On a tranquil Northern California night, as part of the Mill Valley Film Festival‘s “Spotlight on Robert Pattinson,” in conjunction with the California Film Institute, “The Lighthouse” debuted. Robert Eggers‘s highly-anticipated follow-up to his universally critically-acclaimed feature film debut, “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” is a brilliant deconstruction of egoism and masculinity; this psychological, Vantablack comedy pits Pattinson against a formidable Willem Dafoe, and it is a quiet miracle of a film.
In a wildly successful effort to expand his cinematic palette of genres, Pattinson has made it a point to accept unorthodox roles in increasingly weird, daring, and off-kilter films, describing “The Lighthouse” as “show-stoppingly strange.”
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A lifelong fan of Dafoe, and loyal follower of the cult of Eggers since “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse” is the perfect marriage of ideal professional collaboration and perfect Pattinson-patented role. Eggers attempted to lure Pattinson towards one of his earlier followup scripts to “The Witch,” but, on-brand, it wasn’t peculiar enough. However, according to Pattinson, speaking of Eggers’s latest feature, “whenever you see a script where two pages just consist of two characters saying, “What?” to each other…it’s audacious.”
As for Dafoe? One would be hard-pressed to find anyone willing or able to out-duel him in a battle of the bizarre. “No matter what you throw at him, he has something to come back with you, and he’ll go more than you as well,” Pattinson said of his esteemed costar.
“The Lighthouse” opens in limited release on October 18, in New York and L.A. with expansion to follow. Watch the full video interview here.