I agree that Thomas couldn’t give her what she truly wanted even though they loved each other. I feel like her not wanting Thomas to go to Orlok’s castle was a way of her asking him to be more emotionally intelligent/present for her but he was so focused on the “I need to be a high value man who makes 6 figures like Friedrich” that he didn’t get it. Orlok however evil understood her on that level 🤷🏽♀️
That doesn’t make any sense when she was asking him to not go because of her dreams/visions. I get the feeling that it was more her pleading him to stay cus there’s a mf demon haunting her dreams and sending her visions that leave her confused (ie; how at her wedding to death everyone was dead around them, but she was so happy) & her having the intuition to know that if Thomas went on that business trip, that he’d never come back. Even though she got that last part wrong in the end, Thomas does make it back. But count orlok does not connect with her on “that level” lol when he’s an intruder to her life and dreams. Not trashing you, but I don’t agree with your take whatsoever.
@ no offense but your analysis is too literal. this is a Gothic tale and things aren’t so black and white. Is Orlok a demon who plagues Ellen’s mind? Yes. But there is a romantic (although fucked up) element to their relationship (Eggers and Depp literally state so and the attraction is clearly stated in the script). So while she abhors him, she is attracted to him in a way that she isn’t attracted to her husband, even though she loves him dearly. Orlok is a representation of Ellen’s shadow, her dark desires that she can’t express. Even though Thomas loves her, he doesn’t get her in that way, he is a man of his time who thinks she ought to behave like a woman of her time and stop speaking about her dreams (aka her repressed desires). Is it weird/fucked up/uncomfortable? Yes, that’s the whole point. We can’t use our modern lens to analyse a character that is a 1830s woman in a Gothic tale.
@@myiamor3181 just because there’s lines in the script that have her express some sort of desire for Orlok, does not equal she loves orlok or is even attracted to him. Sorry, but the Movie itself that we watched on the big screen, clearly shows that her “feelings” and “obedience” to orlok is not a natural one, but one that was fabricated and planted within her head. This is made even more clear by Orlok’s visit in the night when he arrives to the city, and his overwhelming power is resisted by her and she DENIES him, because she does not love him but loves Thomas and recognizes that Orlok is some sort of dangerous evil being. Again; I think your take here is completely wrong with Thomas as well. It’s not that Thomas thinks she should not talk about it, he listens to her and tries to understand her, it’s his friend and the friends wife that refuse to acknowledge something is is going on. Thomas tries to understand her, but he is clearly missing the context that her dreams are in fact real, the monster in her dreams is in fact real and not just shadows of her past troubles. He doesn’t try to hush her up, he tried to assure her that her dreams are just dreams, but he still tries to listen to her. I don’t mind that the power dynamic is weird or fucked up at all, it was one of my favorite thematic elements that they killed in the movie, but I think you left the theater thinking that her desire for Orlok was real, when in fact, in the movie itself she realizes it’s not a real feeling at all. I think that looking at it as if she was in love with him or genuinely desired Orlok IS applying a modern lens to an 1830s woman in a gothic tale. She’s not in love with daddy Orlok, Orlok is a manipulator & a groomer.
I saw another interpretation of Orlok as depression. Started when she was a lonely teenager, got her when she was older. Also aligns with her being a misfit and a burden on others around her (in her mind), and seeing death as tempting and desirable.
100% this. Reducing her relationship with Orlok to a tired daddy-kink is so nauseating. God I hope that the future generation of men leaves this mindset in the past (spoiler alert: they won’t).
I think Ellen loves Thomas. In the beginning, she said that when she married Thomas all of these like dark thoughts, that scare and excitement her, went away, and I think that’s because she loves him but also because she thinks that Thomas could be what Nosferatu was to her but in a healthy way. Thomas never opens up to that idea because he doesn’t understand and he trying to be the husband he thinks he should be, which in turn makes him a bad husband for Ellen. Thomas doesn’t listen to what she wants, which invites her to looking for it else where, inviting Nosferatu back into her life. I think nosferatu is an abuser but that doesn’t deny the fact that he satisfies something in Ellen. I think the idea of him being a lover and abuser to Ellen are both very prominent in the movie. And nosferatu listens to Ellen’s desires her appetite which Thomas doesn’t so in that way emotionally he beats Thomas.
I think the same for most of your take, but I don't think she turned back to Nosferatu bc Thomas didn't satisfy her. I think when she married Thomas, Nosferatu felt he lost control of her and so moved to get it back. It's only once Thomas left that her spells came back.
The problem with Nosferatu is that it teaches women that their carnal desires come from an evil place that will be their undoing. A modern retelling would have Ellen survive Nosferatu's attempt to consume her.
I personally think it's not about sexual repression, but about suicide. The sex is more an allegory of the pull of life and death. Thomas sort of represents life to Ellen, and Orlock represents death. Ellen is shown to be very, very mentally ill due to a mix of issues including childhood trauma. At the beginning, Thomas and Ellen are pretty happy newly-weds, and Ellen has mostly lost her dark thoughts, but when Thomas leaves, she regresses into her melancholy. When Orlock approaches, she believes that succumbing to him (ie, succumbing to death itself) will save everyone. This is sort of similar to what suicidal depression does to a person's perception of themselves and their value ("I'm such a burden, people would be happier if I were gone" sort of thing)
this is an excellent take! I think there's definitely an interpretation that looks at the intersection of how repression in general (of sexual desire, identity, etc.) pushes a woman to suicide.
Some people are completely misreading the film. Lilly didn’t love Orlock AT ALL. She loved Thomas. But she was terrified by the fact that she was actually drawn to the darkness that Orlock’s presence consumed her with. Until Willem Dafoe’s character informs her that she is drawn to Orlock BECAUSE it is her destiny to sacrifice herself to Orlock to save the world. To save THOMAS. She sacrificed herself for her love of Thomas for sure.
@@kruksog there are some things in this film that can be interpreted, whether or not she loved Thomas or Orlock isn’t one of them. I think the objective fact is obvious. Her connection with Orlock had nothing to do with love or deviant sex. It was because of prophecy. That’s it.
@MasonDixie I don't think it's necessarily prophecy either. She had a psychic gift - like Joan of Arc - that drew him to her. She used that gift to draw him back and kill him, turning the tables. Orlock surely understood her in a way others didn't, as did Professor Von Franz, but that didn't mean she was attracted to Orlock or had some secret lust for him.
@@MasonDixie That's not a prophecy, it's discovering an Achilles heel. Von Franz's research suggests Nosferatu can only be defeated through a fair maiden's willing sacrifice, so Ellen does so while Thomas is distracted. But she didn't have to, she chose to. She has agency and we should admire her for her choice. A prophecy is like the Prophet telling Oedipus Rex he'll kill his father and marry his mother. Which he does (Eeew). Then he stabs his own eyes out.
I think it's an interesting parallel how in the beginning of the movie, Thomas left her bedside to go to work while at the end Orlok didn't leave her bedside even though it literally killed him.
I don't really buy that Ellen has any particular desire to "be" with Orlok, and her dreams as a somnambulist are also being manipulated by Orlok since she's already under contract. Her demeanor totally changes once she's aware of what Orlok is and intends to do, and when he confronts her again in her dreams she practically teases him and is openly defiant. Orlok has to mass murder the people of Wisborg and threaten to kill Thomas just to force her compliance. If it was really left up to her own agency she would have rejected him. Orlok is also an undead thing who only exists due to a contract he made with a demon, so his soul is already forsaken. When Orlok dies and hemmorhages every drop of blood in his body that's it. He doesn't even have a soul anymore, his soul has been burning in Hell for over a thousand years. He's animated solely by his wicked intelligence. So there's not really any chance of them vibing spiritually after the fact, Ellen is most likely ascended to heaven as a saint for making the ultimate sacrifice for Wisborg. The big catch of this all is that Professor Alvin is just as manipulative as all the other men in her life, and leads her on with the expectation that she has no choice but to submit Orlok and draw him into the light of the Sun - even though Thomas knows that you can simply kill a vampire by mundane means. Alvin chooses the plan to destroy Orlok's sanctuary because it's a fool proof alternative, and he doesn't value Ellen's life over the lives of the masses. He idolizes her as a kind of Madonna to rationalize her sacrifice to himself. Nosferatu is so damn good though. It's completely taken over my life. I'm working on a research project to explain all the historical context of the movie, and I have so much ground to cover it could take me months with my day job. There's real occultism, the transition between early and full modernity, the interaction between the fading aristocracy and the oblivious bourgeois, the development of capitalism in Germany, the sexual politics. Eggers is so historically meticulous it's all relevant, and it highlights the historical resonance of the original Nosferatu as well; which was explicitly occultist and featured Enochian script. P.S. Don't want to give the impression that I think your analysis or the other theories are dumb. This is a very well considered analysis. The thing I keep coming back to though is that Orlok has no romantic desire whatsoever. He tells Ellen that he is an "appetite, nothing more" and that she is "an Eve who has not forgotten the Garden." He's telling her straight up that his only interest is in consuming her because she is still innocent despite being deflowered by Orlok & Thomas. Her purity is what makes her such a valuable target compared to even the children, because they are innocent in ignorance while she is a grown woman.
