3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Nosferatu

2024, Robert Eggers (The Northman) -- download

We've seen all Eggers features but for The Northman. Yes, I know, it's not that many but I can safely say we like all the work we've seen, and its nice to see someone doing distinctive work, stylish work that appeals to me. If you have seen our Halloween posting, you will know we are fans of vampires, and therefore have seen both predecessors (the original we saw with live musicians, including throat singers -- it was quite the experience) but to be honest, nothing sticks out to me, but for it being a homage rip-off of Dracula (there is history as to that) and the more horrible, more vourdalak-like, more monstrous depiction of a vampire. Of course, this image became a template to many depictions after.

The plot, the Dracula plot structure, wherein Thomas Hutter (Keanu Reeves Nicholas Hoult, Warm Bodies), a real estate agent / lawyer is sent to an ancient castle in Transylvania to secure signatures from Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, The Crow), a reclusive nobleman seeking a house in the city, is intact --- the names and places have changed from the Stoker novel but the story hasn't. And his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp, Wolf), the goth-ish waif who suffers a connection to an unseen evil and becomes distraught at her husband's failure to quickly return. While he is away she stays with friends Friederick (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nocturnal Animals) and Anna Harding (Emma Corrin, A Murder at the End of the World), who become increasingly disturbed by her emotional outbursts and "fits". 

The arrival of Hutter at the ruined castle in Transylvania is almost a series of vignettes, beautiful gothic imagery, scene cuts and almost always black & white, a nod to the shadows that made the original silent film so stark. In fact so much of the movie fades from colour, except when bright sunlight or fire come into play -- only they let in the colour. And then there is Orlok himself, strangely enough, no a lithe sexual being as one would expect from 21st century vampires, despite my opening about the monstrous nature of "nosferatu", but with Bill Skarsgård playing the role, I expected his emaciated figure to play some sort of sexual role. But no, this is even more monstrous than the pointy ears and bald pate -- he is almost a giant, shrouded in mouldering garb, his Vlad Tepes moustache still somehow intact, his skin taught and corpse-like, sores and grave rot. He taunts and draws blood from Hutter until the man escapes, barely, awakening in a monastery whose monks explain the plot to him. A meagerly alive Hutter hurriedly returns to Wisburg to save his wife, and maybe the city.

Meanwhile Orlok has secured his passage, killed all the crew (as per The Last Voyage of the Demeter) and brought a plague to the German city. Ellen gets worse, which is made terribly so much more tragic by Orlok visiting the children and wife of the Hardings. A barely alive Hutter returns armed with knowledge that he must save his wife and the city, and seeks out a disgraced Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), a man known for his knowledge of the darkness.

I never understood the true need for land ownership and real estate deals in these movies. At least in the original text, Dracula comes as a nobleman, sets up and lives a bit of nightlife in London. But here, it is but a walking corpse, hiding his depredations amidst the plague he brings with him. All he ends up doing is providing his address to his hunters.

The visuals are stunning -- the set dressing, the costuming, the winding narrow streets of the German city, and, of course, the shadows. But what dominates the movie in my memory is the tale between Ellen and Orlok. They are drawn together, seemingly since her childhood, and despite the horrific nature she is well aware of, it is sexual. Despite Orlok's very deathly appearance, it is sexual. A very disturbing aspect of sexuality, of desire and ownership at any cost. In the end, neither can deny what has drawn them together, and only in death can it be truly.... consummated. I was not titillated by Ellen's waifish sexuality, quite clearly the obvious, made uncomfortable by the unnatural act. This movie has succeeded in replacing the 21st century's desire to make all vampire stories about (sparkly?) desire by not only embracing the monstrous nature of the strigoi, but also tainting the act of seduction. The final image of a naked, now very dead, rotting Orlok laying upon Ellen was terribly unsettling.

I do wish I had seen this in the cinema, like Kent.