h3adlessangel

[h3adlessangel]

i think i've mentioned it before in passing but it still fucks me up how Orlok is a physical manifestation of every "wrong and sinful" desire that Ellen tries to repress, as well as the panic that is associated with them.

the first sexual urges of her puberty (he claims her "ever-eternally"). the desire to dominate her husband (he dominates Thomas at the castle, demanding the subservience she never could). her queerness (he drinks from Anna, long and deep, and destroys Harding's family). the desperate longing for companionship, regardless of how dark and abnormal she believes herself to be (he answers her call from miles away, crosses an ocean for her, wants her, wants her, wants her - but she cannot imagine being wanted without repercussions, and so he brings the plague with him, a punishment for the sin of receiving what she craves).

Ellen is a mess of crushing guilt. she only ever sees ugliness in herself and i think it's so compelling to see her being desired above all else - not despite, but because of that ugliness, y'know?..

[h3adlessangel]

Nosferatu (2024) dir. Robert Eggers

Death and Life (1894) by Edvard Munch

[h3adlessangel]

"Nosferatu" (2024) Prologue Breakdown

In one interview, Robert Eggers revealed the prologue of "Nosferatu" (2024) is based on backstory novellas he wrote for all of his characters, to make this story is own: “Most importantly, I was thinking, ‘Who are these characters, and how can I build out their backstories and make them real people?’ I also wanted our version to be Ellen’s story. The previous Nosferatu films start out as Thomas Hutter’s story, or Jonathan Harker’s, and then become Ellen’s story, but I wanted it to always be her story. Our film’s prologue comes from the work I did with the novella.”

At the prologue, 15-year-old Ellen is crying and then prays for “a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort, a spirit of any celestial sphere, anything” to come to her. As she’ll reveal to Professor Von Franz and Thomas Hutter, she was deeply alone, and wanted company, comfort and tenderness: “I was so very alone, you see and... I wished for comfort...” and “I sought company, I sought tenderness, and I called out...”.  

To Professor Von Franz, she’ll elaborate on her background story, and provide an explanation for this prayer. Ellen has been a somnambulist since infancy, even before resurrecting Count Orlok (“sometimes it was... it is like a dream”). She also had premonitions (“And I know things”), from simple things like “always [know] the contents of [her] Christmas gifts” to more serious like knowing when others would die (“I knew when... that my mother would pass”).

She had a connection to nature during her childhood and early teenage years (Ellen calls these two phases “childhood” because the concept of “adolescence” didn’t exist before World War II, it was “childhood” and “adulthood”). Like she says to Professor Von Franz, she enjoyed being in the forest and at the fields: “Father... he would find me in our fields... within the forest... as if – I was his little changeling girl.” Her father called her “changeling girl” as in the European folklore of babies kidnapped by fairies or demons and a substitute child being left in their place; because Ellen liked to be in nature so much, when she was supposed to be indoors (domestic sphere). 

But, as she was growing older, Ellen’s father started to forbid her from being in nature, and her, as a typical teenager, would rebel against her father’s orders: “But as I became older it worsened... Father dispraised me for it”. Ellen, as a young girl in early 19th century society should start learning and preparing to be the future wife of a respectable husband, not spending her days at the forest, and the domestic sphere was, also, a "woman’s realm” (sort of speak), not the outdoors (social life). On top of this, her father also stopped giving her physical affection (hugs, and the sort), and it’s highly implied he would recoil from her touch: “I frightened him. My touch.” 

And this is when Ellen resurrects Count Orlok with her prayer, and the context for the prologue from Ellen's side. From Orlok's perspective, there is a recognition: his first words to her are "You". "you... you..." He not only knows what she is (enchantress), but who she is.

Robert Eggers’ Count Orlok isn’t a random demon vampire; he was once a man. Eggers doesn’t want us to know the full backstory on his Count Orlok, but he wrote an novella on it and gave it to Bill Skarsgård (and it influenced Skarsgård’s entire performance and even the meaning of the ending): "I don’t want the world to know his backstory. But he had a very detailed one.” We know he’s a 16th century Transylvanian nobleman, from the 1580s (voivoide, “lord” and “lordship”), he’s not Vlad the Impaler (15th century). He was a occultist warlord, an enchanter (Şolomonari), and he was married, and had a family (which is present in the set design of his castle: multiple sarcophagi on the castle crypt, and the couple bedroom he attacks Thomas, which was his and his wife's bedroom).

