for their roles.
- The lighthouse and surrounding buildings were built specifically for the film near a historic lighthouse at Cape Forchu in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. After filming, the sets were dismantled.
- The scene where Willem Dafoe curses Robert Pattinson over a lobster was filmed in one take. According to Robert Eggers, Willem Dafoe didn't blink for more than two minutes during the shoot.
- For filming, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe grew beards. Pattinson only slightly tinted his, as it was lighter than needed.
- No seagulls were harmed during filming. In one scene, bird dummies made of rubber were used.
- Robert Pattinson's accent is based on a farming dialect from the state of Maine, while Willem Dafoe uses the slang of Atlantic fishermen and sailors from that era.
- For the role, Willem Dafoe learned to knit.
- The scene where the eyes of the Defoe character illuminate Pattinson's face was inspired by the 1904 painting "Hypnose" by German artist Karl Alexander Schneider.
- The script did not describe what the characters Wake and Winslow saw in the lighthouse spotlight. When Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson played these scenes, they didn't know either. The script only explained what their characters were feeling.
- The plot is based on an 1801 incident when two lighthouse keepers (both named Thomas) were stranded on an island during a storm. It is said that after one of them died, the other went insane.
- Filming lasted 35 days in April-May 2018 in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
