Keepers (3½ Stars)

This is the seventh film in the Stuttgart White Nights Festival.

It's a Scottish film based on a story about three lighthouse keepers who mysteriously disappeared in 1900. The lighthouse was on the uninhabited Flannan Isle in the Outer Hebrides. It was manned by three men at a time, for shifts of six weeks. On 26th December 2000 the lighthouse was found empty, and there was no trace of the men. There were unfinished meals on the table, suggesting they had left their positions very hastily. The bodies of the men were never found, leading to legends like that of the Marie Celeste. Many songs have been written about this disappearance, but the most famous is the Ballad of Flannan Isle, written by Wilfrid Gibson in 1912.

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The Ballad of Flannan Isle

Though three men dwell on Flannan Isle
To keep the lamp alight,
As we steered under the lee, we caught
No glimmer through the night!

A passing ship at dawn had brought
The news; and quickly we set sail,
To find out what strange thing might ail
The keepers of the deep-sea light.

The winter day broke blue and bright,
With glancing sun and glancing spray,
As o'er the swell our boat made way,
As gallant as a gull in flight.

But, as we neared the lonely Isle
And looked up at the naked height
And saw the lighthouse towering white,
With blinded lantern, that all night
Had never shot a spark
Of comfort through the dark,
So ghastly in the cold sunlight
It seemed, that we were struck the while
With wonder all too dread for words.

And, as into the tiny creek
We stole beneath the hanging crag,
We saw three queer, black, ugly birds –
Too big, by far, in my belief,
For guillemot or shag –
Like seamen sitting bold upright
Upon a half-tide reef;
But as we neared they plunged from sight,
Without a sound, or spurt of white.

And still too amazed to speak,
We landed and made fast the boat,
And climbed the track in single file,
Each wishing he was safe afloat,
On any sea, however far,
So it be far from Flannan Isle.
And still we seemed to climb and climb,
As though we'd lost all count of time,
And so must climb for evermore.
Yet, all too soon, we reached the door,
The black, sun-blistered lighthouse door,
That gaped for us ajar.

As, on the threshold, for a spell
We paused, we seemed to breathe the smell
Of limewash and of tar,
Familiar as our daily breath,
As though 'twere some strange scent of death;
And so, yet wondering, side by side,
We stood a moment, still tongue-tied,
And each with black foreboding eyed
The door, ere we should fling it wide,
To leave the sunlight for the gloom,
Till, plucking courage up, at last,
Hard on each other's heels we passed
Into the living-room.

Yet, as we crowded through the door,
We only saw a table, spread
For dinner, meat and cheese and bread,
But all untouched, and no one there,
As though, when they sat down to eat,
Ere they could even taste,
Alarm had come; and they in haste
Had risen and left the bread and meat,
For on the table-head a chair
Lay tumbled on the floor.
We listened, but we only heard
The feeble cheeping of a bird
That starved upon its perch,
And, listening still, without a word
We set about our hopeless search.

We hunted high, we hunted low,
And soon ransacked the empty house;
Then o'er the Island, to and fro,
We ranged, to listen and to look
In every cranny, cleft or nook
That might have hid a bird or mouse;
But, though we searched from shore to shore,
We found no sign in any place,
And soon again stood face to face
Before the gaping door,
And stole into the room once more
As frightened children steal.

Aye, though we hunted high and low,
And hunted everywhere,
Of the three men's fate we found no trace
Of any kind in any place,
But a door ajar, and an untouched meal,
And an overtoppled chair.

And, as we listened in the gloom
Of that forsaken living-room –
O chill clutch on our breath –
We thought how ill-chance came to all
Who kept the Flannan Light,
And how the rock had been the death
Of many a likely lad;
How six had come to a sudden end
And three had gone stark mad;
And one whom we'd all known as friend
Had leapt from the lantern one still night,
And fallen dead by the lighthouse wall;
And long we thought
On the three we sought,
And of what might yet befall.

Like curs a glance has brought to heel,
We listened, flinching there,
And looked, and looked on the untouched meal
And the overtoppled chair.

We seemed to stand for an endless while,
Though still no word was said,
Three men alive on Flannan Isle,
Who thought on three men dead.

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Most of the legends about the lighthouse attribute the disappearance to supernatural causes, but "Keepers" presents a more logical theory, a tale of madness and greed. The film's plot is very close to that of "A Simple Plan", so close that I have to wonder if it was the main influence for the scriptwriters.

Three men, Thomas, James and Donald, named after the real life characters, travel to the lighthouse for their six-week shift. Thomas and James are experienced lighthouse keepers, but it's Donald's first time. Shortly after they arrive a small lifeboat is washed onto the rocks, containing a dead man and a locked wooden chest. They open the chest and find gold bars. They decide to sell the gold when they return to the mainland and split the money among themselves, but they haven't reckoned with obvious problems:

If something that valuable is lost, someone will come looking for it.

If something that valuable is found, the finders will become greedy and turn against one another.

This is a beautiful film, and the barren scenery lends to its beauty. It's all very believable. How would you react if you found treasure worth millions just lying there to be taken? This is probably the best performance I've ever seen from Gerard Butler.