Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1204548
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 JANUARY 2020 8 FILM IN cinema as in all art, boredom is the worst possible offence, and when most of what's on offer is either another steroid-pumped franchise entry or a variant of the same, the threat of glazed- over-eyes remains ever on the horizon. For this reason alone – apart from its lovingly 'vin- tage' visual sense, the inspired potpourri of its subtextual un- derpinnings and a truly game effort from its two-hander cast – writer-director Robert Eggers's second feature already sprints ahead in the race of contempo- rary mainstream cinema. Riding high on the runaway critical success of his femi- nist-adjacent period chiller The Witch (2015), Eggers pulls off a triple-whammy trick that only the likes of Darren Aronovsky have managed over a sustained period of time: roping in star power and courting mainstream attention while weaving the weirdest of weird tales. 'Weird Tales' is right in many ways, being the title of the maga- zine in which the now-canonical (though always socio-politically problematic) early 20th century American horror author H.P. Lovecraft cut his teeth. Lovecraft is only one element in the gamey broth that Eggers has cooked up for us, and never a direct one – his influence is hinted at through the oblique appearance of tenta- cles and an overbearing sense of dread brought about by a mad- ness which may or may not be nudged to further effectiveness by ancient forces lying dormant within the natural world. But Lovecraft is only one weave in this tapestry, a tapestry whose origins can in turn be traced back to one of the author's own key influences. The germ of Robert Eggers's film was actually implanted by his brother Max, whose ultimately aborted ef- forts to adapt Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Lighthouse', only nominal- ly titled as such as it refers to an unfinished work, likely the trou- bled American genre luminary's very last attempt to put prose to paper before his untimely de- mise in 1849. And while all that remains from that early iteration of the project is that very same title, a distinctly Poe-like aura of turn of the cen- tury American Gothic hangs over the proceedings, while auxiliary influences ranging from Herman Melville all the way back to Greek myth are also poured in. If that all sounds like a too-liter- ary, top-heavy exercise in intel- lectual wankery over substance, fear not. Because for one thing, actual, literal wankery does take place throughout the course of the film, and more than once. Indeed, far from coasting on high brow literary references in a rarefied atmosphere of intellec- tual detachment, Robert Eggers gets down and dirty and allows what is initially a simple-enough premise to descend into glori- ous, inspired madness. In the late 19th century, an (eventually) self-confessed drift- er keen to take any job that comes by, Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) is sent to serve as a lighthouse keeper off the coast of New England, where he is to be accompanied by the seasoned sailor Thomas Wake (Willem Defoe). Apparently a taciturn tee-totaler to Wake's hard-drinking, hard-driving tell- er of tall tales, Winslow quickly unravels under the strain of both the harsh weather conditions, his own past catching up with him… and Wake's apparently atrocious cooking. The Lighthouse is an unhinged psychological thriller engineered with the care of an obsessive antique furniture restorer... Robert Eggers's follow- up to The Witch is a feverish yet oddly charming descent into madness Teodor Reljic Struggling to capture the light