The Lighthouse (2019)

Dialogue

The Lighthouse is set on a remote island in 19th century New England, because
this film classifies as a fictional period piece, the dialogue is constructed in such
a way that characters speak in authentic accents of the time and location, with
the films script reading more like a Shakespearean play than a screenplay, with
words such as “hark, wicky” and “copper” appearing throughout the film in
place of more modern-day dialogue.

Audio
 
The sound design in The Lighthouse is one of its most striking features, the film
does not rely heavily on its score, instead focusing a majority of the sound
design on creating an eerie atmosphere, with the film opening up on a shot of
the lighthouse with an old ship horn blaring for the first minute of the film. To
further this, during every conversation between the two main characters, rain
can be heard bashing off the cold exterior of the lighthouse, seagulls can be
heard flying overhead and the intense wind of the ongoing storm can be heard
whistling through every window and crack throughout the lighthouse, creating
an empty, eerie atmosphere.

Lighting

The lighting in The Lighthouse is striking and goes hand in hand with the visual
style of the movie. Robert Eggers, the director of the film, decided to create
sharp, jagged lines with each shadow, making the movie feel like an early
gothic horror movie such as Nosferatu. In a film with modern technology, but
the black and white aesthetic of an early 20’s horror, the shadows are much
clearer and defined, making the viewer more intrigued by what they can’t see
than what’s being presented to them.
Visuals/ Images 

As mentioned above, the visual style of this film separates it from anything that
has been produced in recent years. The black and white, symmetrical
cinematography and harsh lighting, along with the stellar scene blocking allows
this film to not just read or sound like a period piece, but also look like a period
piece, making the viewer feel like they’re stuck on the island with these two
men, intensifying the feeling of claustrophobia and paranoia that the film
expertly crafts with each area of the filmmaking process.

Symbolic

The symbolism in The Lighthouse runs deep within its story, not just within the
dialogue, but thread throughout the story too. The story follows two men
keeping a lighthouse, one being an old man who keeps records in a book only
he may read, the other being a young man, forced to do all the manual labour
like a slave. The movies main theme is power struggle, the two men fight over
which one does which task, one is allowed to look into the lighthouses light,
whilst the other has to rot in the dark, the themes of sexual frustration shown in
the masturbation scenes and most importantly, the phallic imagery of the
lighthouse itself, representing the themes of sexual repression and masculinity.
Another theme of the movie deals with the Greek ideology of gods, with the old
man going on a poetic, 2-minute-long curse at the young man saying “Let
Neptune strike ye down…” and shown again in the final few minutes in which
we are shown two shots which heavily resemble paintings by both Jean Delville
and Sascha Schneider. The director even said himself that the two main
characters are made to represent Proteus and Prometheus, with the young man
“climbing Mount Olympus” (the lighthouse) “to taste the light” (the lamp).