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Starring: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karaman
OUR RATING: ★★★★☆
Story:
Psychological horror directed and co-written by Robert Eggers. Set in the 1890s, The Lighthouse follows an aging lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake (Dafoe), who teams with a younger man, Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson), on a remote and mysterious New England island.
Our Favorite Quotes:
'Doldrums. Doldrums. Eviler than the Devil. Boredom makes men to villains.' - Thomas Wake (The Lighthouse) Click To Tweet 'How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? Two days? Where are we?' - Thomas Wake (The Lighthouse) Click To Tweet
Best Quotes
Thomas Wake: [Wake makes a toast] Should pale death, with treble dread, make the ocean caves our bed, God who hears the surges roll, deign to save the suppliant soul. To four weeks.
Ephraim Winslow: No, sir. Thank you.
Thomas Wake: It’s bad luck to leave a toast unfinished, lad.
Ephraim Winslow: Meaning no disrespect.
Thomas Wake: A man what don’t drink, best have his reasons.
Ephraim Winslow: Ain’t it, I had understood it’s against regulations, sir.
Thomas Wake: Did you?
Ephraim Winslow: Yes, sir. From them’s manual.
Thomas Wake: Didn’t picture you a reading man.
Ephraim Winslow: I ain’t trying for trouble.
Thomas Wake: Then you do as I say. That’s in your book too.
Ephraim Winslow: To four weeks.
[Wake smiles and they click cups]
[as Winslow drinks from his cup of water, he spits it out in disgust, Wake laughs]
Thomas Wake: [as Winslow drinks from his cup of water, he spits it out in disgust] The cistern needs a looking to. One of your duties, lad. Or didn’t you read yourself about it? You’ll clean the brass and the clockwork, and you tidy the quarters after. There’s well more to be mended outside. You hear me, lad?
Ephraim Winslow: Yes, sir.
Thomas Wake: [correcting him] “Aye, sir!”
Ephraim Winslow: Aye, sir.
Thomas Wake: [discussing their duties] When the fog clears, you’ll work through the dog watch.
Ephraim Winslow: Dogging it? I was expecting to have to see to the lantern.
Thomas Wake: I tend the light.
Ephraim Winslow: The rules is alternating shifts
Thomas Wake: It’s the mid watch that’s to dread, lad. My watch. Night to morning.
Thomas Wake: [to Winslow] The light is mine.
Thomas Wake: [drinking by himself, toasting to the light] To ye, me beauty.
Thomas Wake: [as Winslow reaches out to open the hatch to the lantern room] You don’t go in there!
Ephraim Winslow: Oil, sir.
Thomas Wake: [throws a small oil container at Winslow] Use this next time. Save you a hell of a lot of trouble. Catch your breath, lad. I said catch your breath, lad. Then bring that drum back down the ladderwell where you found it. unless you’re fixing to burn the whole light down. Then see to the rest of your duties. You’re behind hand already.
Ephraim Winslow: Aye, sir.
Thomas Wake: You’re too slow. You a dullard?
Ephraim Winslow: No, sir.
Thomas Wake: Fooled me.
Thomas Wake: [makes a toast again as they are sat down for dinner] Should pale death, with treble dread, make the ocean caves our bed, God who hears the surges roll, deign to save the suppliant soul.
[they clink their cups and Winslow winces again as he takes a sip of his water]
Thomas Wake: Still tastes of the head? Ah, find some chirk in you, lad. Now is the time for gab and chatter. Best be enjoying it. Come a fortnight, the brace of us will be wanting to be ever silent as the tomb.
Ephraim Winslow: I ain’t much for talking.
Thomas Wake: Reckon you’re the first?
Ephraim Winslow: No, sir. I don’t.
Thomas Wake: You ain’t. You ain’t.
Thomas Wake: The Chicopee, a fine one, she were. Clean-built and trig-looking! None more fleet in ‘64 than she. We were on the breaks, a mutiny it were. Why, ask you? Why? What’s the terrible part of a sailor’s life, ask you, lad? Tis when the work stops when your twixt wind and water. Doldrums. Doldrums. Eviler than the Devil. Boredom makes men to villains, and the water goes quick, lad. Vanished. The only medicine is drink. Keeps them sailors happy, keeps them agreeable, keeps them calm, keeps them…
Ephraim Winslow: Stupid.
Thomas Wake: [laughs] Curse me if there ain’t an old tar spirit somewheres in you, lad.
Thomas Wake: Out with it, lad.
Ephraim Winslow: What made your last keeper leave?
Thomas Wake: Him? My second?
Ephraim Winslow: Mm-hmm.
Thomas Wake: Aye, went mad, he did. Raving about sirens, merfolk, bad omens and the like. In the end, weren’t no more sense left in him than a hen’s tooth. He believed that there was some enchantment in the light. He notioned that St. Elmo had cast his very fire into it. Salvation, said he.
