Among the many (obvious) joys of Robert Egger’s new
NOSFERATU (2024) is a reaffirmation of the timelessness and malleability of the
core Dracula story. Each of the three film versions to bear this title tell
essentially the same tale but emphasize very different things. And while each has
grown organically out of the times in which they were produced they seem to
reflect the specific creative ideas burning within their directors. The 1922
classic is a brilliant exploration of then new cinematic ways of employing
German Expressionism to visualize horrific images that had never been attempted
onscreen before. This was the cutting edge of stage and screen storytelling at
the time with the film seeming like a call to others to elevate their visuals. Herzog’s
1979 vision was of societal destruction by a plague of evil and the
overwhelming sense that the event was unstoppable and inevitable. This bleak
view of the horrors of the (super)natural world clawing at the thin veneer of
civilization was typical of the director’s harsh opinion of humanity. Egger’s
film shifts the focus to the character who sacrifices herself to end the
horrors being visited upon the entire world. The film centers her struggle with
both mental illness and the ways the world treats her affliction because of how
it is viewed by the people around her. She is the inevitable hero character and
she suffers in more ways than any person should have to with her only solace
being that she can save humanity through self-sacrifice. All three films contain
all of these elements but the focus shift is fascinating and shows why I hope I
live to see another version made in the future.
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