Starring: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karaman
OUR RATING: ★★★½
Story:
Psychological horror directed and co-written by Robert Eggers. Set in the 1890s, the story 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.
REVIEWS
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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
[after Winslow arrives to stay on an isolated island with Wake; Wake makes a toast as they are about to have their dinner]
Thomas Wake: 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.
[Winslow gets up, pours out the drink, fills his cup with water, sits back down and holds up his cup to toast]
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: 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.
[correcting him]
Thomas Wake: “Aye, sir!”
Ephraim Winslow: Aye, sir.
[discussing their duties]
Thomas Wake: 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.
[drinking by himself, toasting to the light]
Thomas Wake: To ye, me beauty.
[after Winslow has carried a heavy oil container up the lighthouse, he reaches out to open the hatch to the lantern room]
Thomas Wake: You don’t go in there!
Ephraim Winslow: Oil, sir.
Thomas Wake: Use this next time.
[Wake throws a small oil container at him]
Thomas Wake: Save you a hell of a lot of trouble. Catch your breath, lad.
[pause]
Thomas Wake: 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.
[Wake unlocks the hatch and goes through it]
Ephraim Winslow: Aye, sir.
Thomas Wake: You’re too slow. You a dullard?
Ephraim Winslow: No, sir.
Thomas Wake: Fooled me.
[closes the hatch door]
[Wake makes a toast again as they are sat down for dinner]
Thomas Wake: 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?
[Winslow just looks at him]
Thomas Wake: 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.
[pause, then Wake starts to laugh]
Thomas Wake: Curse me if there ain’t an old tar spirit somewheres in you, lad.
[as Winslow stops himself from speaking]
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.
[Winslow chuckles]
Ephraim Winslow: Tall tales.
[as they continue eating their supper]
Thomas Wake: I seen you sparring with a gull. Best leave them be. Bad luck to kill a sea bird.
Ephraim Winslow: [chuckles] More tall tales.
[suddenly Wake hits Winslow in the face]
Thomas Wake: It’s bad luck to kill a sea bird!
[pause as Wake calms himself down]
Thomas Wake: Pay me no mind, lad. None. Fix us up some coffee. Long night ahead. Drop of coffee will do us good.
[Winslow stares at Wake as he continues to eat]
Thomas Wake: You’ve been neglecting your duties, lad! Don’t deny it.
Ephraim Winslow: Sir?
[we then see Wake pointing to floor]
Thomas Wake: 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, cause 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!
[as Winslow is whitewashing the tower]
Thomas Wake: 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.
[Wake lowers the rope holding Wake down the tower]
Ephraim Winslow: Easy.
Thomas Wake: Never been in better hands.
[Wake lowers the rope again]
Ephraim Winslow: 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]
[as Winslow pours Wake a drink]
Thomas Wake: Thank you, lad.
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.
[Wake laughs]
Thomas Wake: 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.
[referring to Winslow’s old timber job]
Thomas Wake: 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: Ain’t nothing what can touch it.
[referring to his leg]
Thomas Wake: 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.
[as Winslow won’t look him in the eye]
Thomas Wake: 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?
[shakes his head]
Ephraim Winslow: I could use a hand with them boards, is all.
[as Wake pours Winslow a drink]
Thomas Wake: 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.
[Wake holds up his cup for a toast, and Winslow does the same]
Ephraim Winslow: Should pale death, treble dread…
[pause as he struggles to remember the rest of the toast]
Ephraim Winslow: Ah, hell. To relief!
[they clink their cups]
Thomas Wake: And how.
[they both drink]
[as they are getting drunk on Winslow’s last night]
Thomas Wake: 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!
[they both laugh]
Thomas Wake: 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?
[pause]
Thomas Wake: I’m the keeper of this station, lad. Some other station you can tend the light.
[Winslow pours them more drink]
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.
[pause, then Winslow gives Wake his cup]
Ephraim Winslow: Well, to my friend Tom.
[they clink their cups]
Ephraim Winslow: And getting off this goddamned rock.
[referring to the ferry that was supposed to come for him]
Ephraim Winslow: They didn’t come.
[after a heavy storm hits the island]
Thomas Wake: 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!
Ephraim Winslow: Look, maybe the tender did come. We just missed her, is all. I can take the dory out.
Thomas Wake: Weeks, Winslow. Weeks.
Ephraim Winslow: What?
Thomas Wake: What do you mean, what?
Ephraim Winslow: Weeks?
Thomas Wake: Weeks, aye. Weeks.
Ephraim Winslow: We slept in. Dead drunk.
Thomas Wake: It’s been weeks ago since we missed her, Winslow. And I’ve been asking you to ration for weeks now, too, but you’ve kept barking at me like a mad dog, saying you can take the dory out.
