Any conversation about The Lighthouse inevitably becomes a discussion of just what exactly the film is about. This is no surprise, given the director, Robert Eggers said that he was "more about questions than answers in this movie" when interviewed by the Huffington Post. Therefore, trying to define the film is difficult. You could call The Lighthouse a cosmic/psychological horror movie that’s equal parts romance, tragedy, and character study.
The plot revolves around the tumultuous relationship between lighthouse keepers Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and the madness that ensues when they become trapped within the cramped lighthouse as they weather an ever-worsening storm. Along the way, we bear witness to acts of savage violence, bizarre hallucinations, and a truly toxic masculine power game as both keepers try to uncover the other’s secrets.
The Lighthouse touches on a range of contemporary problems and it does so in a stark horror mode that’s rich in mythology and ambiguity. I have no doubt that The Lighthouse will arrive on many best-of 2020 film lists, and each writer will almost certainly have a unique takeaway because the film juggles so much material all at once.
Whilst you can treat The Lighthouse as this “blank slate” of a movie, I came away from it with a very particular view of the film; I believe The Lighthouse uses much of its material to play out a psychodrama of Winslow’s struggle and refusal to accept his queerness. There are a few key moments in the film which best portray this growing anxiety over queerness.
Spoilers below.
One of which is a brief intimate moment between the two keepers. After a storm locks them inside the lighthouse, they take a break from the harsh physical upkeep of the lighthouse to indulge in plenty of dancing, singing, and drinking. We suddenly jump from a shot of their frantic dancing to a close-up of the two locked in a tender embrace. Wake mutters sweet nothings to Winslow under his breath, and the two nearly go in for a kiss, before Winslow violently shoves Wake away from him and they begin to fight.
There is a mutual longing for comfort here, a need for greater companionship than we’ve already seen. Both have candidly discussed casual, heterosexual intercourse already, but nothing so explicitly homoerotic. Wake seems comparatively more comfortable with the moment than Winslow, seeing as he has also subtly hinted at the feeling of attraction (or at the very least, admiration) for the lad he’s called "pretty as a picture," whilst Winslow breaks the embrace. If this romantic moment is the flashpoint that shows off their bubbling chemistry, then Winslow’s major encounters with the mermaid figure are evidence of his newly developed feelings.
Initially, he finds the mermaid wreathed in seaweed on the rocks during his rounds. He explores her body lustfully, groping at her breast, but as he discovers gills at her hips, he is horrified. When she awakens, bearing an enthusiastic grin, Winslow flees the mermaid in a blind panic, running straight back to Wake in the lighthouse. She lets out a screech that clearly cannot allure him; if this mermaid is a temptress, Winslow is not interested at all.
Then, we see Winslow masturbate to the mermaid statuette he hidden inside. Here, Winslow’s psyche fragments, his mind flitting between aggressive sex with the mermaid and footage of animal insemination, stabbing motions, and flashes of a mystery man. Winslow arrives at the climax with a bestial howl, but the last image we see in this hallucinatory moment is the face of that man whom Winslow is revealed to have murdered.
These two moments are key in charting the progression of the film's latent queerness. There are many others that hint at this growing intimacy, including Winslow snatching a glance at Wake’s behind through a broken slat in the ceiling whilst at work or their increasingly domestic arguments over their living arrangements.
The longer Winslows stays with Wake, the further he descends into madness because he is working harder to ignore that attraction. His attempts at repression continue to take a greater toll on his sanity. Crucially, it is not the homoeroticism that causes his slippage, but his refusal to accept and acknowledge it.
His increasingly violent, maddened behavior is a horrific projection of Winslow’s emotions. Burying Wake alive is a last desperate attempt to turn his back on his companion, briefly “conquering” his emotions in the process. Of course, this respite is incredibly short-lived, as Winslow falls to his death very shortly thereafter.
This reading is not at all designed to downplay any of the other thematic concerns of the film. Eggers draws from a wealth of influences to dramatize the lighthouse keepers' complicated relationship. Without their fraught, toxic relationship at the core, we could not possibly explore how either character truly feels.
Ultimately, The Lighthouse is a deeply complex film that everyone may well draw their own reading from, precisely because there are so many "questions without answers" within the film’s runtime.