My reading (the final one, that combines all other motifs explore to their reductive common thematic thread) is that it doesn't matter if it is truly romantic or truly love.There is a cosmic bond there between them. It works in tandem with him coveting her innocence, especially if you read it as a personification of her dark repressed desire in a society that has no place or rational explanation of it.He covets it,she covets his darkness - yet to acquire either would ruin them because it'd dissolve the fabric of what each is as a self-contained unity.So the moment she succumbs to the dark he succumbs to the light, and the taste of her innocence is death for him just as giving herself over to darkness is death for her. They create a perfect momentary unity together and self-annihilate into a two-headed corpse - the alchemical queen and king of the hieros gamos. In a way,as von Franz might say, they achieve the Great Work, become gold together. In a spiritual sense you can see it as a covenant realized, or/and as a divine self-deification through knowledge (of one another) and spiritual ascension. Just my interpretation at its most general level, obviously many themes are threaded through in the specific plots.
@@kostantza1 The "cosmic bond" you're talking about is child marriage. Consuming Ellen wouldn't ruin Orlok he'd simply be satiated for another indeterminate length of time in torpor until the next victim presents herself. That or he would follow through on what he told Thomas and continue consuming women in the ignorance of modernity, growing into an unprecedented power which wasn't possible in the pre-modern world that knows how to deal with vampires. The fire from Orlok's sanctuary can be seen from Ellen's window, so Orlok could have chosen to spare Ellen, but he consumes her regardless because he's desperate to add on another few hours of unlife in addition to the over 1000 years of consumption he's already lived. Ellen is not the first saintly woman to be consumed by Orlok. He was going to drain her and move on to another century of terror.
@@BradfordCarter I am....not certain "child marriage" is a theme there, tbh, while there is quite an abundance for themes.And while it could be a valid backstory, that, that Orlock awakens when some innocent soul chances upon him, and uses them to not only drain them, but impose himself on a different era, there is no more evidence of this in the movie than there is to say that Orlock is unsatiated because the nature of his self (appetite) is insatiability.To be an appetite necessitates never to be content, and we could just as easily assume that he'd lived much, consumed much and had given up on the world until Ellen chanced upon him, and this was his opportunity to be, for once, complete - to die before he could hunger again. I don't even think at some point the readings contradict each other, because I'm sure if Ellen hadn't initiated he wouldn't have volunteered to die with her, but by the end one can certainly see acceptance in his choice, if they so choose. It's different from Ellen's perspective of course.
@@kostantza1 Ellen was literally a child when she first encountered Orlok, and he induced her into promising herself to him. That's a verbal contract bound by all the laws of magic that define Orlok's existence. It's what gives him power over her and is the basis of his claim to her four years later. It's exactly like arranging the marriage of a daughter to a grown man, which happened all the time in this period. Eggers is an incredibly meticulous historical filmmaker, he wouldn't have overlooked something this obvious without it being intentional. Ellen even scorns Orlok for taking advantage of her innocence. When she gave herself over to him as a child he commits psychic rape to her, which is why she began convulsing uncontrollably at the abandoned manor. If you really think that Orlok was seeking his own death you didn't understand the movie at all. In a sense you're projecting Herzog's interpretation of Dracula onto Eggers's version of Nosferatu. He's not a tragic figure of gothic romance, he's a monster of pure evil who was an aristocratic parasite whose existence was already dependent upon draining the life from peasants & serfs. He entered a demonic contract to continue this existence eternally, and his only thought & ambition is to unnaturally extend this parasitic existence forever. The class analysis is totally absent from your understanding.
@@BradfordCarter Ok, first of all, I project nothing on nothing.Everything I say is speculative and leave room for other interpretations - if anything, it's you who speaks with immovable conviction. She says "I was but an innocent child". That doesn't mean she was an actual child, as in, kid, it means she was young, inexperienced and virginal. There are many interpretations of an occult covenant before you reach the "child marriage" one, especially since there is no father figure who pledged her, but Ellen who, even under deception, pledged herself. Also I never said *he* is a tragic figure of gothic romance, I said Ellen is the tragic heroine of a gothic romance, which is common knowledge that is not bound by healthy romantic perceptions or common romantic tropes of any era - you can have a victim and a stalker, an abuser, a literal malevolent force hellbent on dominating them, and it doesn't mean it is not a romance. Gothic romance is literally about that which is greater than the self. The connection between two characters, whether it's classed as "love" or not, supercedes anything else in their path, usually because they are presented as two parts of the same whole - and Orlock is Ellen's lower anima, the hungry one defined by appetite, twisted and condemned to the dark by social convention. Ellen belongs with him because she *is* him, but she's not only him - she is also a creature of life and the world, she loves Thomas, she sacrifices herself for the world. Orlock is at the same time a contagious force of evil - but we are meant to discern, per the director's words, some human-like characteristics in him, even if they are only pride and greed. The callback of her asking him to remain in bed when his literal death hangs out of the window is a callback to the beginning of the movie, when Thomas leaves for work instead. You said it yourself Eggers wouldn't leave that to chance. The class analysis is pretty obvious, and also tangentially relative to our talk, so I didn't see a reason to go into it. All in all, the pieces are all there, and depending on where you choose to look into the kaleidoscope of themes, you can come up with either a reading of him as a classist abuser, or him as a gothic lover. You get way too worked up and borderline condescending to me for what is readings of a multilayered work of art. If it was as straightforward as you make it appear, we'd have no reason to talk about it.
Women saying they like Orlok....girl, get the the therapy because absolutely not and it has nothing to do with looks. We all have fallen in love with monster looking characters at one point or another but Orlok, as a person (not a metaphor), is a creep, pushy, jealous, and controlling. Dominance might be your kink but once consent is taken away entirely, it stops being sexy. As a metaphor, Orlok can represent death, depression, temptation, shame, deadly masculinity, the lingering affects of assault on the victim and all other yucky aspects of the human condition. Orlok is irredeemable and insufferable (literally in the name Nosferatu) and he should repulse you. Saw the movie twice, absolutely adore it 🖤🤍. Also the amount of funny lines in the movie hit me on the 2nd watch.
how I see it is that she decided to follow her nature and to become one with orlok (who represents that lustful part of her that she and everyone around her wanted to suppress) by liteally bringing him to light and pulling him out of the shadows of her supressed unconscious. its a very bittersweet ending. she becomes one with her nature, and she only can do that by being united with it in death. because there is no place for women like her in this 19th century society.
I too, have been obsessed with this movie since I saw it New Year's Day. You are hitting the points that I have been frustrated that all the other review videos I've watched haven't even been mentioning. Ellen and Thomas' first scene, she tries to keep him a little longer before going to work. The instant boredom and dull expression on her face when he shut the door told me immediately she was not satisfied.
I think Ellen and Thomas did love each other, but they wouldn't have had premarittle sex and then it was stated that the honeymoon was short. And I do think that Ellen wanted more, but she was still happy with Thomas. They just hadn't had enough time. Thomas in the other hand is trying to be the man and husband he thinks he should be as it's what's expected in society. He wants to be what's considerd as successful which means a good job, big house and a family. Ellen is different from everyone else in society and doesn't care about material things and just wants Thomas, not what Thomas can provide for her, which is unusual in that era. Thomas doesn't understand this or just doesn't care.
Nah, it's not just sex that Ellen needed. She needed a companion that also complemented her spiritually and emotionally and had the same abandon as her. You can have a good sex life and still be unsatisfied with your partnership, or with life, or with society, etc. I think she and this type of deeper insatisfaction of which sex was but one more component. Unfortunately the only being that met the criteria was undead and evil.
It bears pointing out that Orlock says "you are not for humankind",but that could as easily mean she is of a more debased state as of a higher one, and seeing Orlock, obviously, I think we see what becomes when you give into your lower instincts - become an appetite. Orlock wants this for her - or rather, wants to fulfill his hunger by devouring her and making her and him of one substance, but the thing is, for all her sexuality and darkness might be repressed by social mores, Ellen isn't just that. Her carnal anxieties coexist with her virtues, which her love for Thomas (aptly not portrayed as a sexless,conventional thing) symbolizes - she is not of the higher spheres, but isn't naturally of the lower either.By combining her giving into Orlock with the higher purpose of saving her world, her city and her beloved husband at the expense of her own life, she acknowledges both her natures at the same time and thus achieves completion - and Orlock, who is a being of the lowest spheres, fulfills his ultimate purpose with the ultimate sacrifice - he devours her and is devoured in turn, dragged into the light and rendered obsolete - as Orlock, but he is absorbed in Ellen, and thus is self-annihilated as the two parts come together, and become one "being", or rather leave behind a print of their last moments as we see in the end. All in all, I think his and her death are a moment of perfection, and that's why we both see her cradling him just before he bleeds out, and see him for the first time vulnerable, pitisome, maybe even sad, as if awed more than terrified by the sun. Idk, liked your review and you thoughts very much, as well as how you acknowledge different readings as valid - had to share my own thoughts. So many levels to read this movie, I feel reduction to a couple would demean the creators' enterprise.
This movie makes you to think about it a lot, and analyze it every different ways. This movie for me is a masterpiece 10/10 can’t stop listening to the movie soundtrack every day. And I can’t wait to pre order this movie
Ive seen it twice now... and the second time was even better! Absolutely gorgeous brilliant movie!!! I cannot wait for Eggers Extended cut! Dafoe is brilliant, well, the entire cast is awesome. Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult were outstanding!! Bill Scarsgard's voice creeped the actual hell out of me!!
