04/03/2025

LYFE TUESDAY | MAR 4, 2025

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Ű BY MARK MATHEN VICTOR

D ESPITE its sanitisation in the recent decade or so, vampirism in folklore, literature, films and television has always been about death, rot and decay. The gorging of blood, the stalking and murder of the living, along with everything else synonymous with these creatures of the night are part of their essence. Under those lenses, Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu effortlessly joins the pantheon of good vampire films. Unfortunately, that is really all the film does, which is to mimic the movies that came before it. Set in the 1800s, Nosferatu tells the story of how Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) unknowingly summons the attention of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard). Her cries for proof of a god or something beyond the mortal realm breaks the primordial vampire out from his slumber. To put his scheme of escaping the grounds that he was cursed to never leave and reach Ellen into action, Orlock lures her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) to Transylvania. Visual horror mastery Those who have watched the iconic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror from 1922, Werner Herzog’s SHINING light on the Israeli displacement of a Palestinian community, No Other Land won the documentary feature film Oscar on Sunday, and its directors appealed to the world to help end the conflict and accused the US of blocking a solution. The film’s co-directors, Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, spent five years making the film, which shows Israeli soldiers tearing down homes and evicting residents to create a military training ground and the encroachment of Jewish settlers on the Palestinian community. The documentary highlights the parallel realities in which the two friends live – Abraham with his yellow Israeli number plate that lets him travel anywhere, Adra confined to a territory that only ever gets smaller for Palestinians. “ No Other Land reflects the harsh reality we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” Adra said on taking the stage. Standing beside his co-director, Abraham added: “We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other, the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people which must end, the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of Oct 7, which must be freed. “When I look at Basel, I see my brother but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military law that destroys his life and he

0 Director: Robert Eggers 0 Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Lily Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, Bill Skarsgard E-VALUE 5 ACTING 9 PLOT 7

Nosferatu’ s gothic horror tale is nothing new.

Iconic vampire returns

Kept largely out of focus or shrouded in the shadows, Skarsgard’s version of Nosferatu is a hulking monstrosity rocking an equally intimidating fur coat. Speaking in a near-perpetual snarl with a Romani-accent, “Skarsferatu” is a shadow born out of unholy nightmares. The choice to change Nosferatu’s appearance in the film has to also be commended. Eggers knew the audience would have liked his vampire to look similar to Max Shreck’s Nosferatu from 1922, but opted for an update that is more striking and sinister. The make-up and costumes have delivered and fully deserve their Oscar nominations in these categories. The audience will only get a clear view of the vampire in the final minutes of the film, but glimpses allowed to them are more than enough to shock and nauseate. From shots that put the vampire’s blisters into focus to the repulsive “interior” hidden by the fur coat, Eggers’s Nosferatu is worth the watch just for Skarsgard’s portrayal of the legendary vampire. Nosferatu is playing in cinemas.

o Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu honours tradition with little innovation, but terrifying visuals

Film about Israeli eviction of Palestinians wins Oscar for best documentary

Nosferatu the Vampyre from 1979, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1992 or literally any movie inspired by the 1922 film will get a whiplash just reading the previous two paragraphs. Eggers’s film is thematically and narratively a copy of its predecessors. It is void, almost bereft of novel additions to the mythos of Nosferatu. However, what the writer director brings to the table in filmmaking and talent allows his version of Nosferatu to stand well above those that came before it. The film shows Eggers’s impeccable taste in cinematography and lighting from his previous films like The VVitch and The Lighthouse being blended

with the symmetry of centre framing, heavy use of panning along the four cardinal directions to bring the gothic, larger-than-life, human yet inhuman atmosphere of a story such as Nosferatu to life. Caked in magnificent rot Though Hoult, Depp and Willem Dafoe – who plays an occult professor – are great in their roles, the film is really about the character it is titled after. While his traditional human roles have always left something to be desired, Skarsgard once again shows he was born to play alarming and terrifying otherworldly characters with his take as Orlok or Nosferatu, which rivals his version of Pennywise the Clown from the It films.

cannot control. “There is a different path. A political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our peoples. And I have to say as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. “And why? Can you not see we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe. There is another way. It is not too late for life, for the living,” Abraham said. Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar lamented the film’s win as a “sad moment for cinema” because it presented what he described as a distorted view of Israel, still reeling from the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack. – Reuters Adra (left) and Abraham pose with the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film for No Other Land following the 97th Academy Awards in Hollywood. – REUTERSPIC

To his shock, Thomas (Hoult) finds out his client is not interested in just selling an old, spooky castle.