The Lighthouse

Last night, I saw the Indecent at Seattle Repertory Theatre, and tonight, I saw The Lighthouse at SIFF — two very different pieces of art. Searching for a connection, I’d say both include meditations on the tension between isolation and collaboration, and both explore how pleasure and intimacy can thrive in the face of guilt and trauma. Big human themes for big human pieces, both are about much more than that: Indecent is about a specific play, God of Vengeance, the durability of art and rich complexity of language, and the Jewish condition (that is, to suffer and survive and evolve your position; to argue with variable stakes; to question, etc.). The Lighthouse is about the fragility of a traumatized ego, I’d argue a specifically masculine and specifically American one, and about psychological survival through myth and truth (relative as it is), and power and pleasure—wrapped up in which, I’d include intimacy and fantasy.

I’m going to write about The Lighthouse not because Indecent doesn’t command unpacking—quite the opposite, I was desperate to be the dramaturg on it—but because I had such a positive theatre-going experience last night top to tail that I don’t want to ruin it by thinking about it too much right now. Another day.

I’m writing about The Lighthouse without reading about it which might be very right or very dumb since I feel like there are lot of things I didn’t really get. On the way out of the theatre, I heard some guy telling his friends that they pulled lots of the dialogue from actual ship logs and, like, lighthouse journals. I buy it—the dialogue was specific and colorful. The shared lineage with Moby Dick was so clear that I was almost disappointed when Captain Ahab was called out directly. Does Moby Dick have to exist in the world of this film? Both of these characters could have learned a thing or two from the obsessive, isolated leader of Pequot. (Confession: I’ve read about 60% of Moby Dick, but I was once in Moby Dick the Musical so I know how it ends).

“I killed a guy and now things are super spooky in my head” is not exactly the most original plotline in the land, but what makes The Lighthouse special is craft. The acting is excellent. Willem Dafoe’s speech acts—mostly curses and blessings—are some of the most arresting monologues in recent memory. I particularly admire his ability to have an emotional shift crest slowly over a bit of dialogue or a whole scene, you can see the shift roll into his eyes bit by bit. It’s detail work that I think you can feel from really good actors on stage, but only get to see in the film. The other guy is good, too. He’s hot and looks good in sweaters and gets covered poop at one point. He’s got the electric energy of an ingenue, the lightening to Defoe’s barometric pressure changes. The film is also shot beautifully, it’s basically the Inkwell filter at it’s best. I love that it’s in black and white—it makes the light which is so central to the film feel more specific, and lends the whole thing a mythic quality. In color, The Lighthouse would feel like a horror movie set in an LL Bean catalog.

It seems obvious to me that this is a story about the complexity and traumas of traditional masculinity because, hello, the central image is a giant isolated mythic dick, the lighthouse itself. The metaphor of the lighthouse tracks further: by burning bright, the lighthouse keeps sailors safely away, and the cost is that someone needs to stay close to it and to stay close to it, is to be suffocated by it and driven madness. But it’s not all damnation from the start: The Lighthouse also explores the extreme and mundane lengths we go to psychological survive. We make myths (mermaids, birds) to make sense of the inexplicable both within us and outside of us. We set-up shared truths—making rituals and rules, keeping the log, sharing our history—and we submit to and over-power one another. The power struggle at the center of The Lighthouse seemed overtly intimate and ultimately erotic to me. Each character enacts some shade of their fantasy of the other, whether than manifests as abuse, violence, or slow dancing. I found myself yearning for these characters to find each other in the right way, to find their way to a kind of love for one another, and through that, a scrap of redemption. Instead, in a moment where it seems they might kiss, they break away into a fistfight, and hope is lost. A certain kind of toxic masculinity gets in the way. Also, you know, the alcohol. The characters grope their way to the comfort of clear alcohol, and then something stronger, literally poisoning themselves.

I find myself wondering if The Lighthouse is in some ways an American Waiting for Godot — there’s one image, in particular, that recalls Pozzo and Lucky. The Lighthouse seems to suggest that no one is coming, at least not in time.