Fredrick loved that his wife would have babies, til she got that boy. It was about how the woman could further his legacy. Still using her body after her soul was gone.
Not really necessarily. It's very much in line with the gothic romance tradition. It's "gothic" for a reason. Necrophilia features pretty heavily in these narratives,whether as an act of posseession, despair, grief or malice, or all of them.
@ I didn’t say it was wrong. Just his characterization was juxtaposed to Thomas. He was the “traditional” man. And his wife had her “awakening” after sleeping with Ellen and her encounter with Orloc. Her husband wasn’t pleading her. She was a baby factory.
I’m still in shock that Australia rated it M. I was worried it wouldn’t be gory… it was sooooo grotesque. Delightfully so! And yet they think it’s okay for 12 year olds to watch coz no naked fucking? He ate a bird!!
If this movie is a love story then its a totally fkked up love story .Count orlok is pure evil and abuser to put it mildly. Orlock is a vampire who just wants to feed . The fact he is bonking ellen while he is feeding on her blood is irrelevant. Coppolas adaptation of bram stokers dracula is a love story , which btw os not in the actual book but was an interesting take. Eggers version of nosferatu was a solid movie, it wasnt particularly scary in my opinion but was creepy and unsettling with a couple of jump scares , and the cinematography was beautiful to look at. Definitely worth watching on the big screen
This review was been the most accurate depiction of how this movie made me feel. It’s was horrific, beautiful, and mystic all At once. Well done, subscription earned
I watched this movie more then once and u missed a lot if that’s what you got 😭😭I really don’t agree with ur interpretation of orlock and Ellen she literally said he was her shame and she was taking advantage of as a child and the end to me is her taking back what she lost as a child then the scene with Thomas comes right after her and orlock talk and she literally calls him vile not only that orlock tried to break them by saying Thomas was not a man because he laid with orlock then u talk about them not having children they just got married they where married for all two weeks before she died on top of that she begged him not to go because she knew orlock was summoning him to get to her
I know it's a meme but I wasn't prepared to hold space for this movie in such a way. Like I think about for a week now. I want more. I'm not surprised people are writing fanfics of this movie. Like you just want more
We're getting an extended cut, so that's good news! I know a lot of people said this movie was too long, but frankly I thought it was too SHORT. I feel like a good chunk was cut out of the second and third acts to pick up the pace of the film. Give me more Eggers!
yeah i have to stand on business and say this movie messed up by making orlok victimize ellen as a child. bc the whole time she's basically getting psychically SA by orlok during her hysteric spells, until in the end she was finally brainwashed into accepting it and giving her 'assaulter' consent like: "all i think about is this SA, all i want is this now so come give it to me." romanticizing that kind of thing just feels very wrong. 🤷🏽♂️
this is a valid take however gothic literature features and romanticises a lot of taboo and general darkness, i think it’s not always to be taken at face value or thinking the story is condoning it
@@bethellen4057 yeah, the "wrongness" of it does add to the horror of the story. but when people are reading it as, 'you should root for them,' or that she's happy in the end, or that orlok sexually liberated her, i just feel like they're confusing this with stephanie meyer. bc ellen was targeted as a child, never consented, and their initial encounter was not a gratifying one. it haunted her for the rest of her life. 🤷🏽♂️
I don't think the movie romanticised anything, it portrays the events as horrifying as they are. It never tries to sugarcoat it. It's not sexy, she is not happy, and it ends in death, they don't end up flying together into the night or any romantic shit. She had a destructive yearning that materialised and consumed her. It's just the logic of human desire but make it evil and turned up to 11. Death drive, depression, consuming insatisfaction, that's what he represents. Humanity and society deal with this through marriage, children, through prefabricated markers of success, vulgar means or rather substitutes of self actualization, but it is barely a fig leaf, a band-aid, that doesn't really make anyone that much happier. It merely conceals what happens under the surface of society. Desire causes chaos. Desire can unleash destructive potential, not just fun and creativity. Anyway, there is so much more about this character and film than a metaphor for SA or a sappy steamy romance with a monster. The SA references are there, but there is so much more. There is a lot of philosophy and psychology going into it.
@@OpsReitia well, i guess i mean that this guy who reviewed it messed up by mentioning rooting for them, and her being happy in the end and that he liberated her. i just don't think he observed the entire picture, bc he's basically praises orlok for 'saving her from a repressed society,' despite the fact that she was groomed to have this hyper sexuality (towards him) in the first place bc she was repetitively victimized sexually since childhood. so he praised her executioner for freeing her from an inescapable prison, when he was the prison architect in the first place.
tbh when the trailer of nosferatu dropped I was pretty excited to see people getting into vampiric gothic horror/romance again because interview with the vampire was my favourite show last year, bar none. but with how many people seemingly taking this movie too literally, idk if I'm ready for the takes that's gonna come out when more people discover interview with the vampire...
I loved your synopsis, very entertaining, you earned a sub from me. That said, Ellen and Thomas are newlyweds at the start of the movie so they wouldn't have had any children, or much physical intimacy at all for that matter, given the era they were living in (premarital sex was a huge no-no). Looking forward to more of your videos!
After seeing Nosferatu for the second time it was incredible. I’ll see it again or more before it leaves the theaters. It’s an experience. If you separated this movie from the Dracula franchise you could call it “the haunted girl”. She was haunted by a demon of masturbation
You are 100% in my line of thinking on my take for this film. I especially loved your point on Ellen and Orlok being together in the afterlife or some kind of astral plane. I loved this film so much. It's been on my mind since I saw it.
I didn't see Orlok as pathetic in the end, I think he saw the sun comming up and resigned to his fate. He kind of just stares at the sun before looking back at her and dying together. He hasn't seen the sun in hundreds of years, he didn't fight it, he didn't get angry with Ellen even, he very tenderly and gently put his hand on her shoulder to hold her as they both died together. I like your notion though that they are off together in another realm.
Okay. Great review. But, it also should be noted that Anna and Fredrick have been married for years and that Thomas and Ellen are newlyweds when the film opens. I’m just saying.
The Nosferatu vampire is commonly misunderstood as Dracula. But besides the movie is based on Stocker's novel, the vampire Orlok is based on Ukrainian historic figure, Pilyp Orlyk. He was Ivan Mazepa's trusted person and thus an ally for Carl XII of Sweden. Mazepa and Orlyk both were vassals of the House Romanov. After west of Russia was invaded by Carolus Rex and Russian Tzar's army suffered a major defeat near Narva, Ukrainian Getmans betrayed russian Tzar and pledged to emperor of Sweden. For such betrayal Mazepa and Orlyk were cursed by Orthodox Church Liturgic Anathema. Peter the Great achieved victory in the Northern War. Russian Tsardom has become the Russian Empire. Carl XII fleed from Russia, severely wounded and without most of his army. Mazepa has died in Ukrainian steppe, he was left behind and literally drained of blood by mass of fleas and lices. But there is a legend about Orlyk has became a vampire because of Church's curse. He ate his former friend Mazepa along with his retinue and fleed to Europe. According to people who were the last to see the Hetman in Budapest, he looked like an embittered, hunted madman or a demon-possessed corpse. It was said that he lived in cemeteries, abandoned crumbling houses or burned-down barns. Local commoners rumoured that mad Cossack fed on carrion and fresh corpses, in winter attacked cattle and even broke into a church one night, but fled in confusion, unable to endure the sight of the crucifixion and the smell of incense. When the Habsburg authorities wanted to find out if count Orlyk, once brilliantly graduated from the University of Vienna, did really fallen so low, the hetman had already disappeared without a trace.
Beauty And The Beast is the theme. Within ourselves. We all have an angel on our right shoulder and the Devil on our left. Ellen ‘picks up her cross’ and makes the ultimate self sacrifice to save the city from the very real plague, and her friends and family from further torture.
I saw a review that this movie has a lot of symbolism that refers to 1nc3st. Complicated feelings of desire and love and dread and treason and disgust. Many victims suffer because it can physically feel pleasing but later understand what they’ve been through. And that’s why nosferatu always looks so big and mature in comparison to her, and the mustache, too… of course, it’s symbolic, not literal
I know everyone are having about this movies...AND THEY'RE RIGHT!! I admit the 1st time I watched I liked ok but my 2nd, 3rd, & 4th, it just kept getting better! The atmosphere & the actor performances are just the iceberg! If you're on the fence about going to watch it, definitely go! You won't be disappointed!!!
What I find interesting about Dafoe's character is that he at first is presented as the person who's on Ellen's side, the only one who's treating her as human and not as a problem, but as the story progresses you see he still sees her as a tool and a problem. I think one of the reads of this movie is that Nosferatu is a metaphor for the sexual assault trauma in a repressed and patriarchal society. The way Ellen is legit hurting under this massive trauma that is both legitimate trauma and exacerbated because to society she's seen as the problem for her own trauma. Then the other characters around her are all people who fail her. Her friend who tries so hard but can't understand her, her friend's husband who sees her as troublesome, the first doctor who sees her as a problem to solve and an object, her husband who tries to do right by her but in the end can't treat her as an autonomous person. Dafoe is then someone who seems to be on her side at first and is the only one to talk to her about trying to fix this and respects her agency but in the end he's still so willing to throw her under the bus in order to revive the status quo. He's so willing to let her die so his world can go back to the way it was before.
