by Velvet Winter
The dark, clawed shadow of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror has stretched out over 100 years of vampiric storytelling.
While unofficially ripped from Bram Stoker's Dracula, F. W. Murnau's transfiguring film has coloured the way we think about those who drink blood to stay alive. As the first flick to feature a vampire dying by sunlight, Nosferatu has seeped into horror lore.
 |
| Max Schreck's 1920s Nosferatu is updated for 21st century tastes in Eggers's remake. (Getty) |
But after years of vampire superheroes, vampire villains and vampires that sparkle, director Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Witch) is making bloodsuckers scary again.
The original Nosferatu centres on Thomas Hutter, a gormless real estate agent sent to a Transylvanian castle to obtain the binding signature of the mysterious Count Orlok. Of course, the Count has little interest in property but has a lot of interest in the occupation of Thomas's soul — along with the soul of his wife Ellen, who is writhing with possession while under the care of their friends, the Hardings.
For Eggers, the classic tale has held his obsession since he was a child. His degraded 16-millimetre copy erased the bald cap lines and greasepaint on original actor Max Schreck's face, transfixing the young Eggers with the illusion that Orlok was real.
"I could have seen it 100 times. I've woken up in the middle of the night, can't go back to bed, and I'll just throw it on in the background," he tells ABC Entertainment
"There's a reason why people still talk about this movie. There were others before it but in many ways, he invented the horror film."
Renowned for his unique take on the darkest of stories, Eggers ripped Nosferatu into the present by shifting the perspective. Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) is no longer the centre of attention; instead Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is the object of Orlok's main obsession.
"In my version, it's [Ellen's] story from the very beginning. When you look at the Murnau film, you see that there was this demon-lover relationship that I got to explore much further," Eggers says.
 |
| "In many ways, my adaptation of Nosferatu is my most personal film," says director Robert Eggers. (Supplied: Universal) |
Unlike Murnau's Ellen, who only encounters the titular vampire in the film's third act, Eggers's film opens with Orlok visiting Ellen as a child, kicking off a nightmarish connection between the two. When Thomas visits Orlok's isolated castle, the intimidating lord catches a glimpse of Ellen in Thomas's locket, reigniting his obsession.
"They're together, he disappears, and then he returns to destroy her, but it is also a love triangle. She has this loving relationship with her husband, but it doesn't have the passion that she has with this demon," Eggers says.
A battle for body and soul
Orlok and Ellen's connection isn't just mental, it physically manifests within Ellen as explosive fits that cause her hands to curl and eyes to roll back in her head.
Stuck under the care of the well-meaning but traditional Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), her best friend's husband, Ellen's outbursts are dismissed as hysteria. A doctor advises them to tie her to the bed and tighten her corset (to keep her organs in place).
"I think that this is an internal battle for Ellen as much as an external one," Lily-Rose Depp tells ABC Entertainment.
"She's been struggling her whole life with trying to accept the darkness within and that there is much more to her than just the kind of well-behaved, perfect wife that everybody seems to want to see.
"I think that all of the characters are like a victim of the time period. [Thomas] thinks that going out and making some money and getting them a big house solved the problem."
It's not until Harding begrudgingly seeks out the advice of a disgraced doctor, Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), an entirely new character of Eggers's creation, that Ellen has a voice on her side.
It's his otherness from society that makes Von Franz such a good ally for Ellen, Depp says.
"He's the only person, because he is connected to that world, that's able to see her," she says.
"I think she's plagued with this shame and this feeling like she's bringing darkness all around her, and he gives her the opportunity to do something good with it, which I think is beautiful."
Surrounding abounds
Ellen isn't the only character benefiting from enrichment in Eggers's transformation. The Hardings — who are almost set-dressing in the original — represent the traditional life Ellen so craves.
Taylor-Johnson says he drew on lived experience to build out the new version of Friedrich Harding.
"They're a compassionate, traditional, thinking, loving family that just want to protect one another through this sort of sweeping plague that comes through," he told ABC Entertainment.
"I felt like these were characters that felt almost contemporary and relatable in a sense that we as a collective have all gone through a global pandemic."
As Orlok's grasp tightens on Ellen, her friends are first in the supernatural firing line. But ultra-traditionalist Friedrich refuses to accept it, bullishly insisting the plague they are experiencing is natural, even as the consequences of Ellen's possession become impossible to overlook.
"It's very black and white with him, which is why he ignores all of Ellen's symptoms," Taylor-Johnson says.
"It was a very misogynistic, male-centric way of thinking in that period in time. There's this perversion or sort of erotic thing that's happening in her, in all her sort of contortions when she's possessed.
"So the men in the room don't know how to look at her. They can't handle this very beautiful woman rolling around the floor; they think it's sinful."
Revealing Orlok
The original image of Nosferatu — all clawed hands and pointed ears — may have terrified audiences in the 20s, but horror fans have become more desensitised over the years.
Bill Skarsgård (It) undertook such extensive preparation to play Nosferatu, including working with an opera singer to lower his voice, that it became legendary among the cast.
"The first time we kind of got a glimpse of what Bill was building, was when we heard a recording of the voice that he was working on," says Nicholas Hoult, who plays Thomas Hutter.
"It filled the room. Even though I was on a phone speaker, there was something that really got inside of your bones about that voice."
Hoult says Skarsgård's triumphant performance goes beyond the prosthetics.
"I think that's what's exciting, he doesn't feel like a monster. This was a Hungarian nobleman who has died, but he has human elements to him. So it feels more chilling and scary because of that."
While Eggers says he respects all the versions of vampires that have come since the original, the fear factor was at the front of his mind for Orlok.
"I think the versatility of vampires is awesome, but if I was going to do this new version of it, it needed to be scary," he says.
"In order for a vampire to be scary again, we needed to go back to the source, we needed [Orlok] to be a corpse, we needed him to be demonic and not sparkling."
Nosferatu will hit Australian cinemas on January 1.
First published at ABC News, December 21, 2024
No comments:
Post a Comment