B+Directed by Robert Eggers Starring Lily Rose-Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Willem Dafoe Review by Jon Kissel |  |
Whatever the opposite of presentism is, that’s how Robert Eggers makes his films. It’s a perfectly fine choice to apply the standards of today to whatever time period a film is taking place in, but it’s not for Eggers. He instead immerses himself in the norms and cosmology of his setting, with the present as some far-off place that has no bearing on the onscreen proceedings. This is irresistible for history-inclined viewers like myself, and Eggers reconstructs his direct pipeline into my brain with Nosferatu. A remake of the 1920’s classic, itself adapted from Bram Stoker, the film is drowning in period detail, era-appropriate lighting, and the ironclad beliefs of 19th century Germans. It’s their perspective which Eggers molds the film around, and that perspective is terrified of the occult, the mysterious east, and female sexuality.
Nosferatu opens with the film’s original sin, where a young Ellen (Lily Rose-Depp) asks the universe for a solution to her horniness. What hears her prayer is Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard), a Romanian vampire who spends many years contriving a real estate scheme that will legally bind Ellen to him. Ellen’s husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) is in the way, and Orlok enlists a go-between company to hire Thomas and send him to Romania, so they can get all the paperwork out of the way. If this seems like an overly complicated plan for a being that can hypnotize anyone and appear out of nowhere, the effect of watching Eggers unspool these legalistic details is total buy-in. Of course an ancient boyar would insist on doing things the right way, just like it’s obvious a German bureaucrat would sign on the dotted line. All this propriety is a cover for what Orlok, and many of the male characters, are secretly obsessed with i.e. sex. None of them can imagine that women might also be horny, particularly outside of marriage, and in their worst nightmares, female lust brings devils onto their entire civilization. The cure is Eggers’ favorite actor, Willem Dafoe, playing a cast-out occultist professor who rightly senses that this is his time to shine. It’s Dafoe’s Professor von Franz that subs in for The Witch’s Puritans or The Northman’s pagans, where his worldview is the one that Eggers has chosen to embody, and it’s depressing how society still hasn’t been immunized by a confident man spouting obvious nonsense.
Dafoe is, of course, magnetic and great fun, as is much of the cast, especially Simon McBurney as Orlok’s flunky who’s in all the film’s best scenes. Depp isn’t as adept with the period dialogue as the excellent Hoult, but when the film calls for her to go into full body contortions of Orlok-fueled delirium, she delivers. Alas, this is the first Eggers film where not all the actors are up to the task, namely an adjacent family that are relevant to the film’s themes and plot but give off the feeling of playing dress-up instead of the immersion that Eggers is known for. Their presence isn’t so off-putting that Nosferatu breaks under that brief discomfort. This isn’t my favorite of Eggers’ films, but it’s another memorable and effective entry that could only have come from him. B+
Dafoe is, of course, magnetic and great fun, as is much of the cast, especially Simon McBurney as Orlok’s flunky who’s in all the film’s best scenes. Depp isn’t as adept with the period dialogue as the excellent Hoult, but when the film calls for her to go into full body contortions of Orlok-fueled delirium, she delivers. Alas, this is the first Eggers film where not all the actors are up to the task, namely an adjacent family that are relevant to the film’s themes and plot but give off the feeling of playing dress-up instead of the immersion that Eggers is known for. Their presence isn’t so off-putting that Nosferatu breaks under that brief discomfort. This isn’t my favorite of Eggers’ films, but it’s another memorable and effective entry that could only have come from him. B+
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