I was not very convinced but the point is interesting that maybe her sacrifice let's the world go on as normal while that world deserved to metaphorically die (i.e. change) but not sure how that would work look like in terms of plot. Nosferatu would kill everyone, then what would she do?
Overall I was disappointed with it. It's not the kinda movie I'm gonna watch again and again like Nosferatu the Vampyre with Klaus Kinski. Eggers Count Orlock or Count Chocula made me laugh the minute he started talking. Anyway, the movie was a gloomy, draggy affair. I get that Eggers wants to make vampires scary, repugnant and disgusting again, but perhaps I'm not ready for it.
I don't know what this generation's obsession with theories and suppositions comes from. Whatever happened to just enjoying a movie for what it is, and admiration for the ones who brought it to you? I don't need to guess whether or not Ellen was ever assaulted by her father. Bottom line, she called to 'anyone' and Orlock answered. This is a superior movie - the way gothic horror should be filmed. The performances are perfect, as well. Ms. Depp is not getting the attention she deserves. If you want to deep dive into anything you need to take a filmmaking class with Robert Eggers, who has nailed every horror sub genre so far, and ask "how do you do it?"
i kinda disagree on your interpretation of "i am an appetite" ... i think it's a pretty decent allegory for how rapists, abusers, even pervy men see women and this is the way in which it plays into the abuser idea ... this is exemplified in the scene where her friend has been abused by nosferatu through the rats. she has now experienced the darkness of SA, literally says "how do i deal with this shit" and ellen basically has no response, but they now share this darkness great video! lots to think about
It can be, but it is also her dissatisfaction with existence (not just sex, a lot more beyond it) taking a bodily form, inducing her to accept an evil influence on her... at the point the movie starts it's already late. SA is just one more thing it can represent but more broadly I think it is about human desire and it's destructive and shadow sides, as an all consuming force in the worst possible way.
He says "the covenant is signed" not government assigned. In other words shut up Thomas, I have all I need now that you've signed away your marriage for a bag of gold.
Disagree on Ellen and Orlok reuniting in the afterlife. Nosferatu's universe is essentially a Christian one where God and Satan exist, so hell must exist too. Orlok sold his soul to Satan and Ellen sold her soul to Orlok. If these two aren't going to hell, I don't know who would. You don't go to hell to reunite with your ex, you go there to suffer eternally.
It's hard to believe Thomas as a character IMO. Maybe it was just the way his scenes were written, but I just felt like he didn't have enough of a drive to save his wife. He was absent the kind of emotional breakdowns and stress that I think would've made his character much more gripping. Thomas constantly wore this expression of terror, as if he were just a victim to everything happening to him in this movie. Having that kind of shared insanity, in a romance like this, I think, could have taken it higher. If he really loved Ellen I think he would have gone mad with her, at least to some degree. I know that isn't how the original movie went down, but, would Thomas' desperation and fervor to keep the flame burning with his wife still not be enough to ward Nosferatu's curse away? What if someone close to Ellen, like a family member, died due to Nosferatu's plague, instead of some random townspeople? What if Thomas actually fought Nosferatu (either physically or spiritually), lost, but weakened him enough for him to really crave Ellen, and then it was up to her to finish him off? I think in that way, Thomas and Ellen would have been working together, at the height of their romance, before they inevitably get split apart at Nosferatu's arrival.
That's the problem, that Thomas never matches Ellen's emotional depth, he never questions life or existence, she has deeper dimensions he isn't even aware of... that's why he cannot reach her fully. If he only woke up and was willing to follow her beyond ordinary, conventional stuff like his job and material success, it may have been different.
@OpsReitia that's kinda the point tho. She's a misunderstood soul, her extraordinary sensibility is unmatched by any other man or woman on screen. That is the source of her curse and her loneliness. Plus it's realistic with the historical context. In those times (and also now, in a lesser degree) men and women were told to contain and repress emotions.
Can you review the Y2K movie? It was produced by Jonah Hill and seems like it wanted to be a “This is the End” kind of movie. It had so much potential I think but fell flat.
I'm not sure about this reading of the movie. I tend to think that Thomas and Elllen would have been fine in the long run had Orlock been dispatched without Ellen dying. Its obvious that he loved her a LOT even if he didn't understand her prior to leaving for the east, but by the time he gets back he is well on his way to being on the same page as her and takes her seriously. I think their fight scene shows this pretty well. Thomas is still fucked up from his experiences (man can barely stand) when his wife confesses that she is kind of responsible for Orlock and that she has kind of had a psychic affair with Orlock for years and before Tom can process this she proceeds to freak out, smash a bunch of stuff, drool all over the place, make scary faces and then tell Tom that he can't fuck as good as the demon monster that tried to kill him. I, and most other men if they're being honest, would not be able to "rise" to the occasion and would do some pussy liberal thing and try to talk it out. But not our boy Tom...Tom knew what she needed. So he threw her onto the couch and railed her but good, so good in fact that she doesn't get possessed after that (as far as I recall). Tom fucked Orlock out of her system. Or at the very least, lessened Orlock's hold over her enough that she could freely choos to do what she had to do to save them all. When the time came, Tom knew exactly what Ellen needed and gave it to her. I think the tragedy of the film is that their relationship never really had a chance to settle in. If Ellen and Orlock are now eternally together in some outer plain, that's pretty dark and I'm not sure its what Ellen,freed by and with regular access to Tom's giga-Chad cock, would really want.
1) the only actual way to dispatch Orlock is by having Ellen, this is shown when Von Granz is researching. The other method just served to distract the other men, who would never be ready to accept the (only) solution. 2) Ellen's insatisfaction is not merely sexual, it is spiritual, existential, across every level of life. Even if Thomas had "railed her well", which he really doesn't (such a short time and they don't even come, as Orlock gets in the way w visions and stuff), only the sex part would be satisfied but still he is a pretty basic dude and she is still a mystically inclined woman that can metaphorically or literally access entire dimensions he can't. She needed a younger Von Franz. Thomas was dear to her because he tried with all his might, and showed a little bit more connection than others despite her troubles, but still did not quite satisfy her as a partner, just as a really good friend.
It's like Eggers grab the 100 year old masterpiece by Murnau, put it thru' ChatGPT and wrote the prompt "make it like a pretentious TWILIGHT but darker, shittier, artsy fartsy and f*ck up the ending so it's look like a fever nightmare from a modern western woman and retar...erm, I mean, "cinephiles", lmfao. I'll stay with the original.
As a fan of the Murnau's Nosferatu, you must be happy that Eggers' did his version since many theatres have taken this opportunity to show the Murnau's again.
you forgot the "and lace all of my poorly written characters with a tiny dose of all of my suppressed sexuality so it feels historically accurate and authentic ... and we totally need a prosthetic dick with no purpose"
@@deppetluna871 so that means we should also praise Rupert Sanders version of 'the Crow' for it was also a huge opportunity for folkes to rediscover and revisit the original... tz tz
I agree that Thomas couldn’t give her what she truly wanted even though they loved each other.
I feel like her not wanting Thomas to go to Orlok’s castle was a way of her asking him to be more emotionally intelligent/present for her but he was so focused on the “I need to be a high value man who makes 6 figures like Friedrich” that he didn’t get it.
Orlok however evil understood her on that level 🤷🏽♀️
That doesn’t make any sense when she was asking him to not go because of her dreams/visions. I get the feeling that it was more her pleading him to stay cus there’s a mf demon haunting her dreams and sending her visions that leave her confused (ie; how at her wedding to death everyone was dead around them, but she was so happy) & her having the intuition to know that if Thomas went on that business trip, that he’d never come back. Even though she got that last part wrong in the end, Thomas does make it back. But count orlok does not connect with her on “that level” lol when he’s an intruder to her life and dreams. Not trashing you, but I don’t agree with your take whatsoever.
@ no offense but your analysis is too literal. this is a Gothic tale and things aren’t so black and white. Is Orlok a demon who plagues Ellen’s mind? Yes. But there is a romantic (although fucked up) element to their relationship (Eggers and Depp literally state so and the attraction is clearly stated in the script). So while she abhors him, she is attracted to him in a way that she isn’t attracted to her husband, even though she loves him dearly. Orlok is a representation of Ellen’s shadow, her dark desires that she can’t express. Even though Thomas loves her, he doesn’t get her in that way, he is a man of his time who thinks she ought to behave like a woman of her time and stop speaking about her dreams (aka her repressed desires). Is it weird/fucked up/uncomfortable? Yes, that’s the whole point. We can’t use our modern lens to analyse a character that is a 1830s woman in a Gothic tale.
