Nosferatu—Masterclass in Balancing Romance And Terror.
Robert Eggers shows us the power of cinema, not just as an interpretive tool but also as a cultural inhibitor in a movie starring Lily Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgard.
I've never watched a more gripping horror film with a plain, simplistic script like Nosferatu. The story itself is a remake of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) which itself is based on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897).
Eggers makes you lose sight of the simplicity of the story by taking a deep dive into the anatomy of the main characters. It is the month of Valentine, but Nosferatu which came out last December is still very fresh in my mind.
The unsettling Gothic horror story follows the life of newly married Ellen and Thomas Hutter. In 1838, Thomas Hutter (played by Nicholas Hoult) shortly after their wedding, and in his attempt to provide for his lovely wife Ellen (played by Lily Rose Depp) takes a job at a brokerage firm run by Herr Knock (Simon McBurney). He is sent on a lucrative mission to Transylvania to meet Count Orlok who's purchasing a decrepit Manor in Wisborg where the couple lives.
Unknown to Thomas, the whole transaction and trip is a trap to get him away from Ellen, his lovely wife so Count Orlok can take possession of her, literally. The premise is simple, the objective, easy. At least for the powerful, demonic Orlok. But like every romance story has come to understand, love always finds a way. Thomas breaks out of his prison in the Count’s dark castle and makes his way back to town to save his love, with much discomfort to himself.
Unlike most romance stories, our lover boy ends up losing his wife, literally. Orlok or Dracula drifts in on a boat, plaguing his way into Wisborg, his emissaries of rats taking over the streets and homes.
Nosferatu balances the elements of love and foreboding excellently. On this side of the scale is Thomas and Ellen's vestal love, and the one like it between Friedrich Harding and Anna. Weighted on the other side of the scale is the ribald, peccant romance between Ellen and Orlok, a rather repulsive one that ends in their desolation on her matrimonial bed.
One thing that happens as you watch this spectacular horror is that you don't even think about the implications of Ellen's dismal lack of judgement which led to the debacle that cost her life. Long before Ellen met Thomas, fell in love and married him, she was already betrothed to Orlok. The background for this grave decision is too sparse to either discount or consider valuable. Eggers made sure to shroud her absurd decision from long ago with a swashbuckling, spirited characterisation. And Lily Rose Depp delivered with a spectacular performance to the point where you identified with Ellen's pain, her bodacious yet muted sexuality, and her eventual sacrifice.
But just when you thought the film Nosferatu is about the torturous love between Thomas and Ellen, the story presents the troubling fortitude of Friedrich and Anna Harding. We see how this couple's marriage slowly feeds off Ellen's maladies, soaking up her plague until Anna Harding becomes bedridden—like Ellen did—and perishes, along with her children.
I love how Nosferatu has its hands around your neck, choking in loving yet hateful increments but you don't realize it until the inexorable end when Orlok goes bad like milk, expiring as dawn creeps through the open windows. Dawn announces Orlok’s death, but declares Ellen's liberation. Everything comes together in the end, very beautifully. A masterful stroke of genius in bringing ordinary day to day things together to wow your audience.
Rats have never appeared on screen with so much spectre. And a boat voyage with foreboding, and a travel through gypsy landscape with dreamy, faceless terror. Every scene is a lesson in quiet macabre. The only gore was in Orlok's obscene, gargling voice and the atrophied, decadence of his prosthetics. If I meet Eggers, I would ask if the bad costume was a deliberate judgement—was he trying to see if viewers cared about authenticity? Was it a test to see what our priorities are: authenticity or story?
In Nollywood, we sometimes sacrifice story for authenticity, as if the two elements were interchangeable. They aren't. In Seven Doors, for example, Femi Adebayo sacrificed some of the character depth for style and drama. This is of course one of the things Nigerian directors struggle with—balancing the different elements in movies.
One way Robert Eggers managed it well in Nosferatu is—in my assessment—by deciding exactly what he wanted to accomplish with the remake. Raised by a Shakespeare professor, he says he's “always been interested in the darker side of things.”
He wanted to create a feminist, macabre romance that was both erotic and haunting. And haunted we were. However, Eggers may have missed the erotic side of his mission, and it is just as well as this may have been pruned at post-production. Nosferatu isn't such an erotic outing at all. In fact, in my first watch, I missed the eroticism entirely in the opening scene when Ellen gets her first ministration of demon copulation.
The deflection from outright eroticism can partly be blamed on Bill Skarsgard’s portrayal of Dracula/Orlok. Skarsgard embodied the role so well, but with a hint of silly frivolity in his accent and deep breathing. Yes, I almost laughed at that portrayal. But it was why I personally didn't stop watching with annoyance when Thomas Hutter became a prisoner in Orlok's castle while the demon gunned for Ellen's bed.
In the final analysis, Nosferatu is a fun watch for the general public, and a masterclass in directing for film makers in Nollywood. It's the week of Valentine and couples can still gross themselves out by watching it. Perhaps ladies and gentlemen can learn a thing or two about sacrificial fervor.
Do have a wonderful love story this month.