In a place in the Carpathians, the name of which I do not want to remember, not long ago there lived one of those Counts with foul breath, a blood diet, and pet rats. Some called him Draculaand others, those who did not have the copyright to adapt the novel written by Bram Stoker, Orlok. Under this last name he starred in the first major film adaptation of the legend, a masterpiece of German expressionism titled Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922).
As no matter how many fields of garlic, crucifixes, holy water and stakes they throw at him, a vampire never dies, In 1979 Nosferatu came back to life by the hand of the unclassifiable Werner Herzogembodied by Klaus Kinski and seconded by an ethereal Isabelle Adjani…Although on that occasion the real stars were 11,000 white rats, painted gray for the occasion and because of which the inhabitants of the Dutch town of Delft almost lynched the director.
More than a century later of his first appearance, the director Robert Eggers has decided resurrect him for the third time. His passion for the character is one of those that crosses oceans of time: if we are to believe his confession, he discovered the film at the age of 9 (ahem). Eggers made his first recreation of the character at age 17, when he decided to take the film to the theater.
After all, according to the chronicles, that was the first adaptation of Draculaon May 18, 1897, eight days before the publication of the novel. Of those, Eggers played Count Orlok and was almost as enamored of him as his beloved Ellen Hutter's monster.
As his career developed under the mantle of A24 and he became, along with his colleague Ari Aster, the maximum representative of what they call “elevated terror”, the need to return to Orlok grew in him. In fact, he made a first attempt after his brilliant debut with The witch in 2015, but that ended in nothing. That was the year, by the way, in which Murnau's grave was desecrated and his skull stolen from the Berlin Stahnsdorf cemetery, which increased his macabre legend.
Rumors, gossip and gossip until, finally, in 2024, the Count returns to walk around the screens in the purulent body of Bill Skarsgårdcon Lily-Rose Depp playing his beloved Ellen Hutter and Nicholas Hoult to Thomas, her cuckold husband. It is the latter who is in charge before us of defending the need for the remake. “Robert has focused much more than the previous ones on the role of Ellen. The film is about her and not so much about the monster. And Lily is a great actress capable of transmitting honest emotions in a wonderful way.” As you will see, it is rare for Hoult to open his mouth and not say a compliment. He praises, for example, Lily's body work done after rehearsing for months with a butoh dance teacher. But let's go back to the Carpathians…
To life or death
In the film, Hoult has a pretty bad time: exploited by his boss, ridiculed by some gypsies, nibbled by a vampire and cheated on by his wife. But for the former child prodigy (and foster adoptee) of Hugh Grant in a big boy A whopping 22 years ago, the role comes at a very sweet time. Few can boast of twelve months like his, in which he has rolled with one of the most promising directors in Hollywood and with the oldest of the teacherssuch a Clint Eastwoodfor which he starred Jury #2.
Two generations, two completely different schools of work. “With Robert everything is depth and detail, from the settings to the clothes, through the camera movements and the constant repetitions of shots. With Clint, everything is very fluid. Both he and his team are great professionals who trust their equipment and in the intelligence of the public. A take is rarely repeated. Working with them has helped me understand that. In cinema there is no single formula for shooting filmsbeyond a good script, a good director and a team committed to telling a good story“.
The case of director Robert Eggers is very different. For him, Nosferatu It's all or nothing, after the many problems he had with his first level project. After the onanistic outrage of The lighthousecon The man of the north (2022) checked how cold it was outside A24. This time he got close to the warmth and the contacts of Chris Columbus (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone), to successfully carry out his ambitious projectfilmed in more than 60 scenarios. So many, that Eggers didn't realize that one of them was Pernštejn Castle itselfwhich was the Count's residence in Herzog's version. A circumstance that awakened Hoult to the backpacker he once was: “Filming in real Czech locations was very special, because when you surround yourself with that architecture to film a Gothic tale you have the impression that those buildings inspired the original legend.”
During these years, there was no shortage of moments in which it was speculated that Hoult would be the new Orlok, something that the actor does not deny and for which he does not protest, perhaps because he is aware of the shame from which he was saved: the six hours of makeup what Bill Skarsgård has had to endure to transform himself into the repulsive aristocrat. Dressed (but also naked as the devil brought him into the world) as a Romanian nobleman of the Middle Ages, he had to lose a few kilos and grow a tartar mustache.
Hoult shows his total admiration for his colleague, the most virile of the Nosferatu that has ever been seen on a screen: “One of the great attractions of the film is seeing how Bill transforms into the character. Not only because he creates a monster, but because he is also a human being who breathes and feels, and that is what is truly terrifying.” He inhales and exhales a lot… and very strongly, since Skarsgård worked with an opera teacher to lower the pitch of your voice an eighthuntil it becomes a low Bane/Hardy whisper in The dark knight.
Although he was spared the most physically demanding part, Hoult was affected by Eggers' other realistic excesses. Thus, for example, he had to deal with the wheelinseparable companions of Orlok's property wherever they go. According to Hoult, in one of the film's climactic scenes he is surrounded by even 5.000 –less than half according to Eggers–, but what they both agree on is that they all wag their tails. “We could have done it with a computer, but Robert wanted to do it with real animals. Obviously, the feeling for both the viewer and the actors is different.”
Less unpleasant, but more exhausting, has been the fact of roll on celluloid under the photography direction of Jarin Blaschke. “It has required us to be extremely precise in our movements in front of the camera, because it is not like a digital shoot, where it is not necessary to cut and you can continue recording as long as you want. Here, each take involves a light, a position…” .
Hoult is not Christopher Lee, the immortal Dracula of the Hammer production company, but he is not a newcomer to the vampire genre either. After all, it hasn't been that long since he had to deal with another bloodsucker: neither more nor less than the one played by the famous Nicolas Cage in Renfield (Chris McCay, 2023).
Here he shares a plan with another illustrious, Willem Dafoewho plays a created character for the occasion, the occult professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. Asked why it's scarier, sharing a shot with Cage or Dafoe, Hoult responds, of course, with new compliments: “It's very inspiring and fun to share a scene with Willem or Nic. I enjoy seeing how they prepare and execute their roles. There's also something intimidating about it, because these are people I've admired for a long time.
In the case of Willem, for example, as a child he saw again and again his transformation into the Green Goblin of Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002)”. Twenty-two years later, they work side by side (and stake in hand) to keep alive the horrifying and pestilent Nosferatu myth.
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