The Lighthouse

Shot on black-and-white 35mm through vintage lenses in a 1.19:1 box, which is nearly square, and the aspect ratio is doing as much work as the script.

Two lighthouse keepers on a rock off New England in the 1890s. One is senior and will not let the other tend the light. The relief boat does not come.

Eggers built a working lighthouse on a cape in Nova Scotia and shot in real storms, and the miserable weather in the film is the weather they had.

The dialogue is assembled from period sources, Melville and real keepers' journals, and Dafoe's flatulence curse monologue is a genuine set piece.

It is very funny, which people are not warned about, and then it is not.

Whether anything supernatural occurs is left completely open. The gull, the light and the last shot are the three things you will argue about.