This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 6: Vampire Night
“Can you imagine enduring centuries, and each day experiencing
the same futilities?”
Nosferatu the Vampyre(or,
Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night) is German director Werner Herzog’s not quite remake of
F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent horror masterpiece. Murnau was not able to secure the
rights to Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula,
so he changed the character names and locations and some plot points to avoid legal troubles. Herzog does not consider his film a remake, but he follows the structure
of Murnau’s film more than Stoker’s novel. Werner Herzog is the kind of
filmmaker incapable of making a simple genre picture. His version of Nosferatu
is not straightforward horror, but it is haunting and transfixing.
The plot is familiar enough. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz), a
young real estate attorney, is sent to Transylvania to oversee the purchase of
an estate, close to his own home in Wismar, Germany, by the mysterious Count Dracula. The Count falls in love with a
picture of Jonathan’s wife, Lucy (Isabelle Adjani), imprisons Jonathan, and
sets off to claim the young bride as his own.
Klaus Kinski plays Count Dracula as a forlorn creature of menace and despair. His look is the same as Count Orlok, played by Max Schreck, in Murnau’s Nosferatu, one of the most iconic images in film history, instantly recognizable whether you've seen the film or not. His skin is bone white, with a head like an animated skull, fingers like slender claws, and two pronounced fangs are front and center in his mouth. The vampire in Murnau’s film was only a monster, but here he is presented as a pitiful, melancholy creature. This Dracula has no brides or servants. He tells Harker that there are worse things than death, like enduring centuries repeating the same futile nights. In Wismar, he tells Lucy that he wishes to partake of what she and Jonathan share.
Count Dracula is a supernatural creature but still seems to be tied into Herzog’s fascination with the unrelenting and overwhelming force that nature has over humankind (see Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Grizzly Man for more intense and unrelenting nature). Harker’s journey through ageless mountains and canyons to Dracula’s castle is an extended sequence set to Richard Wagner’s prelude to Das Rheingold, a choice that enhances the natural landscape’s sense of beauty and awe and foreboding. Hidden deep in that intimidating landscape is Dracula.
Bram Stoker’s novel has Harker’s wife, Mena, as a perfect
Victorian era woman that needs to be preserved and protected. Here, Harker’s
wife, Lucy, mostly absent from the first half of the film, becomes the main character in the second half and is the only person willing to
take action to stop Dracula and the plague spreading rats he has unleashed on the
city. This version of Lucy is an agent not only for her own destiny but the
whole city.
Herzog and cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein use a
handheld camera for many scenes, adding a degree of uncomfortable authenticity and realism to
the supernatural story. Unlike the Universal Studios and Hammer productions of
Dracula, these locations and sets look and feel real and lived in. Everything from the chairs and silverware
to Dracula’s macabre clock feel like real, functional things and imply that he
can exist outside of fantasy.
Watching this film in 2021, it is especially horrifying that
Dracula’s arrival in Wismar doesn’t just mean the arrival of a vampire. Dracula also brings a
huge swarm of bubonic plague spreading rats. A scene of Lucy wandering through plague-ridden
Wismar has her encountering a group of people in their finest clothes having
their last supper; one tells her that all of the guests are infected with the
plague so they are enjoying what they have while they can. The procession of
coffins through the town square is like an endless macabre parade.
Herzog was tasked with producing two versions of this film:
one in German and one in English, for international markets. After a scene was
done in German it would be shot again with the same actors speaking English.
Herzog has said that he views the German language version as more authentic
since it was his attempt to link classic and modern German filmmaking. There is
obviously some dubbing for the minor characters but, overall, I got the same
effect from both versions. I recommend this film in general, but I highly
recommend it for an atmospheric but not-so-scary night.
The Revenant
contains, paradoxically, some of the most beautiful and most unpleasant images
in any film of 2015. The film was shot by renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki
whose nomination for The Revenant is
his eighth nomination for Best Cinematography. He won the award last year for
director Alejandro G. Iñàrritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and the year before that for
Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. It is
entirely possible, and likely, that he will win his third consecutive Oscar for
shooting The Revenant. As much as
Leonardo DiCaprio, Lubezki’s imagery is the star of The Revenant.
The Revenant is
based on a novel by Michael Punke, which is a fictionalized version of the true
story of 19th century frontiersman Hugh Glass. Glass, portrayed by
Leonardo DiCaprio, and his Pawnee son, Hawk, are serving as the guides for a
fur trapping expedition collecting pelts out in the harsh wilderness. Glass is
mauled by a bear and survives, but his wounds are so severe the company cannot transport
him back to camp. Two trappers, Fitzgerald and Bridger, are offered extra money
to stay with Glass and watch over him until the company can send a rescue party
or he dies of his wounds, whichever comes first. But instead of waiting,
Fitzgerald tosses Glass in a shallow grave, covers him while he’s still
breathing, and leaves him for dead. Glass crawls out of his grave, giving the
movie its title, and sets out on a grueling odyssey to take his revenge.
