As punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock. He stole fire from Olympus and gave it to humanity, which enraged Zeus. Prometheus was a Titan with a reputation as a trickster. There’s a bit more to Howard and Wake, though they represent Greek myths Prometheus and Proteus, respectively. In Eggers’ The Lighthouse, that’s the exact setup Thomas Howard ( Robert Pattinson) and Thomas Wake ( Willem Dafoe) are stationed on a rocky isle to man the lighthouse for a month, and their drastically different personalities cause them to clash almost constantly. Henceforth, it was mandated that lighthouse teams be comprised of three men, not two. The beckoning arm and isolation broke Howell down over time, so when his replacements arrived to relieve him, he was unrecognizable. Over the winter, waves battered the coffin against the rocks, and the corpse along with it, making its arm appear to wave and beckon. Instead, Howell built a coffin for Griffith and tied it to the rocks outside the keeper’s house while he continued his duties of keeping the beacon lit. So, when Griffith died in a freak accident, Howell was too afraid to cast the body out to sea he assumed everyone would suspect him of murdering Griffith. It was widely known that the pair didn’t get along in the best of circumstances, often fighting and threatening bodily harm. In 1801, keepers Thomas Griffith and Thomas Howell were stationed at the aging lighthouse on a small, rocky island twenty miles west of Wales. That tragedy, known as the Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy or Incident, changed the way British lighthouses were operated. Hark, Triton! Hark! There be plot spoilers ahead.Ĭo-written with his brother Max, Robert Eggers’ revealed in an interview that it was a true-life tragedy that inspired the barebones outline of The Lighthouse, one that’s turned into a folktale over the years. True to form, Eggers’ submersion into the period and an over meticulousness in research mean The Lighthouse is a richly layered folktale offering new insights with every watch. It’s also not always the easiest to decode. A hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers struggling to maintain a semblance of sanity during their stint on a remote, isolated New England isle makes for one hell of a visual journey rife with dread, farts, and mermaids. If ever there’s a perfect genre movie to encapsulate that cabin-fever madness many of us are likely feeling about now, it’s Robert Eggers’ sophomore feature The Lighthouse, currently available to stream on Prime Video.
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