This was a superlative piece of film-making. Every aspect of film – sound, lighting, framing, mise-en-scene, performances – was wonderfully selected and calibrated with the result that the final experience was a totally satisfying emotional and aesthetic one.
There were some tributes to the original Murnau film (a shot of Nosferatu framed in a doorway, the iconic images of the claw-like hands on billowing white curtains in the bedroom) but these provided nice little reminders for those in the know without coming across as knowingly pretentious. I also enjoyed early on, the nod towards the ultimate Romantic image of Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog which was an early reminder that this is, above all, a classic Romantic drama. This was particularly true in the magnificent, and finally, very powerfully moving, final scene with, for the first time, beautiful clear golden sunlight rightly illuminating the terror and horror-filled final scene. But this scene also achieved almost operatic tragic grandeur reminding us that this is, essentially, a sad and tragic tale of a pained and tormented figure, not only one of horror. And Egger’s gave full and powerful voice to the vital and strongly sexual elements that underpin the whole story. It was where we saw Nosferatu clearly for the first and only time. This cinematic restraint was one of the film’s greatest strengths – and again, so wonderfully rare and so welcome. This impeccable aesthetic control was one of the (many) superb characteristics of the film, as was the impeccable care taken with every detail of the individual shots and framing – at Wes Anderson levels of care but without his self-conscious ‘tweeness’.
On a larger scale too, the pacing was impeccable – on seeing pre-viewing that it ran at over two ours I did wonder how justified this would be – too often these days it is completely unjustified – but here there was not an ounce of surplus visual fat – and the relentless inevitability and skillful pacing added to this.
I cannot praise it highly enough!