"The Lighthouse' is remarkably ugly and beautiful at the same time

Willem Dafoe has one of the great faces in movie history. He can look menacing and angelic depending on the way he is shot. It's incredibly expressive and as he gets older his already distinct features have become even more exaggerated to the degree where he wouldn't need a mask now to portray the Green Goblin.

You see a lot of his weathered face (and Robert Pattison's) in The Lighthouse, the strange new film from director Robert Eggers (best known for The Witch), and that's a good thing. Both actors are put through an intense physical ringer in this movie which is basically about two people quickly going insane while isolated in a lighthouse amid what seems like a brutal, never-ending storm.

Early scenes play like something out of silent film (it reminded me a bit of All Is Lost), and then eventually Dafoe and Pattison (whose backstories are a mystery) fall into rigid roles -- the older man is a cranky taskmaster, treating Pattison like his personal servant, the younger man is the dogged employee who is one more slight away from losing it. So far, so ok -- but then things get really weird.

There's a touch of David Lynch in this film -- the black and white cinematography is gorgeous and the surreal moments are played with such a stark frankness, they feel almost real. It can be a challenging movie -- its claustrophobia and sometimes hysterical tone may be off-putting to some who are looking for a more conventional narrative -- but if you look at this movie as more of an art film than a strictly straightforward story, you might enjoy it a lot.

It definitely provides a lot of room for Dafoe and Pattison (who's matured into becoming a really interesting actor) to chew a lot of scenery and play beautifully off each other. It must have been a hell of a shoot, especially for Pattison, who spends much of it getting pummeled in the face with torrential rain.

The movie itself reaches a truly bizarre crescendo that I couldn't even begin to explain and ends on a darkly ironic note that feels just about right for a movie like this.

It's kind of amazing that it's a studio release -- albeit an indie specialty brand like A24 -- but it's the kind of movie that might be relegated to streaming now because it is so decidedly uncommercial. It's funny to be seeing it on the eve before I see the somehow already polarizing Rise of Skywalker which, whether it's good, bad or somewhere in between, is guaranteed to be profitable because of its being part of a franchise with extremely high brand awareness.

If you try to convince someone to see this movie -- if the ask what is it about -- it's a tough sale. Two men's dissent into madness doesn't pack them in the seats, but boy am I glad there's directors like Eggers who are still willing to give ambitious two-handers like this a try.