The Lighthouse (2019) and Film Interpretation

Since its release back in 2019, Robert Egger’s The Lighthouse has been endlessly dissected and analyzed. Various interpretations have been put forward to explain its ambiguous story and confusing ending.

(Image credit: Parallaxi Magazine)

It is quite refreshing to see these kinds of responses to a film. Usually, when a movie is ambiguous, most people will try to make narrative sense out of that ambiguity. Instead of asking what the ending means, many will ask what happens in the end. Dan Olson, in his discussion of the 2018 film Annihilation, points out the many pitfalls of trying to make sense of narrative. Chief among which is the interpreter’s failure to grasp the meanings conveyed by the filmmaker.

All the “Endings explained” videos are guilty of this. However, Olson might just be too critical of attempts to logically make sense of narratives. After all, does it matter what one gets out of film? Isn’t the meaning each of us derived from an experience wholly individual? What harm are we doing to a story by interpreting it at a surface level?

Well, maybe, in the case of 2018’s Annihilation, there is harm to be made by looking at the film only at the surface level. Doing so would lead us to make various judgments on the basis of concrete plots and story developments rather than trying to grasp at what the filmmaker is trying to say. The fact of the matter is that Annihilation cannot be read as a sensible story, but rather as a kind of abstract thesis, an attempt to explore certain ideas.

Indeed, the response to The Lighthouse is opposite to Annihilation, in that no one is trying to make sense of what exactly happened in The Lighthouse. If you look at the reviews of the film, there are two types. The first discusses the story in bare-bones: a young dude and an old dude are posted on an island as the lighthouse keepers and tension rises. And then it proceeds to recognize the mood that is evoked through the filmmaking: the lighting, the acting, the use of aspect ratio…

(Image credit: Beartai)

This first approach seems on the surface shallower than the “Endings Explained” but it is in fact crucial to the understanding of any films. Even before one starts to decipher the plot, one should try to understand the visual language of the film – since it is the primary channel through which the filmmaker communicates to us. It is perhaps the only aspect of film analysis that can be objective. You can say for example that the lighthouse is shot in prominence and is always framed as greater and inaccessible to Robert Pattinson’s character. This can be deemed as objective or even universal.

However, if you start to point out that the lighthouse is a metaphor for god, a centre for power or a Freudian phallic symbol, then you’re moving into the territory of contention. This is the second type of discussion we could find about the movie. These discussions tend to ask what the movie means. They present various interpretations based on various disciplines and try to discern what the film is trying to say on a more abstract level. While most of the responses in this category recognize that they are merely speculating, there emerge a competition on whose interpretation of the movie is the most correct.

What do you think is the true abstract interpretation of The Lighthouse? Now, hold that thought.

Is this what Olson advocated for? Looking at his arguments, he is not advocating for abstract meaning over concrete plot, but rather an active attempt to understand a film beyond its most obvious elements. Olson’s argument is essentially anti-reductionist. Those who commit to the literal reading of Annihilation are reducing the film to a single level of concrete plot. We’re not sure if this anti-reductionist stance would enjoy how The Lighthouse is being read. When you look at someone on the internet saying that this movie must be a Freudian fantasy or an allegory for the Prometheus myth, they are also reducing the movie to a single interpretation.

This brings us to an important point: reviewers need to reject both the literal explanation and reductionist metaphor analysis. When a reviewer is asked to interpret a film, s/he is being asked to present a particular interpretation of the film, not a universal one. Therefore, it is not an issue for a reviewer to talk at length about the Freudian imageries in The Lighthouse as long as a/he recognizes that this is one in may interpretations of a film.

This understanding has serious implications regarding the idea of the death of the author. This idea was initially proposed by Roland Barthes – a French sociologist and literary critique. He states that once a text is published, the intention of the author no longer matters because it depends on how the audience reads it. In other words, once a movie like The Lighthouse is screened, whatever single intention Robert Eggers might have would’ve dispersed into disparate parts, each defined by individual readings.

(Image credit: floox in flux)

When we interact with art, we project our own understanding of the world onto it. In that sense, because of how individualised it is, art is eternal. Any attempt to read art with an intention, reducing it to a single meaning, whether based on authorial intent, logic or history, would constitute as an attempt to kill the art, rendering it lifeless.

The various interpretations of The Lighthouse tell us that there are many ways a single film can be read. It tells us that at the end of the day, films are individual experiences, expressed in particular spheres of personal experiences, intersecting under a universal understanding of the cinema.

Thus, while everyone is fussing over what is the true and correct interpretation of The Lighthouse, we should instead be content with finding one interpretation, knowing that this is one among a million others.