Nosferatu Robert Eggers (USA; 2024)
Nosferatu Robert Eggers (USA; 2024) Bill Skarsgard, Lily Rose Depp, Nicolas Hoult.
Viewed Tyneside Cinema 4th Jan 2025; ticket £13.25 (price increase of £1 as of 01/01/25)
like being fucked by a monster
Robert Eggers’ ‘Nosferatu’ is a dead film in which technology replaces imagination.
Time was when technology’s effect on the movie industry was to better enable or to extend the engagement of the audience with the material they were viewing. I am thinking of the changes from monochrome film through to full colour stock; the development of camera mobility from the tripod through to cranes and steady cam; the movement of editing technology from simple assembly through to opticals and colour manipulation. There are of course other important areas of change, but the above will suffice as exemplars.
Critical use of the above mechanical technology could work to stimulate the audience to engage with film as an act of individual interpretation, the material working to open up the imagery to the viewers’ imagination. The development of CGI together with the rapid advance of AI has reached the stage where there is complete competency in the creation of virtual image creation. Filmmakers have access to a perfect marriage of computation and cognition that short circuits the imagination of the audience by rendering the ideas suggestions and concepts in the scenario as literalist images. The picture as presented is complete unto itself. There are no cracks in the image integument, the which is complete in itself and offered for visual consumption in similar manner to the popcorn nachos hotdogs and ice-cream that are offered as the complementary oral part of the viewing experience. In fact the CGI film product and the food accompanying it have many similar characteristics: they are both synthetic products and both in a sense can be said to be pre-consumed – meaning they deliver to expectation and are consumed without pause as a mechanical experience.
Films such as ‘Nosferatu’ that make considerable use of CGI virtual imagery often diminish the importance of a narrative line. Rather they are structured so that they move from CGI generated spectacle to spectacle. The narrative line of these films is often obscure complex and somewhat flimsy. OK agreed! Many Hollywood movies, in particular ‘film noir’ have impenetrable plot lines, but they are sustained by the audience satisfaction of being drawn imaginatively into the circuitry of the characters and the narratives; with CGI spectacles the audience expect no more from the plot lines than they would from a fireworks display. Films such as ‘Nosferatu’ are about a series of spectacles designed to immerse the viewer in the experience, and like the hotdog sloshed out with mustard and ketchup, once it’s gone it’s gone, instantly forgot. ‘Nosferatu’ type productions are stitched togather by a series of spectacular set pieces each of which has its own resolution and outcome, and designed as mounting crescendos of affect.
As befits the horror genre the sound track is designed to manipulate the audience and in alignment with the image, it is also intended to overwhelm. In ‘Nosferatu’ the sound is repetitively overbearing in particular the synthesised boom of Orlok’s voice which is invariant from start to finish. At the movie’s end his voice not only has no effect it also starts to feel tiresome obtrusive lacking affect. Overplayed effects which characterise Eggers’ movie, add up to diminishing returns and are also an indication that basic understanding of the how to craft film has largely been forgotten by Eggers in his headlong rush to embrace all the riches of technology which often like fool’s gold turns out to be worthless.
The style of acting and dialogue appear to be premised on ‘Hammer Film Productions’ of the 50’s and 60’s. Without a Christopher Lee or a Peter Cushing around whom to pivot the script and shape the interactions, there is something central lacking in Eggers’ movie, that can never be filled out with the technology he employs. Automation can never replace the human presence, though I suppose AI generated actors may cause me to repent this statement.
Tech literalism in Eggers’ movie is taken to the limits of the absurd in the penultimate sequence of ‘Nosferatu’ which sees Ellen being screwed by Orlok. Orlok is depicted as having disgusting warty lizard type skin, as a giant horny (whoops) entity dripping with mucous. The audience are asked to take seriously the graphic depiction of their impassioned coupling. It’s supposed to be the ‘climax’ (whoops!) of the story but the proposition and representation of their fuck, Orlok thrusting between Ellen’s thighs, is so silly and unbelievable, that it has the effect of an ‘anti-climax.’ Given the general mediocrity of ‘Nosferatu’ it’s appropriate that it should end on an anticlimax.
After seeing Nosferatu my feeling was that this is a film not about the undead but rather made by the undead.
adrin neatrour
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk