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I will be mercilessly “spoiling” in the following “vampirological” film review, otherwise it would bore me a bit to write it. I have long been looking forward to Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, the second remake of the classic German silent film by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. I wasn’t disappointed (I don’t expect much from movies these days), but I wasn’t exactly happy with it either. (more…)
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Robert Eggers is an American filmmaker who has released four films. The Witch (2015), set in colonial New England, is wonderfully atmospheric and deeply disturbing. The Lighthouse (2019), set in nineteenth-century New England, is the least of his films. It is highly atmospheric, but I found the story unintelligible as well as deeply distasteful. The Northman (2022), an adaptation of the original Hamlet story, is Eggers’ best film. Nosferatu (2024), Eggers’ latest film, is a remake of F. W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu (1922), based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), which is one of my favorite stories, in all its variations. (more…)
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While their films couldn’t possibly be more different, David Lynch and Robert Eggers seem to have one thing in common: making movies by, for, and about whites without being explicit white advocates themselves. From Eraserhead (1977) to Inland Empire (2006), Lynch’s movies abound with whiteness, from the casting choices to the detailed examination of life in the suburbs to not even having the occasional nod towards black “culture” or worship like you will see with many mainstream directors today. When blacks do show up in Lynch’s movies, they tend to be either irrelevant to the plot or downright antagonistic. (more…)
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It’s not clear why human beings enjoy being frightened. Indeed, in most circumstances we don’t. I find nothing particularly “thrilling,” for example, about the frightening threat posed by mass non-white migration into the lands of my ancestors. Nor do I enjoy how I feel when I’m the only white person on the J train at midnight. But I thoroughly enjoy the imaginary threats posed by ghosts, witches, and vampires. There’s a lot to be said here about the human fascination with the uncanny, and what it reveals about us. (more…)
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Czech translation here
A POLYP DEVOURS ITS FEED: Paracelsus Unzipped
An analysis of F. W. Murnau’s film Nosferatu
F. W. Murnau’s 1922 movie Nosferatu, starring Max Schreck, begins with bourgeois sentimentality or its tableau. Yet this comfortable familiarity can be vitiated by intrusion, even obtrusion. Darkness occurs amid light; there is a hint of delirium, as well as madness and despair. (more…)
