Enough Already, ‘The Lighthouse’ Performance Proves Robert Pattinson Is More Than Worthy Of Respect [Cannes]

This article contains spoilers for “The Lighthouse.”

Despite what the Batman backlash might indicate, Robert Pattinson has come a long way from his sparkly vampire days. Pattinson made his first major appearance as Cedric Diggory in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” but it wasn’t until his leading role in the “Twilight” saga in 2008 that he became a household name. Since the end of “Twilight” in 2013, Pattinson set to work amassing a fair few indie titles in his filmography, from “Good Time” to last year’s “High Life,” directed by Claire Denis.

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After the announcement that Pattinson would play Batman in the upcoming Matthew Reeves film, the news of Pattinson’s casting has stoked the vitriolic flames of Internet backlash. Our records indicate that, on the whole, Pattinson’s body of work is more substantial than the legions of incensed film bros on Twitter would have you believe.

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But perhaps none of his other titles are as convincing as his latest — and this is coming from a self-professed “Twilight” detractor whose early adolescence was inundated by glittery Pattinson iconography, to great annoyance. Yet even this critic, who diligently avoided Pattinson-related media for most of middle school, has to admit that Pattinson excels in his latest role. It feels particularly auspicious that the Batman casting news coincides with the premiere of “The Lighthouse,” Robert Eggers’ provocative black-and-white horror film, which screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival (our review), and somehow was mysteriously not part of the Cannes competition line-up (one of the most dubious Cannes decision in years).

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Set in the 1890s at a remote, desolate islet, Pattinson’s character Ephraim works for Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe), a grizzled former seafarer who protectively maintains a lighthouse. For the duration of his stay, Ephraim is tasked with the gruntwork: hauling vast barrels of oil up vertiginous stairwells, fending off murderous seagulls, and shoveling coal into a furnace. But what begins as a merely fatiguing stint of manual labor devolves rapidly into a full-blown mental breakdown, as Ephraim and Thomas alternate between drunkenly affectionate revelry and paranoia-fueled violent clashes.

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With increasingly erratic conduct, from bulging eyes to deranged shouting, Pattinson physicalizes Ephraim’s loss of grip on reality in an environment so brutal that at the Q&A session after the film, Pattinson jokingly misremembered their rehearsal as lasting three weeks, not one. Playing Ephraim demands an immense presentness of being tempered with a total absence, as he constantly searches for the truth, which perpetually eludes him. That frustration, coupled with testosterone-fueled aggression and all manners of repressed Freudian anxieties, builds mania to a fever pitch. At one point, Ephraim kills a seagull against Thomas’ advice, bashing it relentlessly on a rock; at another, he masturbates to a nightmarish psychological montage of massive tentacles and a shrieking mermaid (that might not have been so unfamiliar to Pattinson’s “Potter” character). Pattinson delivers this performance with great conviction, in a performance that many critics are already calling a career best.

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So the question remains: Does all of this qualify Pattinson to play Batman? For this critic, the answer is inconclusive in some ways. After all, mysterious, wealthy Bruce Wayne is a far cry from the manic, uncontrollable self-destruction of Pattinson’s role in “The Lighthouse.” There’s also the added question of what this will mean for Pattinson, whose online presence has recently garnered equal parts commendation for “The Lighthouse” and disparagement for his upcoming DC Comics gig. For a famously shy actor who publicly expressed dislike for the one major film franchise attached to his name, it remains to be seen what’ll happen when, over a decade later, another blockbuster project of this scale shifts the spotlight back onto him.

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Yet Pattinson’s “Lighthouse” performance is yet another indication of a preternaturally chameleonic capacity for shifting gears into a tonally specific, physically demanding role. That skill will certainly come in handy when Pattinson steps into the driver’s seat of the Batmobile. With all eyes on him, some more eager to find fault than others, one wonders whether he has what it takes to shift the tide.

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