Ephraim Winslow: Now look here.
Thomas Wake: Now, now, don’t be losing your head now.
Ephraim Winslow: This ain’t funny.
Thomas Wake: No, it ain’t. And I ain’t wanting to be stranded here with some damned lunatic.
Ephraim Winslow: Stranded?
Thomas Wake: That’s what I said.
Ephraim Winslow: I thought you said relief was coming.
Thomas Wake: If we can wait out this storm.
Ephraim Winslow: The tender is coming.
Thomas Wake: In ‘75 ‘Ol Striker were marooned here for seven long months, he was. The storm died on the mainland, but here, the waters were too rageful neither to launch nor land.
Ephraim Winslow: You’re just trying to scare me.
Thomas Wake: Look at you. Pretending. But you well-know your lot.
[after they dig up an extra rations crate only to find it contains alcohol]
Thomas Wake: “Land ho!” hears I, but only grass on that island. So we ate upon the grass.
[knocks on his leg]
Thomas Wake: And it was that scurvy what left me locked ever since.
Ephraim Winslow: I thought you said you broke it.
Thomas Wake: Eh?
Ephraim Winslow: Your leg. Catholic nuns, and such like.
Thomas Wake: You must have misheard me.
[after getting drunk again at night; Winslow is telling a story from his previous job]
Ephraim Winslow: I told that dumb bastard, “Give me your cant hook,” I says to him. But foreman Winslow, goddamned candy bastard Winslow, was always calling me a dog. A filthy dog.
Thomas Wake: Winslow?
Ephraim Winslow: What of him?
Thomas Wake: Who, Winslow? The eaves be falling.
Ephraim Winslow: He’s always ragging on me, like you. Damn fool nonsense.
Thomas Wake: That’s the trouble with you, Winslow.
Ephraim Winslow: The trouble with you is eating grass without no teeth.
Thomas Wake: Come now?
Ephraim Winslow: Your sea maties teeth was fallen out.
Thomas Wake: What are you getting at, Winslow?
Ephraim Winslow: Just, it seems powerful hard to eat grass with no teeth. Goats and sheeps and cows, now, they all got teeth, don’t they?
Thomas Wake: You know how you eat grass without your teeth?
Ephraim Winslow: Oblige me.
Thomas Wake: You rip it out and you swallow it.
[they both laugh]
Ephraim Winslow: You rip it out and you swallow it.
Thomas Wake: You rip it out and…
Ephraim Winslow: I don’t know about that.
Thomas Wake: You don’t?
Ephraim Winslow: I don’t
[staring at each other drunk]
Thomas Wake: What?
Ephraim Winslow: What?
Thomas Wake: What?
Ephraim Winslow: What?
Thomas Wake: What?
Ephraim Winslow: That’s what I mean.
Thomas Wake: What?
Ephraim Winslow: That’s the trouble with you!
Thomas Wake: That’s the trouble with you!
Ephraim Winslow: With you!
Thomas Wake: With You!
Ephraim Winslow: [yells] No! No!
Ephraim Winslow: I want a steak! I want a goddamned steak! If I had a steak, oh, boy, a rare, a bloody steak, of I had a steak, I would f**k it.
Thomas Wake: You don’t like my cooking?
Ephraim Winslow: Oh, don’t be such an old b*tch.
[he throws a pillow at Wake]
Thomas Wake: You’re drunk! You don’t know what you’re talking…
Ephraim Winslow: Oh, how could I possibly like the horsesh*t you fix us for supper?
Thomas Wake: You’re drunk, or ye wouldn’t be saying that!
Thomas Wake: You’re drunk! You’re drunk!
Ephraim Winslow: I’m drunk? I’m drunk?
Thomas Wake: You heard me! Damn you!
Ephraim Winslow: You’ve been drunk since I first laid eyes on you.
Thomas Wake: You’re fond of me lobster, aint’ ye?
Thomas Wake: I seen it. You’re fond of me lobster! Say it! Say it. Say it!
Ephraim Winslow: You’re drunker than a Virginy fence.
Thomas Wake: I seen it. You’re fond of me lobster! Say it! Say it. Say it!
Ephraim Winslow: I don’t have to say nothing.
Thomas Wake: Damn ye! Let Neptune strike ye dead, Winslow! Hark! Hark, Triton. Hark! Bellow, bid our father, the sea king, rise from the depths, full foul in his fury, black waves teeming with salt-foam, to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs till ye turn blue and bloated with bilge, and brine, and can scream no more. Only when, he, crowned in cockle shells, with slithering tentacled tail, and steaming beard, takes up his fell, be-finnèd arm, his coral-tined trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest, and plunges right through your gullet, bursting ye, a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now, a nothing for the Harpies, and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon, only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the dread emperor himself. Forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god, or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff, or part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul, is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea.
