Nosferatu

leaving that cinema felt like a walk of shame.  (edit: just realised in my entire rant i barely even get into the filmmaking, and it being some of the best ive ever seen. the mood is constantly controlled by the light and shadows. chiaroscuro for dayssss. like wow i love da movies!) my gradual realisation that the movie was an adaptation of stoker’s dracula made a major part of my viewing experience just constant appreciation of every detail of the text that they captured so artistically and truthfully.  as someone who annotated that book to DEATH for VCE Lit, nosferatu lifted the themes and ideas of stoker’s dracula and told the story with so much more impact. probably because the writers of nosferatu werent stuck in the time that it was made and questioning the meaning of their own repressed homosexuality with every word they wrote like a certain author… but anyways.  ‼️‼️‼️ similar to stoker’s dracula (but better), the film is a masterful depiction of human fears manifesting itself in a vampiric personification. his presence and influence on the characters is a looking glass into english people’s shame and insecurities during the victorian era, and the movie captures this so beautifully i actually cried during the scene when ellen crashes the FUCK out to thomas, who is rendered powerless in the face of his possessed wife, because it EXPLODES all the built up tension within them that was stifled by external/societal pressures.  + if the image of nosferatu is a looking glass to the victorian era, these moments were the strokes that built that picture: — the shadow of nosferatu’s hand creeping and slowly looming over england and the characters (like the inevitable hand of modernity and change that was about to pick england up and shake its status quo) — nosferatu never being properly lit and constantly shot in darkness so his features are never fully shown until the end (just like how the sentiment he represents is not outwardly ever seen in society but hidden deep in people’s minds, hearts or subconscious) — his foreignness/‘Otherness’ and ancient appearance (the english fearing outward influences that were coming in due to increasing globalisation and consequences of their empire building meaning foreign identities were influencing their originally “pure” society) — THE BOAT omg. the scenes of the boat support the list point above and also shows how the english perceived outside entities as a threat that would bring a plague of sin — the plague being a representation of the moral and social sickness people felt would infect them all and effectively kill them all because people would lose sight of God, righteousness and The Word —> all out eradication of their chastity = end of world ‼️ LAST AND MOST IMPORTANT RANT ‼️ i loved how the movie took everything i mentioned above and focused it all on ellen and thomas, effectively staying true to the story of dracula and its introspection on the conventional victorian perceptions of womanhood, marriage, masculinity and sexuality. (all through an air of mystery and horror which makes it so captivating) i LOVED LOVED LOVED nosferatu’s haunting of ellen and thomas. his impact on them alluded to their unorthodox sexuality and the powerlessness of their love and the concept of marriage in the face of lust and ‘primal’ desire.  the commitment to the symbolism of nosferatu’s bites as kisses, sickness as a sign of pleasure, and death as an orgasm… just wow.  i loved it so much it made me consider rereading dracula even tho that book is such a drag 😭