There are some films where the history of the movie can be as interesting as the film itself; and 1922's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is definitely one of these. A silent German Expressionist movie that was an unofficial adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, the film was almost lost to time when the Stoker estate used copyright law to have all copies of the movie rounded up and burnt. Luckily, a few scattered versions remained, and it passed on into film history as one of the most influential vampire films of all time. The idea that sunlight can kill vampires came from the original film, it shaped vampire myth that much! Over the years it has been remade, but it has always remained something of an oddity, a monster movie with an almost comical creature in the middle of it, and somewhat weighed down by it's dubious connection to the more famous Dracula. However, director Robert Eggers has managed to elevate Nosferatu, creating one of the more ambitious, and beautifully crafted vampire films ever made; and has elevated Count Orlok into a figure of fear.
Following the plot of the original, Nosferatu centres on Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), a young woman who's been haunted by nightmarish visions and dark dreams her entire life; the opening scene of the film takes us into one of these dreams, and sets the tone for everything that comes after. Her newlywed husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), eager to find a way to better support his new wife and provide for her, takes on a long assignment from his boss, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), which will require him to travel to Transylvania, where he will finalise the selling of an old manor. Leaving Ellen with family friends Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin), Thomas sets out for a weeks long journey.
Finally arriving in Transylvania, he's met with fearful locals, tales of the supernatural, and urgings to not travel to the castle where he's to meet his client. As Thomas approaches the castle his mind enters an almost delirious state, with things taking on a more nightmarish and dreamlike quality. Before he knows it, he's inside the ancient castle, face to face with the terrifying Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). Thomas soon realises that there's something truly evil about the Count, and is forced to fight for his life against the monster. Back home, Ellen's mind begins to deteriorate as her past mental health issues and depression returns. She becomes convinced that there's some dark force that's coming to her, one that spells doom for everyone.
From the opening scene it's clear that Nosferatu is a film that's going to be an audio and visual treat. Opening to creepy, off-kilter music box notes and a dream sequence devoid of colour, a deep bluish grey taking over every frame, this is a movie filled with style. Yet thankfully it's not one that forgets that you need more than style to carry a movie. Every scene is carefully thought out, either being used to further build the characters, or moving the story forward in some important way. It's a film that feels like it's being very tight with what it puts on screen, giving you exactly what you need to feel invested in the narrative and those involved, and by the time the credits roll you'll be wondering how more than two hours could have passed in what felt like such a short time.
Eggers has been praised for the way that he presents his movies since he exploded onto the scene with The Witch, a film that captured the era it was set in more than most others; to the point where I remember seeing negative comments and reviews for the more period accurate language that was used in the movie. The Lighthouse was a film filled with visual flair, with it's black and white footage and use of heavy shadows and carefully thought out lighting, a lot of people who'd not seen the movie could identify it from an image because it became so well known for how it looked. Nosferatu feels like a great marriage of the two, crafting a wonderfully detailed and believable period setting that feels genuine but also manages to feel otherworldly thanks to the cinematography.
I want to take a moment to talk a little about the look of the film before delving into the other aspects. One of the chief things I took away from Nosferatu when I came out of the cinema, a point that I made to the people I was there with, was that the film makes you grateful for the invention of the lightbulb. The film has three types of scenes, those shot during the day, scenes set in darkness that feel desaturated and almost devoid of colour, and night scenes where the use of candles, lanterns, and other sources of fire creates a thick, almost oppressive orange haze. There are a lot of films and television shows that seem to either take a stylised approach to night scenes, or have become so dark in a bid to be 'realistic' that you can hardly make out anything ('The Long Night' episode of Game of Thrones being almost universally criticised for this).
Nosferatu feels like it's own animal. Things feel realistic in the sense that it hammer home how oppressive the nights were back then, and how firelight was an awful way of seeing things. Yet the film also feels incredibly stylised, and Eggers seems to know how to use light and darkness to produce some of the best night scenes in a horror film I've ever seen. The darkness itself feels like a character in the movie, one that is able to shape the moments we're seeing, skewing our perception of them, and depending on how it's presented, whether that be cold and devoid of colour or bathed in a soft glow, lets the audience know whether we're safe or not (for the most part at least).
Eggers doesn't just play with the darkness, however, but also messes with the viewers perception of scenes thanks to some beautifully twisted transitions and cuts that give the film a dark nightmarish quality. For the most part Nosferatu is presented as a fairly normal film, one with a chain of events that makes sense and you're able to follow. With the introduction of Orlok, though, things begin to break down. It's when on the road to Orlok's castle, in a beautifully composed night scene that shows Thomas on a dark, moonlit road with snow gently fluttering down upon him, that the film goes into the surreal; in some ways taking some lessons from the German Expressionist movement that gave birth to the original.
Logic begins to break down, a carriage that's about to run him down is suddenly still, awaiting his entry, facing a direction it couldn't have been. As the carriage approaches the castle the camera moves into the blackness of Thomas' coat before moving upwards to emerge from the shadows of the castle itself, giving us a birds-eye view of it. Inside the castle, Thomas shifts around the room, moving from one chair to another thanks to a camera move that seems to take him by surprise as much as it does the audience. There are times where the film doesn't quite make narrative sense, where logic falls by the wayside, and it's like living inside a dream. I have to commend Eggers for these moments, as they make the film one of the more distinct, creative movies of modern mainstream cinema.