@@myiamor3181 just because there’s lines in the script that have her express some sort of desire for Orlok, does not equal she loves orlok or is even attracted to him. Sorry, but the Movie itself that we watched on the big screen, clearly shows that her “feelings” and “obedience” to orlok is not a natural one, but one that was fabricated and planted within her head. This is made even more clear by Orlok’s visit in the night when he arrives to the city, and his overwhelming power is resisted by her and she DENIES him, because she does not love him but loves Thomas and recognizes that Orlok is some sort of dangerous evil being. Again; I think your take here is completely wrong with Thomas as well. It’s not that Thomas thinks she should not talk about it, he listens to her and tries to understand her, it’s his friend and the friends wife that refuse to acknowledge something is is going on. Thomas tries to understand her, but he is clearly missing the context that her dreams are in fact real, the monster in her dreams is in fact real and not just shadows of her past troubles. He doesn’t try to hush her up, he tried to assure her that her dreams are just dreams, but he still tries to listen to her. I don’t mind that the power dynamic is weird or fucked up at all, it was one of my favorite thematic elements that they killed in the movie, but I think you left the theater thinking that her desire for Orlok was real, when in fact, in the movie itself she realizes it’s not a real feeling at all. I think that looking at it as if she was in love with him or genuinely desired Orlok IS applying a modern lens to an 1830s woman in a gothic tale. She’s not in love with daddy Orlok, Orlok is a manipulator & a groomer.
Yeah I actually agree with OP completely, you got pinned comment
@@marshallstannusthank you 🙏🏽 your review was both funny and deep!
"She called out to the universe for companionship" should have a smash-cut to Lilo from Lilo and Stitch praying for 'the best angel you have'
I saw another interpretation of Orlok as depression. Started when she was a lonely teenager, got her when she was older. Also aligns with her being a misfit and a burden on others around her (in her mind), and seeing death as tempting and desirable.
100% this. Reducing her relationship with Orlok to a tired daddy-kink is so nauseating. God I hope that the future generation of men leaves this mindset in the past (spoiler alert: they won’t).
Could be BUT Nosferatu or Orlok is inspired on Dracula and Dracula doesn’t represents depression.
Yeah I was about to say that the metaphor is that of a toxic or unhealthy coping mechanism.
@@renatenha it's INSPIRED. This is not a Dracula adaptation. It doesn't matter what dracula represents
I think Ellen loves Thomas. In the beginning, she said that when she married Thomas all of these like dark thoughts, that scare and excitement her, went away, and I think that’s because she loves him but also because she thinks that Thomas could be what Nosferatu was to her but in a healthy way. Thomas never opens up to that idea because he doesn’t understand and he trying to be the husband he thinks he should be, which in turn makes him a bad husband for Ellen. Thomas doesn’t listen to what she wants, which invites her to looking for it else where, inviting Nosferatu back into her life. I think nosferatu is an abuser but that doesn’t deny the fact that he satisfies something in Ellen. I think the idea of him being a lover and abuser to Ellen are both very prominent in the movie. And nosferatu listens to Ellen’s desires her appetite which Thomas doesn’t so in that way emotionally he beats Thomas.
I think the same for most of your take, but I don't think she turned back to Nosferatu bc Thomas didn't satisfy her. I think when she married Thomas, Nosferatu felt he lost control of her and so moved to get it back. It's only once Thomas left that her spells came back.
The problem with Nosferatu is that it teaches women that their carnal desires come from an evil place that will be their undoing. A modern retelling would have Ellen survive Nosferatu's attempt to consume her.
I personally think it's not about sexual repression, but about suicide. The sex is more an allegory of the pull of life and death. Thomas sort of represents life to Ellen, and Orlock represents death. Ellen is shown to be very, very mentally ill due to a mix of issues including childhood trauma. At the beginning, Thomas and Ellen are pretty happy newly-weds, and Ellen has mostly lost her dark thoughts, but when Thomas leaves, she regresses into her melancholy. When Orlock approaches, she believes that succumbing to him (ie, succumbing to death itself) will save everyone. This is sort of similar to what suicidal depression does to a person's perception of themselves and their value ("I'm such a burden, people would be happier if I were gone" sort of thing)
Excellent take!
and her asking to spend the night with her bestfriend, wanting to spend her sort of final moments with the people that love her. the people that care.
👆💯👍
this is an excellent take! I think there's definitely an interpretation that looks at the intersection of how repression in general (of sexual desire, identity, etc.) pushes a woman to suicide.
Some people are completely misreading the film. Lilly didn’t love Orlock AT ALL. She loved Thomas. But she was terrified by the fact that she was actually drawn to the darkness that Orlock’s presence consumed her with. Until Willem Dafoe’s character informs her that she is drawn to Orlock BECAUSE it is her destiny to sacrifice herself to Orlock to save the world. To save THOMAS. She sacrificed herself for her love of Thomas for sure.
I may or may not agree, but I love seeing people share their interpretations of good films. Thank you.
@@kruksog there are some things in this film that can be interpreted, whether or not she loved Thomas or Orlock isn’t one of them. I think the objective fact is obvious. Her connection with Orlock had nothing to do with love or deviant sex. It was because of prophecy. That’s it.
@MasonDixie I don't think it's necessarily prophecy either. She had a psychic gift - like Joan of Arc - that drew him to her. She used that gift to draw him back and kill him, turning the tables. Orlock surely understood her in a way others didn't, as did Professor Von Franz, but that didn't mean she was attracted to Orlock or had some secret lust for him.
@@dante6985 it was pretty outrightly declared prophecy through Von Franz research.
@@MasonDixie That's not a prophecy, it's discovering an Achilles heel. Von Franz's research suggests Nosferatu can only be defeated through a fair maiden's willing sacrifice, so Ellen does so while Thomas is distracted.
But she didn't have to, she chose to. She has agency and we should admire her for her choice.
A prophecy is like the Prophet telling Oedipus Rex he'll kill his father and marry his mother. Which he does (Eeew). Then he stabs his own eyes out.
I think it's an interesting parallel how in the beginning of the movie, Thomas left her bedside to go to work while at the end Orlok didn't leave her bedside even though it literally killed him.
I think the fact that there are so many potential readings is just evidence of this film being a certified banger. Its so compelling, I'm obsessed
I don't really buy that Ellen has any particular desire to "be" with Orlok, and her dreams as a somnambulist are also being manipulated by Orlok since she's already under contract. Her demeanor totally changes once she's aware of what Orlok is and intends to do, and when he confronts her again in her dreams she practically teases him and is openly defiant. Orlok has to mass murder the people of Wisborg and threaten to kill Thomas just to force her compliance. If it was really left up to her own agency she would have rejected him.
Orlok is also an undead thing who only exists due to a contract he made with a demon, so his soul is already forsaken. When Orlok dies and hemmorhages every drop of blood in his body that's it. He doesn't even have a soul anymore, his soul has been burning in Hell for over a thousand years. He's animated solely by his wicked intelligence. So there's not really any chance of them vibing spiritually after the fact, Ellen is most likely ascended to heaven as a saint for making the ultimate sacrifice for Wisborg.
The big catch of this all is that Professor Alvin is just as manipulative as all the other men in her life, and leads her on with the expectation that she has no choice but to submit Orlok and draw him into the light of the Sun - even though Thomas knows that you can simply kill a vampire by mundane means. Alvin chooses the plan to destroy Orlok's sanctuary because it's a fool proof alternative, and he doesn't value Ellen's life over the lives of the masses. He idolizes her as a kind of Madonna to rationalize her sacrifice to himself.
Nosferatu is so damn good though. It's completely taken over my life. I'm working on a research project to explain all the historical context of the movie, and I have so much ground to cover it could take me months with my day job. There's real occultism, the transition between early and full modernity, the interaction between the fading aristocracy and the oblivious bourgeois, the development of capitalism in Germany, the sexual politics. Eggers is so historically meticulous it's all relevant, and it highlights the historical resonance of the original Nosferatu as well; which was explicitly occultist and featured Enochian script.
P.S. Don't want to give the impression that I think your analysis or the other theories are dumb. This is a very well considered analysis. The thing I keep coming back to though is that Orlok has no romantic desire whatsoever. He tells Ellen that he is an "appetite, nothing more" and that she is "an Eve who has not forgotten the Garden." He's telling her straight up that his only interest is in consuming her because she is still innocent despite being deflowered by Orlok & Thomas. Her purity is what makes her such a valuable target compared to even the children, because they are innocent in ignorance while she is a grown woman.
My reading (the final one, that combines all other motifs explore to their reductive common thematic thread) is that it doesn't matter if it is truly romantic or truly love.There is a cosmic bond there between them. It works in tandem with him coveting her innocence, especially if you read it as a personification of her dark repressed desire in a society that has no place or rational explanation of it.He covets it,she covets his darkness - yet to acquire either would ruin them because it'd dissolve the fabric of what each is as a self-contained unity.So the moment she succumbs to the dark he succumbs to the light, and the taste of her innocence is death for him just as giving herself over to darkness is death for her. They create a perfect momentary unity together and self-annihilate into a two-headed corpse - the alchemical queen and king of the hieros gamos. In a way,as von Franz might say, they achieve the Great Work, become gold together. In a spiritual sense you can see it as a covenant realized, or/and as a divine self-deification through knowledge (of one another) and spiritual ascension. Just my interpretation at its most general level, obviously many themes are threaded through in the specific plots.
