Nosferatu

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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“Nosferatu” (1922) by F.W. Murnau lies deep within the consciousness of German cinema. First headlined on the screen by actor Max Schreck, the silent film had a kind of exclusive creepy power in its ability to show something that is human yet not human, almost in the manner of a puppet. The European town itself, while plagued by the vampire, existed as something Cubist, a village designed by Georges Braque and kissed by Halloween. The film was chockfull of imagery and delivered great daring in showing a being who was half rat and half man with piercing eyes.

Then in 1980, Werner Herzog crafted his own version of the film with Klaus Kinski as Count Orlock. Herzog gave his film great poetry and melancholy in showing a village overrun by thousands of rats while simultaneously highlighting the beauty of the Eastern European landscape: rich verdant greens against a slate gray sky. There existed a poignant haunt in Kinski’s vampire. He was doomed to plague mortal affairs, but he also pined for love. The ghost of want swam in his eyes. Kinski brought the pain of the persecuted to his role, a sadness of the shunned Other. Roger Ebert said that there was genuine solemnity in Herzog’s film and compared it to music, immersive and beautiful.

Now here in 2024, Robert Eggers (“The Witch”) tries his pale hand with his version. The film has an inky Gothic saturated intensity right out of an illustrated Gothic novel.

Ellen (Lilly-Rose Depp) is plagued by visions. Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is solicited by an eccentric Count to buy a property: the older the better. Hutter seems to be under a strange sleep spell as a forbidding carriage is sent for him with no one within.

Meanwhile Ellen becomes more and more entranced and possessed at one point taking on the very scary shape and guttural growl of Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” complete with retching, levitation and a twisted back. Evil is quite literally within a long pinkie’s grasp. Professor von Franz is summoned to heal Ellen of her supposed epilepsy. Von Franz specializes in the occult (but of course).

The one reservation in the film is the usual occurrence of loud bangs during the scary sequences. The power of Orlock and “Nosferatu” is in the eerie fragility of the vampire himself and his solitude. Played by Bill Skarsgård, Orlock is striking, visually searing and tall with a voluptuous circus mustache, but his Count is an Authoritarian King, not the sickly poet from a far away vulturous land. His voice is a dragon smoked rumble, not a plaintive Kafkaesque wisp. This is a rat of Might makes Right. Nothing will stand in his way. Because of this, some of the visual poetry is anemic.

Lily-Rose Depp gives a heartfelt and visceral performance as an Ellen undressed and under duress, but I am not sure the Exorcistic contortions and cues are necessary, obviously satisfying the possessed minded among us. Still, Rose-Depp’s performance is energized and piercing.

The hand and claw shadows that periodically punctuate several segments are exquisite and Murnau fans will chortle and cheer in the fine shadowy tribute.

While the climax feels like a ghoulish repast crafted by David Cronenberg rather than Murnau or Herzog, the last shot of a skeletal Orlock intertwined within an anemic Ellen as a peaceful Juliet resembles the late Renaissance painting “Young Woman with A Skull” by Alesandro Casaloni. There is sadness and loss present: the vampire’s ultimate fate.

This Orlock is more hyperlink Sturm und Drang than the rhythm of Wagner and pale poetics, but each Orlock carries its own era like a coffin along with him and Bill Skarsgård’s Tibetan Terror growl from nowhere, perfectly fits our anxious age of the digital demon, the noise within the namelessness of Artificial Intelligence.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com