Leonardo DiCaprio is nominated for the Best Actor Oscar and
has already collected a few awards thus far for his performance of Glass. At
this point his Oscar win for The Revenant
seems to be a foregone conclusion. DiCaprio gives a good performance, as he
tends to do, but there is not much for him to do with the character of Glass
aside from seethe, suffer, mourn, and brood. It is a mostly silent performance,
aside from the grunts and groans. He simply perseveres, struggles against the
elements, tries to survive the wilderness, the cold, animal attacks, and
attacks by angry parties of Arikara. Glass technically has a character arc and
though I saw it, I didn’t feel his
arc. DiCaprio did good, hard work undoubtedly, for The Revenant, but has had better, more dynamic performances in
other movies. I’m a big fan of DiCaprio and wouldn’t mind seeing him win an
Oscar, but I can think of at least three other performances he should have
already won for and am sure he will give us more.
There are good performances from the other players in this
film, too. Tom Hardy, who delights in challenging himself and the audience with
his roles, plays John Fitzgerald, though his character may as well have been
named, The Bad Guy. One of the first things we hear his character say is a
racial epithet against the Native Americans and then he confronts Glass’s son for
being Pawnee. As soon as Fitzgerald volunteers to stay with Glass after the
mauling, we know he has only bad things in mind. Hardy, another great actor of
which I am a fan, does more than a lot of other actors could with an almost
cartoonish and diabolically evil one dimensional character. Domhnall Gleeson
also gives a good performance as the decent, noble Captain Henry, who
represents civilization in the untamed wilderness; tellingly, when the company
arrives back at the fort he is only man who shaves his beard.
It is obvious that a lot of hard work went into The Revenant, both on and off screen. Principal
filming was done in Canada to capture the Great White North’s snowy wilderness,
but the production went on so long that the snow melted as summer neared, and the
whole production had to be moved to the southern hemisphere, Argentina specifically,
to find more winter scenery. Director Alejandro G. Iñàrritu and Lubezki shot
the whole film, with the exception of one scene, using only natural light, so
there were only a few hours per day when filming could occur. And of course,
you can’t talk about The Revenant
without mentioning Leonardo DiCaprio eating a real bison liver, doing his own
stunts, and, most of all, convincingly being mauled by bear. The visual effects
of that scene are incredibly convincing and impressive; it really does look
like DiCaprio is being mauled by a huge bear. The bear attack is intense and
bloody, but it is one of many gruesome and violent scenes in this 2 ½ hour long
movie.
With The Revenant,
Iñàrritu seems to be only interested in grim suffering; survival is incidental.
There is immense cruelty in The Revenant,
but almost no humanity, aside from Domnhall Gleeson’s character and Glass’s
relationship with his son. Any insights on man’s cruelty to man will come
solely from the viewer and not from the film. The Revenant is not complex in story or emotion. The film’s only
statement seems to be that a man suffered and then suffered some more and it is
a true story…but not really; in real life, Glass had no son and only sought to
get back his possessions that the men who left him had taken with them.
My main problem with the film is that it goes on far too
long for having such a simple story and, therefore, has pacing problems. There
are some thrilling and intense set pieces (among them the fur company being
attacked by Native Americans and Glass being attacked by a bear, and being
chased off a mountain, and going down a waterfall…); but there are also scenes
of nothing really happening. Our only respite from the dour, brutal nature of
the plot is the beautiful cinematography of Lubezki coupled with a wonderful
score by Alva Noto and Ryûichi Sakamoto. All of the scenes of dreamlike
flashbacks and surreal visions that appear to Glass don’t work and though they
deliver information on his past, they don’t build his character. There is an
interesting B-story involving a Native American chief searching for his
kidnapped daughter that eventually converges with Glass’s story. Those scenes
are some of the most interesting in the film; however, if all but the two
scenes which intersect with Glass were cut, the movie would still be the same.
I had a mostly good experience watching The Revenant since it was made by many people who are good at what
they do; however, Iñàrritu’s work as a director is very uneven. Of his five
previous films, I really enjoyed Amores Perros and think it is a very good film and I enjoyed Birdman, despite the problems I had with its themes and plot. I
would place The Revenant third behind
those two films.
While watching The
Revenant, I was reminded of the films of Terrence Malick, and I think it is
no coincidence that Lubezki shot Malick’s films The New World, Tree of Life,
and To the Wonder. As in those films
and Malick’s other work, there are big sweeping camera shots capturing the simple
beauty of the natural world. However, Malick’s stories use those images to add
to the transcendental contemplation already happening in his films. The Revenant only seems to want to be
contemplative in passing. It is primarily concerned with the physical action of
the characters. I was also reminded during certain scenes of Aguirre, the Wrath of God directed by
the great Werner Herzog and wondered if he wouldn’t have been a better fit as
director for this material.
Nominees: Arnon Milchan, Steve Golin, Alejandro González
Iñárritu, Mary Parent, Keith Redmon, Producers
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Screenplay: Mark L. Smith and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, based
in part on the novel by Michael Punke
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson
Production Companies: Anonymous Content, Appian Way, M
Productions, New Regency Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Regency
Enterprises
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: December 25, 2015
Total Nominations: 12, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Actor-Leonardo DiCaprio,
Director-Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Supporting Actor-Tom Hardy,
Cinematography-Emmanuel Lubezki, Editing-Stephen Mirrione, Production
Design-Jack Fisk and Hamish Purdy, Makeup & Hairstyling-Siân Grigg, Duncan
Jarman, and Robert Pandini, Costume Design-Jacqueline West, Sound
Editing-Martin Hernández and Lon Bender, Sound Mixing-Jon Taylor, Frank A.
Montaño, Randy Thom, and Chris Duesterdiek, Visual Effects-Richard McBride,
Matt Shumway, Jason Smith, and Cameron Waldbauer