[pause]
Thomas Wake: I seen it. You’re fond of me lobster! Say it! Say it. Say it!
Ephraim Winslow: Alright. Have it your way. I like your cooking.
Thomas Wake: Get to your duties, or I’ll give you a real keelhauling.
Ephraim Winslow: You ain’t even human no more. Working apart from folks so long. You’re only tolerable when you’re dunk.
Thomas Wake: Get to work, says I. To work!
[after another night of getting drunk]
Ephraim Winslow: Thomas.
Thomas Wake: Aye?
Ephraim Winslow: No, I’m Thomas.
Thomas Wake: I’m Thomas. You’re Ephraim.
Ephraim Winslow: I lied.
Thomas Wake: Well, I’ll be scuppered.
Ephraim Winslow: I’m Thomas. Tommy.
Thomas Wake: Tommy?
[laughs]
Thomas Wake: Tommy Winslow.
Ephraim Winslow: Tom Howard.
Thomas Wake: What’s Winslow?
Ephraim Winslow: It’s nothing.
Thomas Wake: Nothing?
Ephraim Winslow: No.
Ephraim Winslow: Can I trust you?
Thomas Wake: Don’t be spilling any of your beans to me.
Ephraim Winslow: No…
Thomas Wake: I ain’t interested.
Ephraim Winslow: It wasn’t that way, is all. I know what you’re fixing to do. Getting me all liquored up…
Thomas Wake: Your guilty conscience is ever a tiresome boring as any a guilty conscience. Worse. Worse.
Ephraim Winslow: It was a drive, see. A log drive, and he’s ragging on me. I see what you’re doing.
Thomas Wake: Nothing.
Ephraim Winslow: Look, Tom, don’t be working to twist words out of my head.
Thomas Wake: I ain’t.
Ephraim Winslow: I can’t do it.
Thomas Wake: Shut up your own rag box.
Ephraim Winslow: I trust you. I trust you.
Thomas Wake: No.
Ephraim Winslow: I trust you, Tom.
Thomas Wake: You trust me?
Ephraim Winslow: No, I don’t trust you at all.
[confessing his sin to Wake]
Ephraim Winslow: And I had him handy and helpless. Alone. Too far downstream. And I wanted to do him in. I admit I did. Seeing the back of his head. One swipe of the cant hook’d be all. It was, uh, I didn’t, I didn’t. I did not. The day was long as hell on that drive, and I was lead-tired. I admit it. But I saw him slipping, not me. We saw the jam coming, and I stood, and he slipped. He shouted up, and I just stood there. “Tom, you dog!” I just stood there, is all. I just stood. Watched him get swallowed by them logs. And all I could think, when he was done was, “I could use me a smoke.” And that’s it. So, I packed up his kit and fixings, as if they was my own. And Ephraim Winslow, well, now he got a spiffy clean slate, and Thomas Howard, he don’t. No prospects. Now how else am I going to find respectable work?
[he looks around the room]
Ephraim Winslow: Tom? Tom?
[Wake is not in the room]
[Winslow hears Wake’s voice]
Thomas Wake: Why did you spill your beans, Tommy? Why did you spill your beans?
[pause]
Thomas Wake: Why did you spill your beans?
[after Wake’s destroyed the lifeboat that Winslow was trying to escape with]
Thomas Wake: Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Tommy. Last night you made a confession would make a saint swear. I don’t have nothing to confess, but you, spilling your beans, look what it’s done to you? It’s made you mad. I knew you was mad when you smashed up that life boat just now, when chasing me with an axe, trying to kill old Tom. Don’t you trust me, Tommy?
[holds out his hand]
Thomas Wake: Better hand me the dinner knife you pocketed. You ain’t safe with it.
[Winslow gives him the knife]
Thomas Wake: That’s a good lad. Them’s government property. Deducted from your pay.
Thomas Wake: Look at your shivering. You’re so mad, you know not up from down. How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? Two days? Where are we? Help me to recollect, who are you again, Tommy? I’m probably a figment of your imagination. This rock is a figment of your imagination too. You’re probably wandering through a grove of tag alders, up in north Canady, like a frostbitten maniac, talking to yourself, knee-deep in snow.
[Winslow looks at Wake for a moment, turns and then goes to sit down]
Ephraim Winslow: I could use a smoke.
Thomas Wake: We’re out of drink.
Ephraim Winslow: I’m tired out of listening to your damned-fool yarns, and your Captain Ahab horsesh*t. You sound like a goddamned parody. Giving and nagging orders like a spinster schoolmarm. And all the while turning this station to the Devil’s own rum hole.
