Stormy Waters

EARLY LAST YEAR, ROBERT PATTINSON, WILLEM DAFOE AND DIRECTOR ROBERT EGGERS ARRIVED ON A PIECE OF VOLCANIC ROCK TO SHOOT THEIR CRAZED PSYCHODRAMA THE LIGHTHOUSE. . . . THEY’RE STILL RECOVERING. EMPIRE SPEAKS TO THEM TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE GRUELLING SHOOT BEHIND ONE OF THE MOST STARTLING FILMS IN YEARS

- ALEX GODFREY

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be a small film. Some vindictive seagulls and a mermaid aside, it was primarily two men in a lighthouse, toiling, squabbling, drinking, mentally unravelling. After the success of his debut film The Witch, director Robert Eggers was juggling ideas for a follow-up and threw this into the mix: a cheaper, contained little drama. Or so he thought. Nothing about this startling slice of lunacy was small, at all. And nothing was easy.

“It was a little bit more challenging than I expected,” says Eggers, meeting Empire in London. “I knew that it was going to be challenging, and I also knew that it was going to be more challenging than I could understand. And it was even a little bit more challenging than that.” He laughs, looking back at a production that was almost as demented off-screen as it is on. This, then, is the story of The Lighthouse, where, off-camera, the puking was kind of intentional and the crying wasn’t at all.

“IT’S JUST THE rats,” the director comments as we sit down, some ominous creaking going on beneath the floor. Eggers may be right — we’re in a posh hotel, but this is London where, they say, you’re never more than six feet away from a rat. Ye olde London is still here, if you look for it, which Eggers has been doing during his stay, particularly enthusing about his candle-lit visit to Dennis Severs’ House, the East End’s immersive recreation of an 18th century dwelling. “It’s one of my favourite places I’ve ever been to,” he says. “Things just recede into the shadows and you have to use your imagination.”