From Robert Eggers, writer-director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman, comes Nosferatu, a terrifying, gothic reimagining of a classic.
In Eggers’ Nosferatu, estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) travels to Transylvania for a fateful meeting with Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), a vampiric prospective client. Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), Hutter’s new bride, is left under the care of their friends Friedrich and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin) in his absence. Plagued by visions and an increasing sense of dread, Ellen encounters a force far beyond her control.
Before Nosferatu emerges in Australian cinemas on January 1, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s director, Robert Eggers, and star, Willem Dafoe, about the ethereal nightmare that is Count Orlok, and the staying power of the Dracula story in pop culture.
Nick: Willem and Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to chat! How are you both today?
Robert Eggers: Doing good, thanks.
Willem Dafoe: Very well, thank you.
Nick: I’d love to start with how this film so viscerally evokes the feeling of this ethereal sort of nightmare. I’m curious to know for you Robert, how much of that feeling is also there in your script? And for you Willem, was that something you felt when you first read the script?
Robert Eggers: I mean, I certainly endeavour for it too. I don’t know if I can speak for how it reads to other people. But that was certainly the intent.
Willem Dafoe: It’s there. Oh, it’s there. I sometimes don’t know whether I read scripts well! But for this one, it was there.
Robert Eggers: My scripts tend to be a little overwritten, for good or for worse. I’m trying to capture the atmosphere that I’m going for. Actually, I think an actor who turned down a role in one of my films said that my script was “trying too hard” [laughs].
Willem Dafoe: [laughs] Oh, you don’t know the half of it! I read a lot of scripts!
Nick: I just had the chance to chat with Aaron [Taylor-Johnson] and Emma [Corrin], and they both mentioned the depth of the script, and the character packets that you [Robert] create for them. And they both said that they asked you Willem if that was a common thing with Robert’s scripts, and you said that it was. So, I’m curious to know, after doing three films with Robert, what was something on Nosferatu that surprised you about his filmmaking style?
Willem Dafoe: You know, he’s becoming just more and more confident. More and more strong. The biggest thing you see is the gap between what you dream and what is possible. Where you take a hit and where you change things. And that is really where films fly, or they don’t.
I think he is getting stronger and stronger about that. And that’s an important part of the game. That’s an important skill to have, you know? That runs in the relationship to the studio, the actors, to his DP that he’s worked with several times. I just see that he’s becoming more mature, more articulate. So, it’s exciting.
And so then, not only am I pleased with watching the film. But I get a lot of pleasure out of it. I think it’s very strong. It’s just nice to see the progression. And not to denigrate at all his earlier films, because when I saw The Witch, that’s what started me on the path of fandom.
When you do write things that may not necessarily make it into the film, but they give more context to what we do see in the movie, does that affect the way you tackle the “remake” aspect of the film? Because I guess the word “remake” has become a little bit, sort of, toxic.
Robert Eggers: And fair enough. I think that there is this feeling of cynicism, like no one’s having anything new to say. There is cynicism about remakes for good reason. It’s been like that forever though. You can talk about art history, painting motifs, that are always repeated, and that was tradition.
You know, Oedipus is playing on the West End right now, and it’s going to the Old Vic in January, and that’s great. But it’s a matter of perspective. Even I’m like, ‘How many superhero reboots are necessary every two years?’ Or whatever.
I think for this particular film, it’s a story that was really important to me. A film that’s really important to me. And in order to make it my own, I did write a novella with all of these backstories and scenes that would not be in the film, you know? And one of the cool things to come out of that was the prologue of the movie. And I think that is pretty cool.
What do you believe still carries the appeal of the ‘Dracula’ story today, even as filmmaking and society has changed so much over the decades?
Robert Eggers: I mean, I think sex and death are always potent, and I don’t ever expect that to change as they’re things that people are constantly thinking about. And you know, the vampire mythos, and Dracula, are stemmed from those two things.
Willem Dafoe: The thing that strikes me so much about giving yourself to something, and that kind of obsession, and mixing that with the undead visiting the living… there’s lots of ways to spin that. There’s always going to be some way that we’re dealing with the obsession that Ellen’s character has. It’s going to destroy her, but she has to give herself to something that is familiar. Like a spiritual impulse.
It’s also a familiar flirtation with what we don’t know. The other side. And everybody has it in their story. They just have different dedications, whether it’s having a good life, or a good house, or having a family. All of that is in the mix.
Thank you so much to Willem and Robert for their time, and to Universal Pictures for organising the interview. Nosferatu is in Australian cinemas on January 1.