Thomas Wake: You’re making a fool of yourself!
Ephraim Winslow: Well, it’s all horsesh*t! Your leg, and your sea life. All of it! And if I hear one more word of horsesh*t coming out of your foul, rotten tooth, smelly old mouth…
Thomas Wake: Ye…
Ephraim Winslow: [shouts] Shut up, I ain’t finished!
Ephraim Winslow: You think you’re so goddamn high and mighty just because you’re a goddamned lighthouse keeper? Well, you ain’t a captain of no ship and you never was! You ain’t no general, you ain’t no copper, you ain’t the president, and you ain’t my father, and I’m sick of you acting like you is! I’m sick of your laughing, your snoring, and your goddamn farts! Your goddamned, your goddamn farts! You smell like p*ss, you smell like j*sm, like rotten d*ck, like curdled foreskin. Like hot onions f**ked a farmyard sh*t-house! And I’m sick of your smell. I’m sick of it! I’m sick of your goddamned drunk, you goddamned, no-account, drunken, son of a b*tch b**tard liar! That’s what you are! You’re a goddamned, drunken horse-sh*tting, short, sh*t liar. A liar!
[Wake looks at Winslow aghast]
Thomas Wake: You have a way with words, Tommy.
Ephraim Winslow: Damn you!
Thomas Wake: You’re relieved of you duties.
Ephraim Winslow: [laughs] No need to tell me, old timer.
[Winslow walks off]
[after Winslow finds Wake’s logbook where he has recorded all of Winslow’s actions and has recommended severance without pay]
Ephraim Winslow: You’re trying to ruin me. I’m a hard worker. I am. I work as hard as any man.
Thomas Wake: You lie, Thomas.
Ephraim Winslow: Stop it!
Thomas Wake: You lie to yourself, but you ain’t have the sauce to see it.
[kneels in front of Wake]
Ephraim Winslow: Please. Please just let me into the light, old man. I’ve learned so much from you. Please let me show you. Another chance. Forgive and forget, I says. Just let me into that lantern, is all. Don’t make me beg. But I’ll beg. I’ll beg if that’s what you want, I’ll beg. Please. Please! Please!
Thomas Wake: Stand down.
[angrily lunges at Wake; referring to the lantern room in the lighthouse]
Ephraim Winslow: Selfish b*stard! Keeping it all to yourself. You left your old lady, your children, for what? For what?!
Thomas Wake: Look at ye, handsome lad, with eyes bright as a lady. Come to this rock playing the tough. You make me laugh with your false grum. You pretended to some mystery in your quietudes, but there ain’t no mystery. You’re an open book. A picture, says I. A painted actress screaming in the footlights, a b*tch what wants to be coveted for nothing but being born, crying about the silver spoon what should’ve been yours! Now look at you, crying. Boo. Boo.
Thomas Wake: What you going to do? Will you kill me? Will you? Will you kill me like you done that gull?
Ephraim Winslow: I didn’t!
Thomas Wake: Liar! You murdering dog! It was ye what changed the wind on us! It was ye what damned us, dog! It was ye! Will you do what you wish you’d done to old Winslow? Would ye best me then? For Winslow were right, Thomas. You’re a dog! A filthy dog! A dog!
[they lunge at each other and start fighting]
[as Winslow is punching Wake he sees him as a sea monster]
Thomas Wake: You’re killing me!
[Winslow stops punching Wake]
[after Winslow ties a leash around Wake’s neck and starts to bury him in the ration pit]
Thomas Wake: You wish to see what’s in that lantern? So did me last assistant.
Ephraim Winslow: Shut up, dog! Polish your brasswork.
[as Winslow is burying Wake alive in ration pit]
Thomas Wake: O, what Protean forms swim up from men’s minds and melt in hot Promethean plunder, scorching eyes with divine shames and horror, and casting them down to Davy Jones. The others, still blind, yet in it see all the divine graces, and to Fiddler’s Green sent, where no man is suffered to want and toil, but is ancient, mutable, and unchanging, as the she who girdles around the globe. Them’s truth. And you’ll be punished!
[Wake stops talking, Wake jumps into the pit and takes Wake’s keys]
[as Winslow is making his way to the lantern room, suddenly Wake appears and hits him with an axe]
Thomas Wake: The light belongs to me!
[Winslow disarms him and then uses the axe to kill Wake]
[last lines; after killing Wake]
Ephraim Winslow: Should pale death, with treble dread, make the ocean caves our bed, God who hears the surges roll, deign to save the suppliant soul.
[he drinks then makes his way to the lighthouse]
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Trailer:
do you know if there is an author of the toast that Thomas Wake makes as they are about to have their dinner?
Thomas Wake: I seen you sparring with a gull. Best leave them be.