What does the final scene show?
After killing Wake, the younger keeper reaches the lantern,
looks into its light, screams and falls down the stairs.
The final image places him on the shore with seabirds pecking at his
exposed body. The film gives us his reaction to the light while
withholding an image that would explain exactly what he has seen.
Inverse’s interview with Eggers
follows this sequence and asks him about its meaning.
How do Prometheus and Proteus fit?
Prometheus steals fire and suffers a punishment in which a bird eats
his organs. The stolen access to light and the birds make him a useful
counterpart for Pattinson’s keeper. Proteus, the prophetic old man of
the sea, offers a counterpart for Dafoe’s Wake. In the same interview,
Eggers describes bringing the myths together and changing them for
his film. This is an acknowledged source of invention, with room for
the characters to exceed their mythic counterparts.
Why is the light worth fighting for?
Follow who is allowed upstairs. Wake reserves access to the lantern
while the younger man does the exhausting work below. Our reading
starts with that arrangement: the light becomes a privilege whose
attraction grows because another man can withhold it. Taking the keys
seems to promise an end to subordination. Reaching the top instead
brings a fall. The myth gives that reversal an enormous scale, but its
force begins in an ordinary workplace grievance.
In his conversation with Vox,
Eggers explains that he deliberately leaves questions about the younger
keeper’s past open, allowing Pattinson to work with different possibilities.
He also identifies Symbolist painting as an influence on the final image.
On another viewing, watch how early the locked room acquires its power,
long before we reach its door. What starts as a division of duties
comes to occupy the younger man’s imagination completely.
