Robert Eggers’ fourth film, “Nosferatu,” released in theatres Christmas Day of last year, and it was an immediate hit.
Based on the 1922 silent film by the same name, “Nosferatu” follows a real estate agent lured to the mysterious Count Orlok’s estate in Transylvania.
The real estate deal for the count’s second home in Germany is a guise for him to prey on the agent’s wife, and he brings a plague upon Germany.
The director was sued for its similar narrative to the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker, and many copies were destroyed. From the few that were saved, Werner Herzog recreated the film in 1978.
Eggers’ take on this film is inventive and original. Everyone should watch this movie.
With stunning visuals and intense scenes, Eggers breathes life into a film about the undead. This is the first time in a long time I have been able to see what is happening at nighttime in a movie, and what I can’t see is bone chilling.
Risky interpretations of fear mixed with desire come from actors Nicholas Hoult and Aaron Taylor Johnson, and they deliver. Both actors expertly mix their characters’ sense of fear of the unknown with desire for the unknown.
I think this wouldn’t be a proper recount of “Nosferatu” without talking about Lily-Rose Depp’s incredible performance as the leading lady.
Facing mental anguish about men controlling her life at every step of the way, Depp’s character Ellen desperately grasps for someone to listen to her. Not only does Count Orlok control her, but her husband and family friends claim to know what’s best. Depp draws from the experience of women lacking bodily autonomy to create a beautifully layered performance.
The only man who sees her for who she is is Willem Defoe’s character, Professor Albin Everhart Von Franz. Seen as a hack by other characters, Franz and Ellen bond over their lives as outsiders.
In the final scenes of the film, Franz is the one to finally allow Ellen the space to exercise her autonomy and decide her fate. It is beautiful and grotesque.
“Nosferatu” relies on the audience’s preconceived notions of the beautiful and the grotesque to surprise them, leaving them wondering about the romanticization of darkness.
Darkness functions as its own character in the film, haunting everyone more than Count Orlok himself. Cloaked in it, Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok becomes a metaphor for every repressed desire we don’t want to feel.
And Eggers’ “Nosferatu” asks: what if we gave into our desires?