Ephraim Winslow: Tall tales.
Thomas Wake: [as they continue eating their supper] I seen you sparring with a gull. Best leave them be. Bad luck to kill a sea bird.
Ephraim Winslow: [chuckles] More tall tales.
Thomas Wake: [suddenly hits Winslow in the face] It’s bad luck to kill a sea bird!
Thomas Wake: [calms himself down] Pay me no mind, lad. None. Fix us up some coffee. Long night ahead. Drop of coffee will do us good.
Thomas Wake: You’ve been neglecting your duties, lad! Don’t deny it.
Ephraim Winslow: Sir?
Thomas Wake: [points to floor] What do you call that?
Ephraim Winslow: Sir?
Thomas Wake: What?
Ephraim Winslow: I mopped and swept twice, I was…
Thomas Wake: You lying dog.
Ephraim Winslow: I swept them..
Thomas Wake: Tis begrimed and bedabbled. Unwiped, unwashed, and distained.
Ephraim Winslow: [smiles] You get some kind of part out of molesting me.
Thomas Wake: Come now?
Ephraim Winslow: I already says…
Thomas Wake: How dare you contradict me, you dog!
Ephraim Winslow: Now look here, I ain’t never intended to be no housewife nor slave in taking this job. It ain’t right! These lodgings is more ramshackle than any shanty boy’s camp I ever seen. The queen of England’s own fancy housekeeper couldn’t do no better than what I done, because I tell you, I scrubbed this here place twice over, sir…
Thomas Wake: And I say you did nothing of the sort! And I say, you swab it again, and you swab it proper-like this time, and then you’ll be swabbing it ten times more after that. And if I tells you to pull up and apart every floorboard and clapboard of this here house and scour them down with your bare, bleeding knuckles, you’ll do it! And if I tells you to yank out every single nail from every moldering nail-hole and suck off every spec of rust till all them nails sparkle like a sperm whale’s pecker, and then carpenter the whole light station back together from scrap, and then, do it all over again, you’ll do it! And by God and by Golly, you’ll do it smiling, lad, because you’ll like it. You’ll like it because I says you will! Contradict me again, and I’ll dock your wages. You hear me, lad?
Ephraim Winslow: [reluctantly] Aye, sir.
Thomas Wake: Now, swab, dog. Swab!
Thomas Wake: [as Winslow is whitewashing the tower] Whitewash must be even, lad. Bright! Shining! Like a silver whorehouse token. Give them sailors a proper daymark.
Ephraim Winslow: They’re not going to see it in a Goddamn storm!
Thomas Wake: Keep your temper now, lad. Tis fine work, and you’re making high marks in me logbook. Them’s gospel! I’ll drop you down a few feet.
Ephraim Winslow: [as Wake lowers the rope holding him down the tower] Easy.
Thomas Wake: Never been in better hands.
Ephraim Winslow: [Wake lowers the rope again] Easy!
Thomas Wake: Quit your flailing, lad.
Ephraim Winslow: I ain’t!
Thomas Wake: You are! Keep still!
Ephraim Winslow: I am…
[suddenly Winslow plunges to the ground]
Ephraim Winslow: Winslow. Ephraim Winslow. These last two weeks, I’d like it if you’d call me by my name.
Thomas Wake: Listen to ye, giving orders, lad. Winslow. Alright, alright. Suits me just as fine, Ephraim Winslow.
Thomas Wake: So, what brung such a one as you to this damned rock?
Ephraim Winslow: Such as what?
Thomas Wake: Pretty as a picture. Only joshing, lad, only josh…
Ephraim Winslow: Winslow.
Thomas Wake: Winslow. What brung you to this rock, Ephraim Winslow? What were your work before?
Ephraim Winslow: Timber.
Thomas Wake: Timber.
Ephraim Winslow: Big timber. Up north. Canada ways.
Thomas Wake: Hudson Bay outfit?
Ephraim Winslow: The same.
Thomas Wake: [referring to Winslow’s old timber job] Had enough of trees, that it, then?
Ephraim Winslow: Yes, sir.
Thomas Wake: Can’t say I blame you. I heard tell about that life. Hard going. Work one man harder than two horses, they say. No thankee. The sea, she’s the only situation wanting for me.
Ephraim Winslow: You miss it?
Thomas Wake: [referring to his leg] Ain’t nothing what can touch it. But I can’t be dragging me old stump about. Nay, not worth the trouble. Now, I’m a wickie, and a wickie I is. And I’m damn-well wedded to this here light, and she’s been a finer, truer, quieter, wife than any a live-blooded woman.
Ephraim Winslow: You ever married?
Thomas Wake: Thirteen Christmases at sea, little ones at home. She never forgave it. Tis for the better.
