Script Analysis: “The Lighthouse” — Part 3: Characters

Read and analyze the script for the hallucinatory horror movie.

Reading scripts. Absolutely critical to learn the craft of screenwriting. The focus of this bi-weekly series is a deep structural and thematic analysis of each script we read. Our daily schedule:

Monday: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
Tuesday: Plot
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Dialogue
Saturday: Takeaways

Today: Characters.

Characters are the players in our stories. They participate in scenes, move the plot forward through action and dialogue, influence each other, evolve and change. Each has their own distinct backstory, personality, world view, and voice. When a writer does their best, digging deep into their characters, tapping into their souls, the players in our stories magically lift up off the printed page and come to life in a reader’s imagination.

But there’s this: In a screenplay, characters exist for a reason. Hence my principle: Character = Function. Writers can shade and shape a story’s character in limitless ways. But if you dig down deep enough, you can find each character’s narrative function, and that can become a lens through which you develop the players in your stories.

Same thing with script and movie analysis: Look at each character and think about why they exist and what their function is.

Today we discuss the characters in the script for Parasite. You can download the script here.

A list of the key players:

Young (Thomas Howard)

Old (Thomas Wake)

Mermaid

Ephraim Winslow

Not a lot of characters, so an intriguing prospect to think about the respective functions Young and Old play over the course of the story: Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster.

Written by Robert Eggers and Max Eggers.

Plot summary: Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity whilst living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.

Writing Exercise: Think about each character. What’s their function?

Major kudos to Halil Akgündüz for doing this week’s scene-by-scene breakdown.

To download a PDF of the breakdown for The Lighthouse, click here.

For Part 1, to read the Scene-By-Scene Breakdown discussion, go here.

For Part 2, to read the Plot discussion, go here.

To access over 70 analyses of previous movie scripts we have read and discussed at Go Into The Story, go here.

I hope to see you in the RESPONSE section about this week’s script: The Lighthouse.