The Lighthouse (2019)

June 11, 2025

Very atmospheric. It has some good rants in it. I love the use of older English. Also, it’s a bit scary.

Here’s my take on the movie: both of the men did wrong in the past. In trying to escape from their lives, they ended up on the island with the lighthouse — a representation of fleeing from their problems without confronting or solving their root causes.

On this island, because they hadn’t addressed the underlying issues, they fell back into the same destructive behaviors as before. The mysteries they encounter — the mermaid, the secrets kept by the lighthouse keeper — ultimately turn out to be unimportant and trivial. They serve as a metaphor: when you run away from your problems, you may experience mystery and complexity, but in the end, these are just distractions from what truly needs to be faced.

The light of the lighthouse symbolizes the kind of salvation both men hope to find in their escape. But as it turns out, this salvation is illusory — it cannot be attained by running away. When one of them realizes this, he is tormented by seagulls eating his abandoned body — a representation of his inner torment upon realizing that the salvation he sought was an illusion all along. This echoes the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and was eternally punished.

What pleasure is there in seeing new lands? Or in surveying cities and spots of interest? All your bustle is useless. Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you. [..]

That trouble once removed, all change of scene will become pleasant; though you may be driven to the uttermost ends of the earth, in whatever corner of a savage land you may find yourself, that place, however forbidding, will be to you a hospitable abode. The person you are matters more than the place to which you go; for that reason we should not make the mind a bondsman to any one place.

~ Senneca, On Travel as a Cure for Discontent

That’s all I got. 7/10.