If you haven’t seen the Herzog Nosferatu yet, you really should. It’s much more interested in the emotional backdrop of the story, which I think got sacrificed in the Eggers version in favor of, like you’ve mentioned here, the angle of Ellen’s desire for Nosferatu. Dracula/Nosferatu has always had that theme as a present part of the text, but Herzog deals with it in a more empathetic way vs presenting it as a sublimated Victorian pathological desire that Eggers does. I see the value in both approaches but agree that Eggers didn’t nail it (which is really too bad, because there’s a great movie in there somewhere) and may have been more concerned with the visuals than connecting his themes. Huge bummer because I also wanted to like it so much more than I did!
If you haven’t seen the Herzog Nosferatu yet, you really should. It’s much more interested in the emotional backdrop of the story, which I think got sacrificed in the Eggers version in favor of, like you’ve mentioned here, the angle of Ellen’s desire for Nosferatu. Dracula/Nosferatu has always had that theme as a present part of the text, but Herzog deals with it in a more empathetic way vs presenting it as a sublimated Victorian pathological desire that Eggers does. I see the value in both approaches but agree that Eggers didn’t nail it (which is really too bad, because there’s a great movie in there somewhere) and may have been more concerned with the visuals than connecting his themes. Huge bummer because I also wanted to like it so much more than I did!