Pathologizing Isolation

The Dramaturgy of Isolation Using the Example of The Lighthouse

Abstract

The Lighthouse is a chamber play captured on the screen in sober black and white images, whose aesthetics evoke reminiscences to the classic "chamber drama" of the Weimar Republic. But director Robert Eggers offers more than a mere homage to past cinematic art: numerous references and influences from the fields of art, cultural, and medical history are embedded in an intertextual web of symbols and tropes that reveal a variety of possible etiologies of mental illness. In his famous book From Caligari to Hitler (1947), film historian Siegfried Kracauer called the silent chamber plays “Triebfilm" (libidinous drama) - a postulate that still holds for The Lighthouse. In addition to its function as a libidinous violence-drama, the film also creates a basis for reflection on highly actual themes such as the influence of isolation - a highly relevant topos in times of pandemic and quarantine - on the human psyche or psychologically vulnerable personalities. In short: The Lighthouse presents an indirect media warning of the devastating consequences of isolation in the guise of a multifaceted arthouse film.