Thomas Wake: Since we’re getting too friendly, Ephraim Winslow, tell me, what’s a timber man want with being a wickie? Not enough quiet for you up north? Sawdust itching your nethers? Foreman found you too high-tempered for carrying an axe?
Ephraim Winslow: Well, it’s like you said, I just had enough of trees, I guess. Since I left Dad, well, I done every kind of work can pay a man. Some I ain’t near proud of.
Thomas Wake: Drifter, eh?
Ephraim Winslow: No, I just can’t find a post I can take a real shine to, so I keep moving along. I ain’t the kind to look back at what’s behind him, see.
Thomas Wake: On the run.
Ephraim Winslow: Now, look here, ain’t nothing wrong with a man starting fresh, starting new, just looking to earn a living.
Thomas Wake: No.
Ephraim Winslow: Just like any man, trying to settle down quiet-like with some earnings. I read someplace that a could earn six hundred and thirty, or I read one thousand dollars a year, if he tends a light far off shore. The further away, the more he earns. I read that, and now I says, “Work. Save my earnings.” Sometime soon, I’ll raise my own roof, somewhere up country, with no one to tell me “what for”. That’s all.
Thomas Wake: Same old boring story, eh?
Ephraim Winslow: Well, you asked.
Ephraim Winslow: Say, why is it bad luck to kill a gull?
Thomas Wake: In them’s the souls of sailors what met their maker.
Thomas Wake: You a praying man, Winslow?
Ephraim Winslow: Not as often as I might. But I’m God fearing, if that’s what you’re asking.
[after Winslow kills a seagull for attacking him, Wake finds Winslow doing his scrubbing duties]
Thomas Wake: Wind’s changed.
Ephraim Winslow: Good riddance.
Thomas Wake: Now, don’t be so darn foolish. It’s the calm before the storm, Winslow. She were a gentle westerly wind you’re cursing. Only feels roughly because you don’t know nothing about nothing, and there ain’t no trees on this here rock like your Hudson Bay bush. Nor’Easterly wind will come soon a-blowing like Gabriel’s horn. Best board up them signal house winders.
Ephraim Winslow: Aye, sir.
Thomas Wake: [as Winslow won’t look him in the eye] Something stirring in you? You’re getting off this island tomorrow, Winslow, Don’t start grudging me now.
Ephraim Winslow: No, sir.
Thomas Wake: Keeping secrets, are you?
Ephraim Winslow: [shakes his head] I could use a hand with them boards, is all.
Thomas Wake: [as Wake pours Winslow a drink] Ain’t no crime to take a snort now. A clear night, and our last afore relief, I never known an inspector what wouldn’t turn a blind eye. And I won’t take no for an answer.
Ephraim Winslow: [as Wake makes a toast] Should pale death, treble dread… Ah, hell. To relief!
Thomas Wake: And how.
Thomas Wake: [as they are getting drunk on Winslow’s last night] And a pretty lass, she were, taking off her bonnet. But as I says, I broke me leg, and banged myself all up. It was to a nuns hospital. All of them nuns were Catholics, I tell you.
[they both laugh]
Thomas Wake: Aye, but I never went to Salem since without hoping that I should see her, for bedding down weren’t the same since.
Ephraim Winslow: You feel shame when you lie with a woman?
Thomas Wake: I ain’t shamed of nothing! Well, I’ll say it. I might even miss ye, Ephraim Winslow, your fastly a true blue wickie in the making, you is. Thought one night you was bound to split me skull in twain, but you’re a good-un. Why you’ll be working the lamp in no time.
Ephraim Winslow: Why haven’t I?
Thomas Wake: What?
Ephraim Winslow: The light? I’m the keeper of this station, lad. Some other station you can tend the light.
Ephraim Winslow: Say, I never, I don’t know your name.
Thomas Wake: Wake.
Ephraim Winslow: Your Christian name?
Thomas Wake: Thomas.
Ephraim Winslow: Thomas?
Thomas Wake: Aye. Thomas Wake. Call me Tom.
Ephraim Winslow: [toasting] Well, to my friend Tom. And getting off this goddamned rock.
Ephraim Winslow: [referring to the ferry] They didn’t come.
Thomas Wake: [after a heavy storm hits the island] The damp‘s got to the foodstuffs. The salt cod is out.
Ephraim Winslow: Out?
Thomas Wake: Blasted. Gone to rot.
Ephraim Winslow: Praised be.
Thomas Wake: Now will you hear me?
Ephraim Winslow: Hear what?
Thomas Wake: That we best be rationing.
Ephraim Winslow: Rationing?
Thomas Wake: Insubordinate again..
Ephraim Winslow: It’s only been one day.
Thomas Wake: The Devil’s tail!
Trailer: