While Robert Eggers’s ‘Nosferatu’ Is Visually Stunning, the Film Is Burdened by Its Director’s Hubris

Art historians, particularly those who specialize in Western art, are recommended to spend their hard-earned dollars on the least merry of Christmas entertainments, Robert Eggers’s “Nosferatu.” Should these scholars happen to carry flasks of spirits into their local cinemas, they are advised to resist playing a drinking game whenever Mr. Eggers explicitly quotes the work of this-or-that painter. Inebriation, fast and thorough, will result. Working with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and production designer Craig Lathrop, Mr. Eggers recreates the distinctive light and compositional structures of any number of artists, largely those hailing from the northern climes of Europe. The keening light, fabulous costumes, and picturesque period trappings are, like, wow: Mr. Eggers and his crew have crafted a film of exacting visual splendor.The crystalline quietude of Johannes Vermeer is evoked, as is the grandiosity of Caspar David Friedrich. The sfumato typifying “Nosferatu” is more Dutch than Italian — the influence of Rembrandt can be gleaned here; given Mr. Eggers’s interest in the fantastic, so, too, can the nightmarish images of Henry Fuseli and Arnold Böcklin.Elegance also typifies “Nosferatu.” If our heroine Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) hasn’t been modeled on any number of the aristocratic women limned by the great French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, I’ll eat my red silk chapeau.The picture is, of course, based on F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” (1922) and, to a lesser extent, Werner Herzog’s version of the story, “Nosferatu the Vampyre” (1979). The Murnau film has been subject to a number of theoretical interpretations, the most sweeping of which might be “a primal fear—that of foreign contagion,” as posited by a film critic, J. Hoberman. Mr. Herzog, in contrast, saw his film as a commentary on “bourgeois trappings.” Of course he did.Nicholas Hoult in ‘Nosferatu.’ Via Focus FeaturesIn E. Elias Merhig’s fictionalized account of the making of “Nosferatu,” “Shadow of the Vampire” (2000), the emphasis was on the extremes to which an artist will go to realize his vision. So, what is Mr. Eggers up to? “As recently as twenty years ago, in Southern Romania,” he writes, “a man believed to be a vampire was exhumed, and his corpse ritually mutilated.” Mortality alone was not enough to quell the dire influence this individual had on his family. Our director is left to wonder: “what is the dark trauma that even death cannot erase?”Murnau’s “Nosferatu” is an inescapable cinematic monument that was almost lost to circumstance or, rather, copyright law. Murnau and screenwriter Henrik Galeen thought they had made enough changes to the basic story of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” to avoid charges of plagiarism, but were proved wrong after a German court sided with the author’s widow. It was decreed that all copies of the picture should be destroyed. Most of them were — except for random copies located in London and New York City. Happenstance benefits posterity.“Nosferatu” is a touchstone whose eminence postdates its demise — much like the film’s vampiric character, Count Orlok. The hold Murnau’s picture has on popular culture isn’t only attributable to its slim purchase on history, but on aesthetic worth: “Nosferatu” holds up less as a “symphony of horrors” than as a poetic fever dream. Unlike the many Dracula movies that have come since, “Nosferatu” hasn’t altogether been tamed by the passing of time. It has become all the more unsettling and otherworldly.As for Mr. Eggers’s movie: Does his re-telling of the tale justify its buzz? The precedents set by Murnau and Mr. Herzog are confirmed in how the myth of the vampire has been thoroughly denuded of romance: There’s none of the silky charm proffered by Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or Frank Langella. Count Orlok (a significantly camouflaged Bill Skarsgård) is a beast, pure-and-simple. As such, he’s prone to gratifying a taste for blood in the most egregious manner possible. Among the heroes of this “Nosferatu” is the supervising sound editor, Damian Volpe: Never before have we heard a vampire sup like we do here.The sound design is more graphic than the visuals. Count Orlok is swathed in so much darkness we never get a true gander at him. Cultivating mystery is the point, I know, but, in the end, there’s less mystery in divining Mr. Egger’s rationale for remaking a masterwork. He did it because he could.This “Nosferatu” has been burdened by nothing so much as its director’s hubris. The original story has been tweaked with more gore, more sex, and more more. What survives is an exhausting display of technical know-how at the expense of artistic necessity. Mr. Eggers has made a stylish popcorn movie that only the most liberal application of butter and salt can make appetizing.

While Robert Eggers’s ‘Nosferatu’ Is Visually Stunning, the Film Is Burdened by Its Director’s Hubris

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