The Lighthouse

Thomas Wake and Ephraim Winslow arrive at a remote New England lighthouse for a four-week rotation. Wake is the keeper — seasoned, tyrannical, fiercely protective of the lamp at the top of the tower. Winslow is the wickie, assigned to coal hauling, maintenance, and every degrading task Wake can find for him. Wake keeps the light to himself. Winslow isn't allowed near it.

The work is brutal. The island is barren. Winslow is plagued by a one-eyed seagull that follows him everywhere — bad luck, the old sailors say. He endures Wake's theatrical authority and the relentless grind, and begins drinking heavily. The two men eat together, drink together, argue and sing and fight in an escalating rhythm that starts to feel like something older than either of them.

A storm rolls in and doesn't leave. Their relief ship doesn't come. The four weeks become indefinite. They are stuck on a rock in the North Atlantic with a dwindling supply of wood alcohol and nowhere to go. Wake's monologues grow more oracular. Winslow's grip on what is real begins to loosen — visions of mermaids, of Wake as something divine and monstrous, of the light as something that cannot be looked at and cannot be ignored.

The mythology surfaces: Prometheus stole fire from the gods and was punished for it. Winslow is drawn to the light above everything else. Wake will not give it to him.

The killing happens. Winslow opens the light at last and is destroyed by it — blinded, overwhelmed, falling. The film's final image is Promethean: he lies on the rocks below while the gulls tear at him, splayed and ruined and having touched what he came for.