Nosferastivus for the Rest of Us | Nosferatu (2024) Movie Review
And a Merry Nosferastivus to YOU 😈 | #OSCARSHOMEWORK
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This is one of those films people are going to be pedantic about, I can already tell, so I girded myself with some Wikipedia facts.
Some background on Nosferatu
Pedants take note: the listed reason for changing names, language and location from the original text — Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula — for the 1922 silent film Nosferatu is not a copyright infringement dodge, as is often claimed, but rather an intention to localize and make names, places and customs more palatable to famously-insular 1920s German audiences. The original German print’s intertitles even reference the novel, and in fact, the production was eventually sued by the Stoker estate, so even if the find-and-replace changes were (quietly) intended as a defense against a lawsuit, it ultimately proved unsuccessful.
Truthfully, attempting to skirt copyright laws is one of the nicer reasons one can imagine for the alterations to the text. Given the Outsider/Other status of Count Orlok, his co-conspirator Knock being explicitly Jewish and the flourishes to Orlok’s look and vibe (hooked nose and rodent-like features, such as contemporaneous propaganda would often ascribe to Jews; attended by rats and pestilence; eager to invade and corrupt an unsuspecting, wholesome community; comes for their lily-white women), any competent reading of the original text would be remiss not to draw parallels between the rising anti-Semitic sentiment in the country and the depiction of the film’s villain and his villainous ways (not for nothing, it’s happening here in my country right now, too, and I’d be remiss not to mention that, as well).
It’s equally important to note that the filmmaker, one Friederich Wilheim Murnau, was, himself, a homosexual and by all accounts an ally to German Jews in the country, and it’s pretty clear that whatever xenophobic resonance the film had for its German audience, it was likely not intended by Murnau.
Also, a nontrivial number of people consider Nosferatu the ur-text ‘cult’ film, because the result of the Stoker Estate’s (successful) copyright lawsuit was that every print of the film was ordered to be destroyed, and nearly all were, but one had already been distributed internationally. So it was copied and copied, and those copies were copied, the film’s reputation bolstered by the somewhat-rebellious or taboo edge it carried.
It’s a rich text. To say the least.
Nosferatu is also credited as crystallizing or codifying what we, today, think of as the Horror genre, or even that we think of it as a genre. Writer/Director Robert Eggers expressed his intention to adapt the 1922 silent film for a modern audience pretty much immediately following the success of The Witch in 2015. Various production and creative delays meant he completed and released The Lighthouse and The Northman prior to getting around to Nosferatu.
Production was apparently a bit of a nightmare, with Eggers expressing frustration and bafflement at delays; Anya Taylor-Joy signing on, then dropping out and getting replaced by Lily Rose-Depp (any hyphenate will do, I guess); Bill Skarsgård was originally cast to play Friederich, then Orlok; Aaron Taylor-Johnson (wait, is the hyphen how he got this job?) was announced as being part of the cast, along with two others, days before shooting began.
Kind of a mess, it sounds like. So, given we know all that now, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the film?
Nosferatu (2024)
Nosferatu is a bastardization of an archaic Romanian word (Nesuferitu), which — roughly translated — means ‘the offensive one’ or ‘the insufferable one.’
This film is incredibly atmospheric and vibe-y, with some sweeping, IMAX-level mountain vistas and a profound, creeping sense of dread. It’s often gorgeous, sumptuously costumed (it will win the Oscar for it, I predict) and set decorated, is clearly a labor of artistic merit with something to say, and the power to move you or make you feel, make you think.
Eggers and cinematographer (The Lighthouse-collaborator) Jarin Blaschke have managed to convincingly conjure a gothic and troubling entire world, authentic and lived-in. Mostly. There is one notable exception.
Maybe I’m biased, having just come off seeing Kraven the Hunter days prior, but Holy Fucking Shit what. is going. on. with Taylor-Johnson in this film?
Having seen the whole thing through now, I can confidently say that for its entirety, the sole ingredient in this gumbo that doesn’t work for me is Taylor-Johnson’s Friedrich. But when I think back on this movie in five or six years, I honest-to-god think my only, actual, concrete memories of this film will be how laughably mismatched his performance was with literally every other element of the film.
I don’t get it. Every facet of this film is competent, polished, purposeful; when people talk about directors having a clear Vision, this is it. This guy’s got a Vision and the means and drive to see it realized.
Taylor-Johnson’s performance was so jarringly mismatched with literally every other character he plays against that when I consider my feelings about this film, I am kind of weighing on the one hand, the costuming, direction, other performances, the writing, the general aesthetic and set design and on the other hand, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s performance, and I don’t know which outweighs the other.
Let me be clear: the man is a Golden Globe winner for Best Actor and a BAFTA Best Actor nominee. I’m not saying the guy is a bad actor. I wouldn’t even know. I’m not there on set. All I see is the finished product.
So I’m speaking only of those finished products, and speaking of those finished products only: Aaron Taylor-Johnson has turned in back-to-back performances that stand out as the worst in their respective films, both in a bad movie and in a good one that — for my money — overcomes its enormous Aaron Taylor-Johnson-shaped problem, but just barely.
That said, I tellingly tweet way more about Aaron Taylor-Johnson than any other element of the film. He’s a British actor. So, he in theory shouldn’t struggle with the British accent everyone except Defoe is using. It’s baffling.
To be clear, when dealing with literally any other element of the story that doesn’t involve watching Friederich operate onscreen, I was kind of blown away. Believe me when I say, that makes the untenability of Taylor-Johnson’s work ten times more puzzling and noteworthy.
I had never seen Lily Rose-Depp in anything before, did not know she was an actor, and was very disinclined to give her undue credit or benefit of doubt, etc. By the credits, I think her performance absolutely nets her a Oscar nomination, if not win. Stunning work.
I want to be totally fair here. It wasn’t all bad.
Without spoiling it, he suffers a pretty brutal personal tragedy, and has a scene that is predicated entirely on his emotional gravitas, and he mourns silently in tremendously affecting and authentic fashion. Full credit to him, I absolutely believed him in those handfuls of seconds, but then immediately afterward, the vocal performance was inescapable, even intrusive.
It’s a shame, because I get the feeling that a different Friederich performance would have put Nosferatu on par with The Witch for me, in terms of being a satisfying composition and best-in-class of the cotemporary horror genre. But I’m left mostly baffled by how astonishingly out-of-place and wild Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s performance was.
And that will conclude the airing of grievances.
Nosferatu: Not bad.
But it takes a Visionary Genius and some of the best filmmakers working to (barely) transcend Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s bizarrely incongruous performance.
