A film review on Home for Fiction? Sort of. But this isn’t a typical review. Rather, in this post I plan to analyze how Robert Eggers’s 2019 The Lighthouse is a Gothic masterpiece.
To do that, I will really go deeply into Gothic tropes, to show the seriously great job the director did with this film. Indeed, to this Gothic specialist, The Lighthouse is a Gothic classroom. If I needed to pick only one work from the recent 10-20 years to teach someone about the Gothic, The Lighthouse would be the one.
I’ve tried to balance between not including any spoilers and still being able to talk about the Gothic tropes of the film. In all honesty, the Gothic as a mode doesn’t rely on strictness and linearity. That is, it’s about affect, not plot.
However, if you haven’t watched The Lighthouse yet and you’d like to enter the narrative without any interpretative prejudice, feel free to stop reading at this point. You can then come back to this post after you’ve watched the film.
Otherwise, if you’ve already seen the film and want to know why I consider The Lighthouse a Gothic masterpiece, read on!
