After seeing Jerzy Skolimowski's macabre movie of teenage obsession, "Deep End", I had to follow up and see what else he has done. "The Lightship" turns out to have been the only movie of his available at Ye Olde Locale Video Store; though there are more Skolimowski movies still in print on DVD, they don't tend to be on very many shelves. It's a shame, because if "Deep End" and "The Lightship" are any indication, this is a director who deserves more attention.
"The Lightship" is a thriller confined to a single boat--somewhat like a return to Skolimowski's earlier feature script "Knife in the Water", directed by the famous Roman Polanski, only with slightly different concerns and an unfortunate mark of 80s era production. Klaus Maria Brandauer is a late-50s (in age and era) Coast Guard captain of a "lightship", a stationary ship that warns other vessels of dangerous waters, who invites his son on board after the son gets arrested. The son, being Youth, hates the confinement and close proximity to his father, saying "I'd rather have gone to prison" in voice-over. However, things get lively once some bank robbers come aboard and hijack the ship, leading to a slow but strong build up of tension as the captain has to protect his crew and his son from their dangerous intentions.
Now, it's precisely at the point when the badguys come on the ship that the movie gets good, and from there it builds itself spectacularly into a very effective thriller. Robert Duvall heads the baddies as one Caspary, a Southern gent and nihilistic flaneur hit with a form of moralistic ennui that counterparts Captain Miller's post-WWII world-weariness for an effective exploration of personal guilt and relativistic sincerity. These two men--one who simply wants to retire offshore with a dependable group of people and his son to keep him company, the other a listless thrill seeker who somehow manages to have violent and unbalanced lackies to follow him around to help him achieve his goals of doing whatever he fancies--are almost constantly face to face, circling each other physically and verbally as they parlance over all sorts of issues of the world, most of which involve the very nature of the history that got them to be at the precise point they are geographically and mentally for that moment of their lives. Meanwhile, the aforementioned lackies (one played with true panache by William Forsythe) and the crew have their own confrontations and side-stepping to do, all in a very narrow ship. As the tension builds and more and more character development reveals the true nature of the two leads, both the group leaders and the crews themselves engage in psychological warfare that, of course, eventually leads to greater danger.
The extra wheel is the son. Truly, there is no reason for him, and he ultimately becomes only a nuisance to an otherwise finely crafted movie. From the get-go he becomes one of the more detestable parts of the movie, with a terrible voice-over narration that should have been cut completely and the fact that he is so damned 80s when the movie is otherwise pleasantly set in the 50s. Furthermore, he really ends up doing nothing but complaining, comparing himself to his father (the similarities? The son is a whiny jerk and the father struggles with guilt. Which means they aren't similar at all), and finally to proselytize on the nature of what he observed on the boat that fateful few days. "The Lighthouse" is that kind of unfortunate movie that is a perfect film overburdened with the dead weight of a single bad idea, which was the son. The character didn't even add intensity to the bubbling violence, as Captain Miller already had the crew to care for fatherly.
However, Skolimowski's direction and amazing visual technique keeps the movie striking beyond its faults. Under a lesser director, the movie would have come off merely as a forgettable, cheap, 80s thriller. In some ways it still does except for the visuals and the performances of Duvall, Brandauer, and Forsythe. And for his faults, a particularly effective moment is made of the son in the light dome, perhaps one of the most poignant visuals in the movie.
Re-edit this movie, completely eliminate the voice-over narration and cut a few of the son's scenes, and you have a very good thriller. As is, "The Lighthouse" is still a good performance piece and cinematic curiosity in the life of an unfortunately lesser-known director.
--PolarisDiB
"The Lightship" is a thriller confined to a single boat--somewhat like a return to Skolimowski's earlier feature script "Knife in the Water", directed by the famous Roman Polanski, only with slightly different concerns and an unfortunate mark of 80s era production. Klaus Maria Brandauer is a late-50s (in age and era) Coast Guard captain of a "lightship", a stationary ship that warns other vessels of dangerous waters, who invites his son on board after the son gets arrested. The son, being Youth, hates the confinement and close proximity to his father, saying "I'd rather have gone to prison" in voice-over. However, things get lively once some bank robbers come aboard and hijack the ship, leading to a slow but strong build up of tension as the captain has to protect his crew and his son from their dangerous intentions.
Now, it's precisely at the point when the badguys come on the ship that the movie gets good, and from there it builds itself spectacularly into a very effective thriller. Robert Duvall heads the baddies as one Caspary, a Southern gent and nihilistic flaneur hit with a form of moralistic ennui that counterparts Captain Miller's post-WWII world-weariness for an effective exploration of personal guilt and relativistic sincerity. These two men--one who simply wants to retire offshore with a dependable group of people and his son to keep him company, the other a listless thrill seeker who somehow manages to have violent and unbalanced lackies to follow him around to help him achieve his goals of doing whatever he fancies--are almost constantly face to face, circling each other physically and verbally as they parlance over all sorts of issues of the world, most of which involve the very nature of the history that got them to be at the precise point they are geographically and mentally for that moment of their lives. Meanwhile, the aforementioned lackies (one played with true panache by William Forsythe) and the crew have their own confrontations and side-stepping to do, all in a very narrow ship. As the tension builds and more and more character development reveals the true nature of the two leads, both the group leaders and the crews themselves engage in psychological warfare that, of course, eventually leads to greater danger.
The extra wheel is the son. Truly, there is no reason for him, and he ultimately becomes only a nuisance to an otherwise finely crafted movie. From the get-go he becomes one of the more detestable parts of the movie, with a terrible voice-over narration that should have been cut completely and the fact that he is so damned 80s when the movie is otherwise pleasantly set in the 50s. Furthermore, he really ends up doing nothing but complaining, comparing himself to his father (the similarities? The son is a whiny jerk and the father struggles with guilt. Which means they aren't similar at all), and finally to proselytize on the nature of what he observed on the boat that fateful few days. "The Lighthouse" is that kind of unfortunate movie that is a perfect film overburdened with the dead weight of a single bad idea, which was the son. The character didn't even add intensity to the bubbling violence, as Captain Miller already had the crew to care for fatherly.
However, Skolimowski's direction and amazing visual technique keeps the movie striking beyond its faults. Under a lesser director, the movie would have come off merely as a forgettable, cheap, 80s thriller. In some ways it still does except for the visuals and the performances of Duvall, Brandauer, and Forsythe. And for his faults, a particularly effective moment is made of the son in the light dome, perhaps one of the most poignant visuals in the movie.
Re-edit this movie, completely eliminate the voice-over narration and cut a few of the son's scenes, and you have a very good thriller. As is, "The Lighthouse" is still a good performance piece and cinematic curiosity in the life of an unfortunately lesser-known director.
--PolarisDiB