A final declaration of consent

By intentionally using her own body as a weapon, NosferatuEllen becomes her own hero.
Photo: Focus functions

Spoilers for the 2024 and 1922 versions follow Nosferatuincluding the endings of each film.

Calls a vampire movie Ellen doesn’t have the same oomph as Nosferatu. But Robert Eggers’ new version of the vampire classic stands out precisely for its treatment of this character, who FW Murnau’s silent original from 1922 defines only as a willing victim in the service of her husband. Meanwhile, Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen strives for redemption for her own sake.

Across his filmography of four features, Eggers’ female characters can be selfish and inscrutable, but this is almost always a reaction to unsympathetic, patriarchal societies. Think about it The witchTeenage Thomasin, cruelly mistreated and underestimated by her English settler parents because she was just a daughter, started over and chose a delicious life in community with Black Phillip. Or Queen Gudrún The NorthmanShe starts a new family with her brother-in-law after he kills her husband. It is unclear whether she was actually abused or was pursuing her own desires. And while the monstrous mermaid is there The lighthouse Although she is not a full-fledged character, her mix of aggression and sensuality towards Wickie Ephraim Winslow is one of the film’s defining motifs, a representation of both the fascination and unknowability of the natural world and perhaps of a woman’s mind.

The women in Eggers’ films tend to be sympathetic, but their motivations are not always clearly stated – a pattern he breaks with Depp’s Ellen. Like Anya Taylor-Joy’s Thomasin, she is a young woman whose childhood alienation was caused by an unhappy family life and who turns to an older, evil man for attention and self-realization. (Taylor-Joy was first cast in the role and then dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.) Eggers’ adoration for Murnaus Nosferatu – it is the film that made him want to become a director, as he says – leads to a lot of mimicry: he uses the same character names as in the original German film and retains many of the plot lines and visual elements of the silent film. like Nosferatu’s malleable shadow. But compared to its predecessor, this is Nosferatu offers space for central moments, humanity and heroism to almost all female characters. This expansion is most evident at the end of the film, where Ellen’s fatal sacrifice is recreated but also reframed.

Ellen is no longer passionate about saving her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), an act of martyrdom or self-imposed audacity. In the context of Eggers’ expanded backstory for Ellen, the young bride not only decides to spend a night with Count Orlok; She decides to return to her former shame for having a relationship with him in the first place and redeems herself by using that relationship to defeat him. Ellen’s final act is not an impotent surrender. It is a springboard for research into consent. Within this new one NosferatuThe eponymous vampire is a stalker, an obsessive, a bad friend who talks and harasses his ex and doesn’t leave him alone, especially when he finds out that she has happily moved on. Nosferatu haunting Ellen’s dreams basically means he slides into her DMs, and the sexualized nightmares he forces her to have are a kind of revenge porn. This guy sucks! Eggers counters this by deepening Ellen’s characterization, describing her as a woman more clearly torn apart by Nosferatu’s interference and more clearly driven to regain control of her own physicality and sexuality.

The “Virgin on Horseback” (Katerina Bila).
Photo: Focus functions

A century ago, Ellen was a woman consumed by a vague sense of danger that awaited her husband on his business trip, and then increasingly fascinated by Nosferatu when he saw a small portrait of her among Thomas’s belongings. She wore a lot of black, she sleepwalked, and her story began and ended in connection with Thomas; Her first and last moments on screen are both at his side. In contrast, this is Nosferatu begins and ends with Ellen on screen making decisions about her own life – impulsive and short-sighted, single-minded and wistful. In Murnau’s film, she only becomes important in the middle of the story because Nosferatu is obsessed with her youth and her “beautiful neck.” At Eggers, she is the engineer of her relationship with the vampire. The first flashback-slash-dream shows us how a desperately sad, undeniably lonely girl called out for “a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort, a spirit of some heavenly sphere, anything” to give her friendship and intimacy. Nosferatu appears to her in shadow form and woos her with promises for eternity: “You are not for humanity… Shall you be the one who is with me, forever and ever?” And Ellen decides to be with him Vow that ends with her moaning and writhing in a half-seizure, half-orgasm. Everything else that happens in the film is connected to this moment, when Ellen offered her body and promised her steadfastness to a creature who misrepresented herself out of regret for losing her virginity to him (Ellen, you would love that) . Buffy the Vampire Slayer(s “Becoming” arc!) to her realization that only voluntarily reliving this act can finally defeat Nosferatu.

Both films use tomes of ancient lore to convey this mythology, but the wording each film uses is different. In the earlier film, “only a woman can break his terrible spell – a woman of pure heart – who donates her blood generously.” In Eggers’ version, no “purity” is required. Instead, a “Virgin Mass” is needed to “offer her love to the beast,” a change that is less about preserving a woman’s chastity and virtue and more about encouraging her. Depp plays her character’s final moments with a range of conflicting emotions that immerse us in Ellen’s mind, from tearful resignation to sensual seduction to bitter determination. While her performance had previously been a physical miasma of shaking limbs, gasping moans and thrusting tongues, here it becomes more focused, an attempt at restraint that reflects Ellen’s unique choice.

In both films, Ellen has to get Thomas to leave her alone so she can draw Nosferatu to her. In Murnau’s film, this is Ellen and Nosferatu’s only night together, and the focus is on the vampire; His hollow eyes, long claws, and kneeling form are illuminated as Ellen faces away from the camera, her body a lumpy, indistinct shape on the bed. She opened her bedroom windows and waited for him, but the couple didn’t exchange a word; Her act was one of surrender. In Eggers’ film, Ellen’s actions have a compounding effect, and we see her face and body bold and defiant in the frame. This is not her first night together with Nosferatu (remember that she told Thomas about her previous “happiness”), but it is the first physical consummation of their bond, and she must make the vampire believe that she is no longer ” denies.” away from him, as he had previously accused her. While he had described himself as having “an appetite, nothing more,” she now has to convince him of her own desire. Her tone is docile, her eyes are half-closed, her moans are quieter; As he moves naked on top of her, she touches the decaying wounds on his back and presses his head to her breasts, urging him to drink “more, more.” As he begins to shrink in the rays of the rising sun, she holds him in the light and then experiences her own moment of triumph – a glittering look of victory in her eyes – before Thomas comes to her side.

Everything throughout Eggers’s NosferatuWomen are willingly facing downfall. The “maiden on horseback” (Katerina Bila), who follows Thomas to a Romanian cemetery, leads a vampire hunter to the “unclean spirit” that the villagers want to exhume and kill; She holds the reins with her head held high, more of a leader than an offering. Nuns find Thomas after he escapes from Orlok’s castle, offer him refuge despite the danger to them, and then nurse him back to health using their knowledge of how to counteract the vampire. And back in Germany, Ellen’s best friend Anna (Emma Corrin) never lets “Leni” down; She loyally defends Ellen against her own pompous husband Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who complains about Ellen’s “fairy ways.” “She is not to blame for her illness,” Anna insists, and even when Nosferatu infects Ellen’s mind with an “unbearable darkness,” she understands the mental interference that her friend has suffered for so long. These women display an individuality that complements Ellen’s own arc, and they create a world in which she can reclaim her sexual past and free her from her original humiliation and regret. By intentionally using her body as a weapon, NosferatuEllen becomes her own hero.