NOSFERATU

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Robert Eggers Digs His Own Grave

By Cole Smithey

If you've seen Robert Eggers's excellent film "The Lighthouse," then you should have high expectations for how Eggers could approach the well-worn story of Irish novelist Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel "Dracula."

Sadly, you will be disappointed.

"The Lighthouse" is everything that "Nosferatu" is not — suspenseful, and dark in a terrifyingly human way.

There's not much humanity in this plot-crammed and poorly written "Nosferatu."

Eggers's inspiration arrives via Henrik Galeen's 1925 German expressionist script for F.W. Murnau's groundbreaking if politically problematic silent movie, considering its obvious racist underpinnings.

Overworked and under-edited, Robert Eggers's "Nosferatu" is not without its charms. Lily Rose Depp is a revelation in her exotic role as Ellen Hunter, a young, horny, nubile woman who offers herself up to the universe to be devoured by whatever form (alien, human, evil or otherwise) that comes through her open window.

Careful what you wish for.

A sleepy first act finally gives way to a late reveal of the monster. To be clear, Nosferatu is a hook-nosed freak of nature non-human creature, well except for his exposed penis.

Yes, "Peenee on set" was announced during the filming of the scene where Bill Skarsgård's Nosferatu shows up very nude, and sporting the most ridiculous mustache you've ever seen. 

This Nosferatu gives mustache rides. Now that's scary. Beauty and the beast indeed. Unlike Bela Lugosi's Dracula, this vampire is no charmer. Zero sex appeal on display.

"Nosferatu" is visually stunning but the screenwriting is not up to snuff by a lot.

Eggers is so obsessed with ticking off a checklist of details culled from every vampire movie ever made that he ties himself up. He employs tropes rather than imbuing the story with novel meaning. The movie goes so far as to throw in a gratuitous Exorcist scene that stumbles.

Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu The Vampyre" (1997) is a far superior to Eggers's film in every way. Herzog's movie is simply told in a hyper stylized yet sparse setting where fear and suspense breed.

Hell, Paul Morressey's 1974 cult classic "Blood For Dracula" is a damn sight better than Eggers's movie.

Robert Eggers has squandered a great opportunity to use Bram Stoker's novel as a leaping off narrative form from which to improvise his own cinematic narrative design of suspenseful intent. 

Where is your sense of Jazz improvisation Mr. Eggers?

Come on man; you're better than this.

If it were me I'd have cast Bill Skarsgård as Ellen Hunter's put-upon husband Thomas, and given the role of Nosferatu to his brother Alexander Skarsgård, who I might add would have been much more charming and dignified — think Astro-Hungarian Empire royalty.

I'd have played up suspense in the three hellhounds sequence where Thomas gets chased off a ledge into the abyss below. This sequence should be the centerpiece of the film.

I'd have let Thomas die from his fall, and have him communicate with Ellen telepathically (post-death) in her dreams as Ellen does with her domineering sex master Nosferatu. Nevermind that this vampire has all the appeal of a zombie meth addict with lesions all over his body that rebuke his gigantic well-groomed mustache.

"Nosferatu" is infuriating because of its cut-and-paste approach, and due to its lack of originality.

A miscast Willem Dafoe does the movie no favors as Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, a Van Helsing archetype. This is the worst performance I've ever seen from Willem Dafoe.

Viggo Mortensen would have been much better casting.

I suppose this film's tag line, "Succumb to the Darkness" is an apt sentiment in the age of global warming and yet another Trump era.

This vampire movie is perfectly watchable; you may feel inclined to nap during it. Don't worry, you won't miss much.

Rated R. 140 mins.

ANORA — CANNES 2024

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LOVE FOR SALE:

SEAN BAKER'S CINEMA OF SATISFACTION

Sean Baker has stepped firmly into the role of America's most sophisticated, articulate, and socially meaningful filmmaker.

Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Ken Loach, and Mike Leigh should be falling over themselves, praising Sean Baker for his filmmaking gifts.

Not the least of which is Mr. Baker's seamless ability to slip intimately between American regions (Florida, Texas, New York City) to create thoroughly researched, locality specific, stories that ring like a bell with authenticity and humor.