@@kostantza1 The "cosmic bond" you're talking about is child marriage. Consuming Ellen wouldn't ruin Orlok he'd simply be satiated for another indeterminate length of time in torpor until the next victim presents herself. That or he would follow through on what he told Thomas and continue consuming women in the ignorance of modernity, growing into an unprecedented power which wasn't possible in the pre-modern world that knows how to deal with vampires. The fire from Orlok's sanctuary can be seen from Ellen's window, so Orlok could have chosen to spare Ellen, but he consumes her regardless because he's desperate to add on another few hours of unlife in addition to the over 1000 years of consumption he's already lived.
Ellen is not the first saintly woman to be consumed by Orlok. He was going to drain her and move on to another century of terror.
@@BradfordCarter I am....not certain "child marriage" is a theme there, tbh, while there is quite an abundance for themes.And while it could be a valid backstory, that, that Orlock awakens when some innocent soul chances upon him, and uses them to not only drain them, but impose himself on a different era, there is no more evidence of this in the movie than there is to say that Orlock is unsatiated because the nature of his self (appetite) is insatiability.To be an appetite necessitates never to be content, and we could just as easily assume that he'd lived much, consumed much and had given up on the world until Ellen chanced upon him, and this was his opportunity to be, for once, complete - to die before he could hunger again. I don't even think at some point the readings contradict each other, because I'm sure if Ellen hadn't initiated he wouldn't have volunteered to die with her, but by the end one can certainly see acceptance in his choice, if they so choose. It's different from Ellen's perspective of course.
@@kostantza1 Ellen was literally a child when she first encountered Orlok, and he induced her into promising herself to him. That's a verbal contract bound by all the laws of magic that define Orlok's existence. It's what gives him power over her and is the basis of his claim to her four years later. It's exactly like arranging the marriage of a daughter to a grown man, which happened all the time in this period.
Eggers is an incredibly meticulous historical filmmaker, he wouldn't have overlooked something this obvious without it being intentional. Ellen even scorns Orlok for taking advantage of her innocence. When she gave herself over to him as a child he commits psychic rape to her, which is why she began convulsing uncontrollably at the abandoned manor.
If you really think that Orlok was seeking his own death you didn't understand the movie at all. In a sense you're projecting Herzog's interpretation of Dracula onto Eggers's version of Nosferatu. He's not a tragic figure of gothic romance, he's a monster of pure evil who was an aristocratic parasite whose existence was already dependent upon draining the life from peasants & serfs. He entered a demonic contract to continue this existence eternally, and his only thought & ambition is to unnaturally extend this parasitic existence forever. The class analysis is totally absent from your understanding.
@@BradfordCarter Ok, first of all, I project nothing on nothing.Everything I say is speculative and leave room for other interpretations - if anything, it's you who speaks with immovable conviction. She says "I was but an innocent child". That doesn't mean she was an actual child, as in, kid, it means she was young, inexperienced and virginal. There are many interpretations of an occult covenant before you reach the "child marriage" one, especially since there is no father figure who pledged her, but Ellen who, even under deception, pledged herself. Also I never said *he* is a tragic figure of gothic romance, I said Ellen is the tragic heroine of a gothic romance, which is common knowledge that is not bound by healthy romantic perceptions or common romantic tropes of any era - you can have a victim and a stalker, an abuser, a literal malevolent force hellbent on dominating them, and it doesn't mean it is not a romance. Gothic romance is literally about that which is greater than the self. The connection between two characters, whether it's classed as "love" or not, supercedes anything else in their path, usually because they are presented as two parts of the same whole - and Orlock is Ellen's lower anima, the hungry one defined by appetite, twisted and condemned to the dark by social convention. Ellen belongs with him because she *is* him, but she's not only him - she is also a creature of life and the world, she loves Thomas, she sacrifices herself for the world. Orlock is at the same time a contagious force of evil - but we are meant to discern, per the director's words, some human-like characteristics in him, even if they are only pride and greed. The callback of her asking him to remain in bed when his literal death hangs out of the window is a callback to the beginning of the movie, when Thomas leaves for work instead. You said it yourself Eggers wouldn't leave that to chance. The class analysis is pretty obvious, and also tangentially relative to our talk, so I didn't see a reason to go into it. All in all, the pieces are all there, and depending on where you choose to look into the kaleidoscope of themes, you can come up with either a reading of him as a classist abuser, or him as a gothic lover. You get way too worked up and borderline condescending to me for what is readings of a multilayered work of art. If it was as straightforward as you make it appear, we'd have no reason to talk about it.
Lilly’s performance reminded me of Eva Green in Penny dreadful. These two women do possession so well. It’s so terrifying.
Omg YES
watch Isabel Adjani in Possession
@ I will add it to the to watchlist. Thank you for the recommendation.
Same here.
First movie in a few years where I went to the theatre twice to watch a movie, it was such an engaging and interesting watch
Women saying they like Orlok....girl, get the the therapy because absolutely not and it has nothing to do with looks. We all have fallen in love with monster looking characters at one point or another but Orlok, as a person (not a metaphor), is a creep, pushy, jealous, and controlling. Dominance might be your kink but once consent is taken away entirely, it stops being sexy. As a metaphor, Orlok can represent death, depression, temptation, shame, deadly masculinity, the lingering affects of assault on the victim and all other yucky aspects of the human condition. Orlok is irredeemable and insufferable (literally in the name Nosferatu) and he should repulse you. Saw the movie twice, absolutely adore it 🖤🤍. Also the amount of funny lines in the movie hit me on the 2nd watch.
It should have to do with looks/age too
this guy said Orlok represents shame then shames women for liking him lmao
When Orlok killed those kids...dear God that was horrifying
Yeah that part was rough
In the end, it seems like she chose to sacrifice herself knowing it would kill Orlok so he won't hurt her husband and the people around her.
how I see it is that she decided to follow her nature and to become one with orlok (who represents that lustful part of her that she and everyone around her wanted to suppress) by liteally bringing him to light and pulling him out of the shadows of her supressed unconscious. its a very bittersweet ending. she becomes one with her nature, and she only can do that by being united with it in death. because there is no place for women like her in this 19th century society.
I too, have been obsessed with this movie since I saw it New Year's Day. You are hitting the points that I have been frustrated that all the other review videos I've watched haven't even been mentioning.
Ellen and Thomas' first scene, she tries to keep him a little longer before going to work. The instant boredom and dull expression on her face when he shut the door told me immediately she was not satisfied.
I think Ellen and Thomas did love each other, but they wouldn't have had premarittle sex and then it was stated that the honeymoon was short. And I do think that Ellen wanted more, but she was still happy with Thomas. They just hadn't had enough time.
Thomas in the other hand is trying to be the man and husband he thinks he should be as it's what's expected in society. He wants to be what's considerd as successful which means a good job, big house and a family. Ellen is different from everyone else in society and doesn't care about material things and just wants Thomas, not what Thomas can provide for her, which is unusual in that era. Thomas doesn't understand this or just doesn't care.
Nah, it's not just sex that Ellen needed. She needed a companion that also complemented her spiritually and emotionally and had the same abandon as her. You can have a good sex life and still be unsatisfied with your partnership, or with life, or with society, etc. I think she and this type of deeper insatisfaction of which sex was but one more component. Unfortunately the only being that met the criteria was undead and evil.
It bears pointing out that Orlock says "you are not for humankind",but that could as easily mean she is of a more debased state as of a higher one, and seeing Orlock, obviously, I think we see what becomes when you give into your lower instincts - become an appetite. Orlock wants this for her - or rather, wants to fulfill his hunger by devouring her and making her and him of one substance, but the thing is, for all her sexuality and darkness might be repressed by social mores, Ellen isn't just that. Her carnal anxieties coexist with her virtues, which her love for Thomas (aptly not portrayed as a sexless,conventional thing) symbolizes - she is not of the higher spheres, but isn't naturally of the lower either.By combining her giving into Orlock with the higher purpose of saving her world, her city and her beloved husband at the expense of her own life, she acknowledges both her natures at the same time and thus achieves completion - and Orlock, who is a being of the lowest spheres, fulfills his ultimate purpose with the ultimate sacrifice - he devours her and is devoured in turn, dragged into the light and rendered obsolete - as Orlock, but he is absorbed in Ellen, and thus is self-annihilated as the two parts come together, and become one "being", or rather leave behind a print of their last moments as we see in the end. All in all, I think his and her death are a moment of perfection, and that's why we both see her cradling him just before he bleeds out, and see him for the first time vulnerable, pitisome, maybe even sad, as if awed more than terrified by the sun. Idk, liked your review and you thoughts very much, as well as how you acknowledge different readings as valid - had to share my own thoughts. So many levels to read this movie, I feel reduction to a couple would demean the creators' enterprise.
Like how it was said in the movie. You need to face your darkness and know it exists in order to conquer it
First straight man with a solid review of this movie
how come you be sure he is straight?
Don’t diss my man Cody Leach like that
Hetero males feel threatened by Orlok's BD energy.
the scene where Ellen said "You can never please me as he could" to Thomas is so 😭😭😭😭 i didn't expect that
I think that was the presence of orlok inside her like the demonic presence that was saw before
This movie makes you to think about it a lot, and analyze it every different ways. This movie for me is a masterpiece 10/10 can’t stop listening to the movie soundtrack every day. And I can’t wait to pre order this movie
your review is the closest assessment of Nosferatu to my own thoughts than any of the reviews I’ve seen online.