The film isn't just stylish visuals though, as the film cannot rely on flair alone to win over audiences. The film's central cast are outstanding, and deliver some superb performances. Lily-Rose Depp is incredibly impressive, bringing a well of emotional range and physical acting to the role that marks her out as someone worthy of keeping note of. This is my first film with her in it, and so for me she was a completely unknown factor, and her role is such a vitally important one that it would make or break the movie. As it is, Depp is shockingly good, bringing something new to each scene she's in. Depp plays Ellen as a very sad character for much of the film, depressed that her husband has to leave her, a depression that only grows thanks to her nightmares and hallucinations. There are moments in the film where you're never quite sure what Ellen is going to do next, and some of her sudden turns from deeply sad to shaking with cold rage come so suddenly that it's shocking to take in. This, coupled with the way she plays the physical side of Ellen's ailment, intense shaking, twisting limbs, and rolling eyes, makes her almost as hard to look at as Orlok at times.
Nosferatu relies heavily on Ellen being performed well as, unlike the book that the story draws inspiration from, the female lead isn't just something for the men to covet. Yes, several of the men in the movie want to protect her, and she's the thing that the villain desires, but here Ellen is someone who is more of the hero. If you're familiar with the original you know that Ellen plays an incredibly important role in defeating Orlok (I won't say how), and that without her it's likely the villain would remain undefeated. Because of this, the film becomes something of a feminist story, with a central female figure who is largely ignored by the men around her, her warnings of a coming evil chalked up to hysteria, who's tied down and drugged rather than helped, but who ultimately is able to save the day when she's finally listened to and allowed agency. Compared to her Stoker counterpart it's shocking how much more this film gives its female lead.
Nicholas Hoult might not be given the hero role of the film, but is absolutely a character that the audience spends much of the film with, and through who we're introduced to a lot of the horror. His already mentioned journey to Orlok's castle gives Hoult a huge amount to play with, from a young man eager to make more of himself, to a man tired and worn down by his long journey, to someone living though a nightmare within Orlok's castle. As soon as Thomas enters the castle Hoult's entire demeanour changes, and he shows genuine terror in many of these moments. Hoult is barely holding himself together in some of these moments, tears running down his face, his body shaking. With a lot of horror films putting the female cast in the role of the most frightened, it's wonderful to see a film showing that anyone would be terrified in these situations. Thomas is often more frightened than Ellen in the movie, and it just makes his decision to stand against Orlok even more triumphant. He's a man who was very nearly broken completely, but now he's choosing to face those horrors again in order to save those he loves. It's a wonderful performance, and it's easy to see why Hoult is one of those actors that often gets brought up as an underrated gem.
Filling out the rest of the main cast is Ralph Ineson as Doctor Sievers, a physician who comes to help Ellen with her declining health, and Willem Dafoe as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, a former teacher of Sievers who has become disgraced over the years thanks to his study of the occult. Alongside Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Emma Corrin, this group become a focus for much of the film, as Thomas recovers from his ordeal at the castle, and Ellen remains unwell and tied to the bed. They become the 'normal' part of the film, a group trying to get to the bottom of Ellen's illness as best they can. It's the introduction of Dafoe's character that begins to steer them towards the supernatural, a journey that takes much of the film for them as they write it off as superstitious nonsense.
Ineson shines as the respectable doctor type, though thanks to the medical practices of the time comes across as sexist and backwards, yet the film makes it clear that's historical thinking and not necessarily a failing on his part as he tries to be a good man where he can. Johnson and Corrin get some decent scenes, but often their characters are playing catch-up to the others, expressing their incredulity at the events happening around them, and being a little slow at realising the horrors they're experiencing. Dafoe is a surprisingly quiet presence in the film. Dafoe is one of those actors who you're never sure what kind of performance he's going to give, one who can do quiet and calm, but who is also well known for being a bit over-the-top. It would have been easy to have his Van Helsing stand in go this direction, to be the man raving about the supernatural, but instead he tackles the role more as a man tired and worn down by the world.
The stand out, however, is Skarsgård as Orlok. Orlok's presence has been kept to a minimum in the build up to the film, with little more than a shadowy presence in the trailers and barely distinguishable shapes on posters. This has been one of the biggest strengths of the film for me, and going into the movie I was excited to see what he'd be like. The first few scenes he's in you don't even get a good look at him, yet he manages to become an instantly terrifying figure thanks to the sheer presence he has. Even when out of focus in the background, or draped in shadows, he looms over every moment, and your eyes are instantly drawn to him. The voice that Skarsgård employs for the count is booming, guttural, and plays into the sound design wonderfully. Even as the film continues and you see more of him you never really get a clear look at him, and it's just the actors physicality, the way he moves, the way he holds himself, and the way he talks, that brings Orlok to life like never before.
The original Count Orlok has become something of a joke over the last century, with the wizened, diseased vampire with the rat-like teeth having become used as a gag in various media; but Skarsgård makes Orlok into one of the most frightening vampires that I've seen be put to film. This is an Orlok who makes your skin crawl, you plays with your mind, and who you feel would tear you apart before you could even raise your arms in defence. This performance coupled with his version of Pennywise makes Skarsgård one of the best monster actors we have, and may ever have had. I knew that this was him, but I couldn't see or hear him at all, he'd transformed himself so much here that it wasn't an actor playing Orlok, it was just Orlok to me. And because of that I'm going to find it hard to see another vampire top this.
Nosferatu is a beautiful, disturbing, terrifying movie. It's a film that has taken a story and character that people have largely looked down upon over the years and made it so surprisingly good that I may have to name this movie as my favourite adaptation of Dracula now. With the huge attention to detail and the clear thought that has been put into the framing of every shot this is a film that you can point to as more than just entertainment and clearly say 'this is what we mean when we say movies are art'. Eggers has an eye for both the beautiful and haunting, and brings that to play in equal measures here, creating a film that will worm its way under your skin and wow you at the same time. It's not perfect, as I don't think any film can be, and there are some things that I'd have liked to have seen the film focus more on or to have given us more of, but it's one of the most stunning films I've had the pleasure to see on the big screen.
No comments:
Post a Comment