Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Peter Mullan, Gerard Butler, Connor Swindells, Gary Lewis, Ken Drury, Gary Kane, Emma King, Soren Malling, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Roderick Gilkison, John Taylor.
There are some jobs that feel as though they are built for the romantic, for the notion of what being alone with your thoughts can do, and the impact it will have on your soul; time apart from the rest of humanity, time spent with just yourself in command and with nothing to worry about except perhaps the demons waiting in the dark.
The prestige of being a lighthouse keeper has arguably been long since forgotten, automation has taken the sense of adventure from the guardian that stands between the sea and the rocks, and left only the memory of what it meant to be a small crew on the edge of the horizon and withstanding all weather, all that the world could throw at you.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote that “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches”, for in that glimmer of truth, more people have surely been saved by the light of the edifice manned by the watchful eye of the determined soul than ever can be counted in the pews of the invisible and indiscriminate; and yet as The Vanishing shows, sometimes a soul is damned no matter how much light shines upon the path to salvation.
Before automation there was always a problem when it came to the life a lighthouse keeper, that of the silence and the company, left almost completely alone with your thoughts for six weeks at a time will invariably feed into the psyche, when you add in the gravity of the elements, of only having two others sharing your world on a rock far from the shore’s horizon, it is then no wonder that some peculiarity might set in, might take over.
For the experienced Thomas and James, played with deep examination and subdued thought by the ever-excellent Peter Mullan and the often-alluring Gerard Butler, and the novice Donald, a series of events conspire to bring the three men to a breaking point they could not have imagined.
To witness the three men’s gradual decline, to see them turn on each other as others intrude upon their island sanctuary, and the promise of riches should they disappear from view, is to understand the part of the mind that crumbles when it is faced with the impossibility of its actions. We may have to kill in self-defence, but that moment never leaves our mind, the image never fades, and as Donald fails to come to terms with his action, so it is to Thomas and James that the war falls upon.
The Vanishing is a violent examination into the effects that solitude and isolation can have on the human mind, it is up there with Kubrick’s cinematic imagery of Stephen King’s The Shining, maybe not as horrific, but just as intense, a just reminder on how the mind can be a fragile organ and little contact can alter its perception and the outcome; a film that might not catch the attention of those who are unaware of the social history and importance of Britain’s lighthouses, but one that nevertheless is as beautifully constructed as any that keep ships safe from the ragged and intemperate shore.
Ian D. Hall