Sex-work in America is the topic that Sean Baker continues to mine in all of his films.

Mikey Madison takes no prisoners in her fearless performance as Anora. Russian/American "Ani" works at a Brighton Beach strip club where she meets Vanya (Mark Eidelshtein), the over-privileged son to Russian oligarch, Nikolai Zakharov (Aleksey Serebryakov). 

Shit hits the fan when Vanya's filthy rich folks find out that their son and a stripper are a thing.

Darya Ekamasova is hilarious as Galina Zakharov, a woman with way too much money and power. 

The film's remarkable ensemble cast feeds on the material to achieve incredible set-piece action sequences that explode like indoor fireworks.

"Anora," is yet another film (behind "Starlet," "Tangerine," "The Florida Project," and "Red Rocket") that Mr. Baker wrote, cast, directed, and edited, is yet another quantum leap in modernday cinematic storytelling.

This is a movie that gets into your bones.

It is inspiring that Sean Baker is able to write screenplays with such precise novelistic detail about people interacting in overlooked aspects of day-to-day life in America.

Mr. Baker's dialogue is modernday Shakespearean.

Just stunning.

You want Neo-Modern-Realist Cinema, well here it is. Serious adult filmmaking doesn't get any better than this. All NYU film students should be studying Mr. Baker's films.

You can easily tell in its first 15 minutes why "Anora" won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes.

"Anora" is a winner, and an instant classic of American Independent Cinema.

Rated R. 140 mins.

LAST TANGO IN PARIS

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Born of Bernardo Bertolucci's fantasies about carrying on a purely sexual affair with a complete stranger, Marlon Brando's Paul and Maria Schneider's Jeanne meet regularly in an empty Parisian apartment for unbridled sexual trysts. Paul insists that neither one reveal their names or express any elements of their lives outside their insular world.

Theirs is a relationship built purely on carnal intention and experimentation. The stark atmosphere that Bertolucci creates allows for sensual realism to thrive.

Jeanne doesn't know that Paul is coping with his wife's recent suicide. Paul knows nothing of Jeanne's obsessive filmmaker boyfriend Tom (Jean-Pierre Léaud) who is on the brink of proposing to Jeanne.

Written with assistance from Franco Arcalli and Anges Varda, Bertolucci plays liberally with dualities to address deep-seeded emotions that can only be expressed indirectly. Even the filmmaker’s noir-influenced image system plays with angles.

For the first time, Paul drinks with Tom, his wife's neighbor and former lover, who wears the same robe as Paul. The over-enthusiastic Tom represents an outwardly preoccupied inversion of Paul, who tests Jeanne's temperamental boundaries in similar but altered ways.

After revealing his identity and troubled situation, Paul tells Jeanne, "When something's finished, it begins again." He breaks the carefully guarded code the lovers have adhered to up until now. Paul's sudden turn from cynic to optimist (late in the story) must be punished. His refusal to adhere to his own rules is unacceptable. Not everything is permitted.

For all of the critical and public controversy about “Last Tango” being a pornographic film at the time of its release, the movie is a painstakingly theatrical mood piece that relies heavily on judiciously coded musical cues from Gato Barbieri's repeated motifs.

Significant is Philippe Turlure's bold art direction that draws on the work of the artist Francis Bacon. Two of Bacon's paintings introduce the film during its opening credit sequence. They influence the look of the movie’s saturated color scheme for the interior of the apartment where much of the story takes place. A two-foot high rust colored waterline surrounds the interior walls as if to suggest that the apartment had been submerged in a mixture of blood and water for an extended period during its storied past. The ravages of wars fought have left their mark here.

“Last Tango in Paris” is a masterwork of post-modern existential angst that attempts to reconcile a depth of social existence through its sexually liberated characters.

Rated NC-17. 129 mins.

Mike broke out Wavy Tropics Guava Pale Ale from Kills Boro Brewing for our discussion of Bertolucci's LAST TANGO IN PARIS even if we had planned to do Lars von Trier's MANDERLAY for this, our 99th episode. Check out my silent shout-out to THE STRYPES if you go to ColeSmithey.com. Bon appetite!