Lights, camera, 1890s Maine lighthouse keepers.
Robert Pattinson of "The Twilight Saga" and four-time Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe star as such in "The Lighthouse," a black-and-white A24 film premiered last month at Cannes Film Festival in France.
Ephraim Winslow and Thomas Wake, a fictitious pair respectively played by Pattinson and Dafoe, are trapped in isolation on a craggy Maine island. A "cabin fever in extremis" develops from salty solitude and loneliness after the keepers are met with a storm and can't get off the remote rock. Minor characters in the secluded drama-fantasy-horror include a mermaid, seagull and tentacles.
Pattinson and Dafoe are "thick with flavorful period dialect and jolts of ever-intensifying insanity soaked in rum," who "bring invigorating physicality to their performances, along with bracing shots of humor," The Hollywood Reporter says.
Variety calls it "gripping and turbulent" — something "you can't pigeonhole."
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New Hampshire native Robert Eggers, the director, co-wrote the script with his brother Max Eggers. Variety reports the Eggers based the film on journals from the period, passages out of Moby-Dick author Herman Melville's work and writings from South Berwick's Sarah Orne Jewett. Jewett wrote in the late 19th century, the same time period in which "The Lighthouse" is set, and is known for her work depicting lonely, isolated Maine seaport towns in decline.
Eggers is a "maximalist," Variety says, who stages the film as "a fetishistically authentic tale of grueling conditions, drunken meals by lone candlelight, and merciless physical labor," and "possesses something more than impeccable genre skill … the ability to lock you into the fever of what’s happening onscreen."
In an interview with Deadline Hollywood, Eggers acknowledges the film's horror elements, but said it would be better described as "dreadful," something he compares to "The Witch," his first feature film from 2015. Also an A24 production, "The Witch" shares the story of a family in 1630s New England who is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic, and possession, according to IMDb.
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Pattinson commented on the difficulty of the Downeast Maine accent during the interview, describing it as "quite unusual" to pull off.
"It was surprisingly difficult for me. Normally I've got quite an ear for accents but this was … [sic] … there's no real reference for it," Pattinson. "It's kind of a combination of three or four different accents, and if you just make one vowel mistake then you suddenly are doing a different accent, and you can't really control it that much."
"These old time-y, Downeast New England accents, don't have rhotic Rs, which, in that hard R, is a signpost for a Brit like [Pattinson]," Eggers told Deadline. "It's super fascinating. It's weirdly close, so that made it tricky."
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Principal photography took 35 days, according to IMDb, and was conducted last April and May in Yarmouth and Halifax, Nova Scotia. THR reports that a full-scale lighthouse, utilities building and stone guard's cottage was built from scratch by production designer Craig Lathrop and his team, nestled into the volcanic rock of Cape Forchu in Nova Scotia, standing in for the Maine island.
Inspiration for the set and subjects also came from paintings by Cushing's Andrew Wyeth and symbolist painters such as Arnold Boecklin and Jean Delville.
IMDb reports the cast and crew filmed under extreme weather conditions with three nor'easters blowing across Cape Forchu during production. "The most crazy and dramatic stuff was shot for real," Eggers reportedly said.
The film was shot in 1.19:1 aspect ratio on 35 mm, emulating that of an early sound movie, Variety and IMDb report; additionally, Baltar lenses and a custom cyan filter from Schneider Filters were utilized to match a 19th century look.
Among others, joining Eggers on "The Lighthouse" from "The Witch" were producers Lourenco Sant' Anna, Rodrigo Teixeira and Jay Van Hoy; composer Mark Korven, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, film editor Louise Ford, caster Kharmel Cochrane, and designers Craig Lathrop and Linda Muir.
A24, the film's domestic distributor, led a production that also included RT Features, Regency Enterprises and Parts & Labor. Focus Features is distributing it internationally.
Though the film has been officially released overseas, a domestic premiere had yet to be determined.
