One blue night, young Ellen walks to her open window, not so much sleepwalking as possessed. On the curtains fluttering in the breeze a massive but immaterial silhouette can be seen. In fact, no one is standing there. With this disturbing image, both simple and powerfully evocative, Robert Eggers sets the tone for his remake of Nosferatu. Infusing a lugubrious splendor into every shot, the director delivers his most bewitching film since The Witch (The witch).
The story is well known: while a young notary (Nicholas Hoult) dispatched by his firm to a distant castle tries to escape his vampire host (Bill Skarsgård), the latter undertakes to convince the wife (Lily- Rose Depp) of his unfortunate captive to join him in the eternity of the damned.
Released in 1922, the Nosferatu original is a cinematographic monument. Not only did FW Murnau set a milestone for German expressionism, but he also laid the foundations for horror cinema. Now, once is not customary, measuring yourself against this precise masterpiece is not sacrilegious.
On the one hand, Werner Herzog has already proven the validity of the approach by offering in 1979 a magnificent and distinct remake – of the original film. On the other hand, Nosferatu is, basically, an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, a novel that has inspired countless films.
In short, faced with the resurrection, so to speak, of this vampire, there is little reason to cry heresy.
Macabre paintings
If it intelligently combines the best of both Nosferatu precedents, Eggers, like Herzog before him, does not limit himself to reproducing what came before.
Thus, during the night sequences, with this photo direction all black and shades of blue, we come closer to the effect produced by the contrasting black and white of Murnau in the past. The macabre scenes that Eggers is so gifted at imagining are at their most gripping on these occasions.
In the scenes taking place during the day, the colors are washed out, bloodless. This was the case with Herzog’s version, which was characterized by formal deprivation exuding sepulchral poetry. Eggers seems to have been inspired by it, abandoning the one-upmanship of his previous The Northman (The man from the north): a happy choice which allows the few baroque impulses, for there are some, to resonate even more strongly.
Ultimately, the filmmaker transcends any notion of mimicry by infusing his gothic vision with an almost epic breath. Passages seen lots of times in the different Nosferatu et Draculalike the arrival of the ghost carriage, see their power of bewitchment renewed thanks to a staging combining intimacy and grand display.
Visually, this new Nosferatu is the most ambitious and undoubtedly the most accomplished film by the barely forty-year-old filmmaker. It must be said that the project had been in development for almost ten years: this means that Robert Eggers had plenty of time to visualize the production in its smallest details.
-Moreover, in an interview with Duty at the exit of The Witchwhich marked his remarkable debut behind the camera, Eggers had this eloquent confession: “When it comes to horror, I prefer that we leave it to the imagination. I don’t want to see Christopher Lee’s ankles as Dracula: his cape should blend with the darkness, like in a Rembrandt painting. »
Lily-Rose Depp désinhibée
Still on the subject of Eggers’ first film: the revised and improved Ellen of this Nosferatu-this has a lot in common with the Thomasin of The Witch. In both cases, we are talking about young women stuck in stifling environments, with narrow values, and who emancipate themselves by embracing the darkness. Interesting Fact: Ralph Ineson plays the Puritan patriarch in The Witchand the doctor mired in ordinary misogyny in Nosferatu.
Note that Eggers added this subtext, which he reinforces by transforming the vampire count’s supposed love for Ellen into a thirst for domination. He wants her to submit to him, as he clearly states by issuing a sinister ultimatum (the content of which leads to late delays). From then on, Ellen’s final decision comes down to self-determination: another new variant.
In the same vein, Eggers opens its Nosferatu not with Thomas, like Murnau, but with Ellen, like Herzog. Subsequently, Ellen is often the one who propels the action, where past iterations of the character were a bit like frightened puppets. Although, in the 1979 film, Isabelle Adjani’s haunted performance captivates.
Speaking of Adjani, it is obvious that his mind-blowing performance in the cult Possessionby Andrzej Żuławski, partly inspired the equally fascinating one by Lily-Rose Depp. Its inhabited, totally uninhibited composition strikes the imagination, like the film.
And this is how, in turn, Robert Eggers succeeds in frightening and seducing, with this Nosferatu purveyor of splendid nightmares to come.
The movie Nosferatu will be on display on December 25.
