A beautiful pair of spectacles is usually enough to make me fall for a film—this one has two, though I doubt it will endure the passage of time as have the iconic frames whose stories it tells. If it will continue to be seen, it will likely be within the shadow of the oeuvre of one of the brightest directors of our time—an in-between title.
Yet, I don’t think that Pablo Larraín’s metaphysical tragedy is quite as bad as Mark Kermode described it in his scathing review1. While the script often feels contrived and affected, the aphoristic wit of its dialogues comes across more as a deliberate if questionable mannerism than a vain artifice—a literary gravity that somehow evokes Paolo Sorrentino’s criticised lyricism, whose influence on the Chilean director might perhaps extend beyond the writing.
Although Angelina Jolie’s rigorous preparation to sync with Maria Callas’s voice led to hardly believable results, her portrayal conveys a sense of aristocratic stoicism that I personally enjoyed. Rather than her performance, the real issue may lie in the casting—as it does for the entire leading ensemble.
What remains a moment of personal fascination in any of Larraín’s films, is his raw and instinctive directing method, apparent even in less convincing projects like this might ultimately be—no readings or rehearsals, no storyboards or shot lists, just a few takes per shot, and utter creative freedom on set. All this relying, of course, on the irreplaceable collaboration with a cinematographer of Ed Lachman’s uncommon stature.
In conclusion, flares of cinematic and thespian beauty do arise throughout the film, but, partly sharing Kermode’s disappointment, without giving the same exaltation and intoxication the stage used to give to Maria Callas (‘Sometimes I thought the stage itself would burn,’ makes her continue Steven Knight)—a feeling I kept on longing for, until the end credits ungracefully dashed my hopes.
It is hard a life, surrounded
by people who constantly
worry about you when
everything you need, is—
something
silence
help.
It is within the eerie prologue that Robert Eggers hints at what could have been his most valuable contributions to the much-frequented material. I say could, because establishing Ellen as the protagonist from the start, emphasising sexual repression as a central theme, and giving an even more explicit form to the idea of vampires as carriers of fatal diseases are intriguing premises which do remain somewhat unexplored. Not entirely devoid of other notable intuitions and flashes of striking imagery, Eggers’s Nosferatu ultimately comes across as an over-produced bore lacking the artistic emancipation of his earlier works. The nicely orchestrated narrative flow those possessed, here feels broadly stiffened by repeated visual and sound solutions, and often upstaged by contrived—at times inelegant—camerawork. Contrary to what Eggers stated in various interviews, my immediate impression was that the film’s photography attempted to use an analog camera as if it were digital, rather than embracing its intrinsic characteristics.
However inappropriate, it is difficult to elude comparison with Murnau’s original enactment or Werner Herzog’s Sturm und Drang reincarnation. Of the latter particularly, Eggers’s seems as an almost pedestrian revisitation deprived of mood and humanity, and dulled by mainstream sensitivity. If there’s a veiled irony about Hutter becoming increasingly worried about meeting Count Orlok over the decades—he was euphoric in the twenties, wary in the seventies, and so anxious in the latest Nosferatu that I wonder whether in the next adaptation he will finally have the good sense to cancel the trip—the Count himself goes through an even more significant evolution. Compared to Max Schreck’s relatively sober portrayal and Kinski’s unearthlier presence, Eggers externalises the lonely nobleman’s torments into a far more explicit form of monstrosity, seemingly reflecting the struggle of the modern audiences to use their imagination and the emphasis on appearance that is so idiosyncratic of our times. Just speculative reflections, or maybe not.
Regardless, this emphysemic Nosferatu and his copiously drooling adepts will hardly be redeemed by the production’s superb artistry, the many finely written and performed pages, or the palpable passion for the subject that permeates every single frame. So, for now, while I genuinely hope that a second round will make me reconsider these notes, I shall pretend that this and The Northman never happened, and look forward to Eggers’s next, his third after The Witch and The Lighthouse.
While The Apprentice may not be as unconventional a biopic as intended, it did exceed the expectations that my aversion to the genre, my reluctance to devote two hours to what seemed an irrelevant and unattractive subject, and—however marginally—the negative comments I had intercepted in the ether since its Cannes premiere had fed. On my second attempt after buying and returning the ticket within a few hours on the day of its release, both lead performances made me soon realise it had been worth giving it another chance. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong imbue their roles with a disturbingly convincing sense of humanity without shying away from the most contemptible facets of their characters’ personae, nor yielding to the temptation of rendering farcical events even more so, thereby reducing the film to a redundant political scorn.
Splitting the story in two distinct parts, each identified by an iconic presidency and look—the first following a more structured narrative logic, the second being looser, messier, and slightly out of control, quite metaphorically so indeed—is per se a pretty interesting idea. It’s a shame, though, that technical impossibilities eventually led DP Kasper Tuxen to shoot digitally, faking both 16mm and analog video effects in post to largely perfectible results. A more stoic approach wouldn’t have changed the film, but would have at least added consistency to its aesthetics and artistic value to the project as such.
On another note—minor for most—the portrayal of Andy Warhol left me a little sceptical, but a clumsy young Trump not recognising him at a time when he was well into stardom, felt like a fairly paradoxical yet fitting touch of comedy.