I would have felt more sorrow for Orlock if he hadn’t killed the kids. That was a bridge too far but necessary I suppose to make him truly evil.
When you cant forget a movie its beautiful..i saw nosferatu twice and love him so much...
Ive seen it twice now... and the second time was even better! Absolutely gorgeous brilliant movie!!! I cannot wait for Eggers Extended cut! Dafoe is brilliant, well, the entire cast is awesome. Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult were outstanding!! Bill Scarsgard's voice creeped the actual hell out of me!!
Fredrick loved that his wife would have babies, til she got that boy. It was about how the woman could further his legacy. Still using her body after her soul was gone.
Not really necessarily. It's very much in line with the gothic romance tradition. It's "gothic" for a reason. Necrophilia features pretty heavily in these narratives,whether as an act of posseession, despair, grief or malice, or all of them.
@ exactly, her body belonged to him. So it was his to use even in her death.
@ I didn’t say it was wrong. Just his characterization was juxtaposed to Thomas. He was the “traditional” man. And his wife had her “awakening” after sleeping with Ellen and her encounter with Orloc. Her husband wasn’t pleading her. She was a baby factory.
@@MeghannMonroeThat is a reading of it in accordance with some of the themes,for sure.
I’m still in shock that Australia rated it M. I was worried it wouldn’t be gory… it was sooooo grotesque. Delightfully so! And yet they think it’s okay for 12 year olds to watch coz no naked fucking? He ate a bird!!
Well she literally bangs a corpse...sooooo
They have a lot of sunlight down in 'stralia, maybe that's why they aren't afraid of allowing kids near this vampire' s darkness. 😅
If this movie is a love story then its a totally fkked up love story .Count orlok is pure evil and abuser to put it mildly. Orlock is a vampire who just wants to feed . The fact he is bonking ellen while he is feeding on her blood is irrelevant. Coppolas adaptation of bram stokers dracula is a love story , which btw os not in the actual book but was an interesting take. Eggers version of nosferatu was a solid movie, it wasnt particularly scary in my opinion but was creepy and unsettling with a couple of jump scares , and the cinematography was beautiful to look at. Definitely worth watching on the big screen
This review was been the most accurate depiction of how this movie made me feel. It’s was horrific, beautiful, and mystic all
At once. Well done, subscription earned
I watched this movie more then once and u missed a lot if that’s what you got 😭😭I really don’t agree with ur interpretation of orlock and Ellen she literally said he was her shame and she was taking advantage of as a child and the end to me is her taking back what she lost as a child then the scene with Thomas comes right after her and orlock talk and she literally calls him vile not only that orlock tried to break them by saying Thomas was not a man because he laid with orlock then u talk about them not having children they just got married they where married for all two weeks before she died on top of that she begged him not to go because she knew orlock was summoning him to get to her
I know it's a meme but I wasn't prepared to hold space for this movie in such a way. Like I think about for a week now. I want more. I'm not surprised people are writing fanfics of this movie. Like you just want more
We're getting an extended cut, so that's good news! I know a lot of people said this movie was too long, but frankly I thought it was too SHORT. I feel like a good chunk was cut out of the second and third acts to pick up the pace of the film. Give me more Eggers!
I saw the word fanfic and my brain immediately went "Oh no.mp3"
yeah i have to stand on business and say this movie messed up by making orlok victimize ellen as a child. bc the whole time she's basically getting psychically SA by orlok during her hysteric spells, until in the end she was finally brainwashed into accepting it and giving her 'assaulter' consent like: "all i think about is this SA, all i want is this now so come give it to me." romanticizing that kind of thing just feels very wrong. 🤷🏽♂️
this is a valid take however gothic literature features and romanticises a lot of taboo and general darkness, i think it’s not always to be taken at face value or thinking the story is condoning it
@@bethellen4057 yeah, the "wrongness" of it does add to the horror of the story. but when people are reading it as, 'you should root for them,' or that she's happy in the end, or that orlok sexually liberated her, i just feel like they're confusing this with stephanie meyer. bc ellen was targeted as a child, never consented, and their initial encounter was not a gratifying one. it haunted her for the rest of her life. 🤷🏽♂️
I don't think the movie romanticised anything, it portrays the events as horrifying as they are. It never tries to sugarcoat it. It's not sexy, she is not happy, and it ends in death, they don't end up flying together into the night or any romantic shit. She had a destructive yearning that materialised and consumed her. It's just the logic of human desire but make it evil and turned up to 11. Death drive, depression, consuming insatisfaction, that's what he represents. Humanity and society deal with this through marriage, children, through prefabricated markers of success, vulgar means or rather substitutes of self actualization, but it is barely a fig leaf, a band-aid, that doesn't really make anyone that much happier. It merely conceals what happens under the surface of society. Desire causes chaos. Desire can unleash destructive potential, not just fun and creativity. Anyway, there is so much more about this character and film than a metaphor for SA or a sappy steamy romance with a monster. The SA references are there, but there is so much more. There is a lot of philosophy and psychology going into it.
@@OpsReitia well, i guess i mean that this guy who reviewed it messed up by mentioning rooting for them, and her being happy in the end and that he liberated her. i just don't think he observed the entire picture, bc he's basically praises orlok for 'saving her from a repressed society,' despite the fact that she was groomed to have this hyper sexuality (towards him) in the first place bc she was repetitively victimized sexually since childhood. so he praised her executioner for freeing her from an inescapable prison, when he was the prison architect in the first place.
@@perrywonderclub☝️🧠💯❤️👍
tbh when the trailer of nosferatu dropped I was pretty excited to see people getting into vampiric gothic horror/romance again because interview with the vampire was my favourite show last year, bar none. but with how many people seemingly taking this movie too literally, idk if I'm ready for the takes that's gonna come out when more people discover interview with the vampire...
I loved your synopsis, very entertaining, you earned a sub from me. That said, Ellen and Thomas are newlyweds at the start of the movie so they wouldn't have had any children, or much physical intimacy at all for that matter, given the era they were living in (premarital sex was a huge no-no). Looking forward to more of your videos!
After seeing Nosferatu for the second time it was incredible. I’ll see it again or more before it leaves the theaters. It’s an experience. If you separated this movie from the Dracula franchise you could call it “the haunted girl”. She was haunted by a demon of masturbation
You are 100% in my line of thinking on my take for this film. I especially loved your point on Ellen and Orlok being together in the afterlife or some kind of astral plane. I loved this film so much. It's been on my mind since I saw it.
People just need to stop idealizing SA and toxic relationship victms, and how their should feel and cope with their experiencies
you Sold me in under sixty seconds sir lmao well done
I didn't see Orlok as pathetic in the end, I think he saw the sun comming up and resigned to his fate. He kind of just stares at the sun before looking back at her and dying together. He hasn't seen the sun in hundreds of years, he didn't fight it, he didn't get angry with Ellen even, he very tenderly and gently put his hand on her shoulder to hold her as they both died together. I like your notion though that they are off together in another realm.
Okay. Great review. But, it also should be noted that Anna and Fredrick have been married for years and that Thomas and Ellen are newlyweds when the film opens. I’m just saying.
The Nosferatu vampire is commonly misunderstood as Dracula. But besides the movie is based on Stocker's novel, the vampire Orlok is based on Ukrainian historic figure, Pilyp Orlyk. He was Ivan Mazepa's trusted person and thus an ally for Carl XII of Sweden. Mazepa and Orlyk both were vassals of the House Romanov. After west of Russia was invaded by Carolus Rex and Russian Tzar's army suffered a major defeat near Narva, Ukrainian Getmans betrayed russian Tzar and pledged to emperor of Sweden. For such betrayal Mazepa and Orlyk were cursed by Orthodox Church Liturgic Anathema. Peter the Great achieved victory in the Northern War. Russian Tsardom has become the Russian Empire. Carl XII fleed from Russia, severely wounded and without most of his army. Mazepa has died in Ukrainian steppe, he was left behind and literally drained of blood by mass of fleas and lices. But there is a legend about Orlyk has became a vampire because of Church's curse. He ate his former friend Mazepa along with his retinue and fleed to Europe. According to people who were the last to see the Hetman in Budapest, he looked like an embittered, hunted madman or a demon-possessed corpse. It was said that he lived in cemeteries, abandoned crumbling houses or burned-down barns. Local commoners rumoured that mad Cossack fed on carrion and fresh corpses, in winter attacked cattle and even broke into a church one night, but fled in confusion, unable to endure the sight of the crucifixion and the smell of incense. When the Habsburg authorities wanted to find out if count Orlyk, once brilliantly graduated from the University of Vienna, did really fallen so low, the hetman had already disappeared without a trace.
Do you have any sites/books that talk about it ?
Beauty And The Beast is the theme. Within ourselves. We all have an angel on our right shoulder and the Devil on our left. Ellen ‘picks up her cross’ and makes the ultimate self sacrifice to save the city from the very real plague, and her friends and family from further torture.
the sexual abuse themes here (and many other layers, obviously) link with The Exorcist so much...
That opening bit was incredible. Too funny.
I saw a review that this movie has a lot of symbolism that refers to 1nc3st. Complicated feelings of desire and love and dread and treason and disgust. Many victims suffer because it can physically feel pleasing but later understand what they’ve been through. And that’s why nosferatu always looks so big and mature in comparison to her, and the mustache, too… of course, it’s symbolic, not literal
you review movies in a way that makes me feel like you'd be a great writer / director
This is so sweet and means the world, thank you so much!
Willem: "I wouldn't sleep w him" lol
I LOVED Nosferatu. It was a beautiful masterpiece. I saw it twice now ❤
Orlok matches her freak
I know everyone are having about this movies...AND THEY'RE RIGHT!! I admit the 1st time I watched I liked ok but my 2nd, 3rd, & 4th, it just kept getting better! The atmosphere & the actor performances are just the iceberg! If you're on the fence about going to watch it, definitely go! You won't be disappointed!!!
the last shot of the movie was like perfect
What I find interesting about Dafoe's character is that he at first is presented as the person who's on Ellen's side, the only one who's treating her as human and not as a problem, but as the story progresses you see he still sees her as a tool and a problem. I think one of the reads of this movie is that Nosferatu is a metaphor for the sexual assault trauma in a repressed and patriarchal society. The way Ellen is legit hurting under this massive trauma that is both legitimate trauma and exacerbated because to society she's seen as the problem for her own trauma. Then the other characters around her are all people who fail her. Her friend who tries so hard but can't understand her, her friend's husband who sees her as troublesome, the first doctor who sees her as a problem to solve and an object, her husband who tries to do right by her but in the end can't treat her as an autonomous person. Dafoe is then someone who seems to be on her side at first and is the only one to talk to her about trying to fix this and respects her agency but in the end he's still so willing to throw her under the bus in order to revive the status quo. He's so willing to let her die so his world can go back to the way it was before.
I was not very convinced but the point is interesting that maybe her sacrifice let's the world go on as normal while that world deserved to metaphorically die (i.e. change) but not sure how that would work look like in terms of plot. Nosferatu would kill everyone, then what would she do?
Your ears move when you say "consider". (great video btw)
whyyy just why ctfu Id never say that word again if someone said that to me
Overall I was disappointed with it. It's not the kinda movie I'm gonna watch again and again like Nosferatu the Vampyre with Klaus Kinski. Eggers Count Orlock or Count Chocula made me laugh the minute he started talking. Anyway, the movie was a gloomy, draggy affair. I get that Eggers wants to make vampires scary, repugnant and disgusting again, but perhaps I'm not ready for it.
21m5s the bar for men is so low
Great analysis!
I don't know what this generation's obsession with theories and suppositions comes from.
Whatever happened to just enjoying a movie for what it is, and admiration for the ones who brought it to you? I don't need to guess whether or not Ellen was ever assaulted by her father. Bottom line, she called to 'anyone' and Orlock answered.
This is a superior movie - the way gothic horror should be filmed. The performances are perfect, as well. Ms. Depp is not getting the attention she deserves. If you want to deep dive into anything you need to take a filmmaking class with Robert Eggers, who has nailed every horror sub genre so far, and ask "how do you do it?"
i kinda disagree on your interpretation of "i am an appetite" ... i think it's a pretty decent allegory for how rapists, abusers, even pervy men see women and this is the way in which it plays into the abuser idea ... this is exemplified in the scene where her friend has been abused by nosferatu through the rats. she has now experienced the darkness of SA, literally says "how do i deal with this shit" and ellen basically has no response, but they now share this darkness
great video! lots to think about
It can be, but it is also her dissatisfaction with existence (not just sex, a lot more beyond it) taking a bodily form, inducing her to accept an evil influence on her... at the point the movie starts it's already late. SA is just one more thing it can represent but more broadly I think it is about human desire and it's destructive and shadow sides, as an all consuming force in the worst possible way.
Great Analysis!
All I’m hearing is Orlok and Allan. You’re the only person I’ve watched who has said what I think the movie is about
He says "the covenant is signed" not government assigned. In other words shut up Thomas, I have all I need now that you've signed away your marriage for a bag of gold.
Disagree on Ellen and Orlok reuniting in the afterlife. Nosferatu's universe is essentially a Christian one where God and Satan exist, so hell must exist too. Orlok sold his soul to Satan and Ellen sold her soul to Orlok. If these two aren't going to hell, I don't know who would. You don't go to hell to reunite with your ex, you go there to suffer eternally.
It's hard to believe Thomas as a character IMO. Maybe it was just the way his scenes were written, but I just felt like he didn't have enough of a drive to save his wife. He was absent the kind of emotional breakdowns and stress that I think would've made his character much more gripping. Thomas constantly wore this expression of terror, as if he were just a victim to everything happening to him in this movie. Having that kind of shared insanity, in a romance like this, I think, could have taken it higher. If he really loved Ellen I think he would have gone mad with her, at least to some degree. I know that isn't how the original movie went down, but, would Thomas' desperation and fervor to keep the flame burning with his wife still not be enough to ward Nosferatu's curse away? What if someone close to Ellen, like a family member, died due to Nosferatu's plague, instead of some random townspeople? What if Thomas actually fought Nosferatu (either physically or spiritually), lost, but weakened him enough for him to really crave Ellen, and then it was up to her to finish him off? I think in that way, Thomas and Ellen would have been working together, at the height of their romance, before they inevitably get split apart at Nosferatu's arrival.
That's the problem, that Thomas never matches Ellen's emotional depth, he never questions life or existence, she has deeper dimensions he isn't even aware of... that's why he cannot reach her fully. If he only woke up and was willing to follow her beyond ordinary, conventional stuff like his job and material success, it may have been different.
@OpsReitia that's kinda the point tho. She's a misunderstood soul, her extraordinary sensibility is unmatched by any other man or woman on screen. That is the source of her curse and her loneliness. Plus it's realistic with the historical context. In those times (and also now, in a lesser degree) men and women were told to contain and repress emotions.
Can you review the Y2K movie? It was produced by Jonah Hill and seems like it wanted to be a “This is the End” kind of movie. It had so much potential I think but fell flat.
Alright I’ll check out if I can find a copy or if it comes to cinemas in Australia!
count orlocks #1 groupie I’m cryinggg😭
0:05 🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Using “the freakiest horror of the year” w a pic of lily rose depp topless scene wow this is really telling bud
I'm not sure about this reading of the movie. I tend to think that Thomas and Elllen would have been fine in the long run had Orlock been dispatched without Ellen dying. Its obvious that he loved her a LOT even if he didn't understand her prior to leaving for the east, but by the time he gets back he is well on his way to being on the same page as her and takes her seriously.
I think their fight scene shows this pretty well. Thomas is still fucked up from his experiences (man can barely stand) when his wife confesses that she is kind of responsible for Orlock and that she has kind of had a psychic affair with Orlock for years and before Tom can process this she proceeds to freak out, smash a bunch of stuff, drool all over the place, make scary faces and then tell Tom that he can't fuck as good as the demon monster that tried to kill him. I, and most other men if they're being honest, would not be able to "rise" to the occasion and would do some pussy liberal thing and try to talk it out. But not our boy Tom...Tom knew what she needed. So he threw her onto the couch and railed her but good, so good in fact that she doesn't get possessed after that (as far as I recall). Tom fucked Orlock out of her system. Or at the very least, lessened Orlock's hold over her enough that she could freely choos to do what she had to do to save them all.
When the time came, Tom knew exactly what Ellen needed and gave it to her. I think the tragedy of the film is that their relationship never really had a chance to settle in.
If Ellen and Orlock are now eternally together in some outer plain, that's pretty dark and I'm not sure its what Ellen,freed by and with regular access to Tom's giga-Chad cock, would really want.
1) the only actual way to dispatch Orlock is by having Ellen, this is shown when Von Granz is researching. The other method just served to distract the other men, who would never be ready to accept the (only) solution. 2) Ellen's insatisfaction is not merely sexual, it is spiritual, existential, across every level of life. Even if Thomas had "railed her well", which he really doesn't (such a short time and they don't even come, as Orlock gets in the way w visions and stuff), only the sex part would be satisfied but still he is a pretty basic dude and she is still a mystically inclined woman that can metaphorically or literally access entire dimensions he can't. She needed a younger Von Franz. Thomas was dear to her because he tried with all his might, and showed a little bit more connection than others despite her troubles, but still did not quite satisfy her as a partner, just as a really good friend.
This is the second lilly I've seen who gets applauded for getting run through, first lilly Philips and now lilly-rose depp , seriously WTF?
I stopped thinking about the snooze fest as soon as the credits hit.
The movie was boring
It's like Eggers grab the 100 year old masterpiece by Murnau, put it thru' ChatGPT and wrote the prompt "make it like a pretentious TWILIGHT but darker, shittier, artsy fartsy and f*ck up the ending so it's look like a fever nightmare from a modern western woman and retar...erm, I mean, "cinephiles", lmfao. I'll stay with the original.
Rage bait
As a fan of the Murnau's Nosferatu, you must be happy that Eggers' did his version since many theatres have taken this opportunity to show the Murnau's again.
you forgot the "and lace all of my poorly written characters with a tiny dose of all of my suppressed
sexuality so it feels historically accurate and authentic ... and we totally need a prosthetic dick with no purpose"
@@deppetluna871 so that means we should also praise Rupert Sanders version of 'the Crow' for it was also a huge opportunity for folkes to rediscover and revisit the original... tz tz
Boo hoo