From the clues on his character design and iconography (sigil and coat of arms), he was a Hungarian-speaking Count of Székely lineage, a sorcecer-warrior (Slavic historical hairstyle), and his castle is at the Eastern Carpathian Mountains. He’s not a “Devil worshipper”, he’s a Pagan enchanter, follower of the Dacian God Zalmoxis, owner of the secrets of life and death, and immortality. He has also known reincarnations throughout the centuries, because Robert Eggers has revealed he's an ancient soul who pre-dates the Roman empire, which means he's probably Dacian in origin.

Robert Eggers has said, in several interviews, his "Nosferatu" is deeply rooted in folklore, especially his Count Orlok: "One of the tasks I had was synthesizing Grau’s 20th-century occultism with cult understandings of the 1830s and with the Transylvanian folklore that was my guiding principle for how Orlok was going to be, what things he was going to do, and the mythology around him. I was synthesizing a mythology that worked with all of that".

“Cinematic vampires have lost their power and what makes them frightening,” says Eggers, who “went back to the folklore to understand the time when people believed vampires existed and were truly terrified of them.” and “so it was clear to me that I needed to return to the source, to the early folkloric vampire, to written accounts about or by people who believed that vampires existed – and who were terrified of them. Most of these early accounts come from Balkan and Slavic regions. Many are from Romania, where Stoker’s Dracula resides.”

Robert Eggers' Count Orlok is a strigoi morti from Balkan folkore, with roots in Dacian mythology, from his appearance, psychic nature (feeding on souls), behavior, to his haunting of Ellen. Like Robert Eggers said, the early folkloric vampire legends are the basis for his Count Orlok mythology.

In Romanian folklore, it’s said when strigoi raise from their grave the first time, they return to those they have loved the most, because they wish to relive their life together. And they make an appearance at their windows, asking for entrance. Which is what we see at the prologue of "Nosferatu" (2024):

The motif of the strigoi lover has been a staple of 19th century Romanian Romanticism and stories of women and men being visited by their dead lovers were very popular, both in folklore and in high culture.

However, that connection was broken and the world of the living cannot be in contact with the Afterlife (death). As such, the very presence of the strigoi is life threatening, and they will, inevitably, drag their loved ones to their graves, as they will progressively be drained of their life force, wither and die, if the haunting isn’t stopped. Which is what we see in "Nosferatu" (2024), as Count Orlok is dragging Ellen to an early grave for them to be reunited in the Afterlife ("you are not for the living. You are not for human kind. And you shall be one with me, ever-eternally. Do you swear it?").

Next, we see Ellen walking outside of her family manor, and, in garden of lilacs, she starts to moan, in obvious sexual pleasure, as she swears to be one with Orlok ever-eternally. As Linda Muir, the costume designer, has confirmed in one interview: "Ellen starts off with wealth, which is apparent from the bedroom in the estate and the lilacs that she’s writhing around under."

However, he’s not touching her in anyway, because when he does touch her, she has a violent seizure. He grabs her neck, and almost suffocates her in the process, as he reveals himself to her:

And he's a vision inside of her head, because the next shot clealry indicates he's not physically present (nor he could ever be because he's a strigoi, he can only astral project himself as a shadow or a ghost):

Ellen was masturbating and her sexual energy caused Orlok to materialized inside of her head (sexual energy being what conjures him for telepathic communication to happen will be further confirmed by Herr Knock’s ritual). He grabs her neck, which is a reference to the strigoi myth of these creatures suffocating their victims to death. Like Robert Eggers refers in his own essay about "Nosferatu" in "The Guardian": "Most surprisingly, many of these early folk vampires do not even drink blood; rather, they might suffocate their victims to death or spread plague and disease."

Was Orlok trying to kill Ellen in this scene to get her soul to join him in the Afterlife? Probably. She just swore to be one with him ever-eternally, and the only way for that to happen is for Ellen to die. He obviously wasn't successful, because Orlok has to be physically present in order to do physical stuff. There's no "sexual assault" going on between these two characters nor ever was.

On a symbolical level, a demon (strigoi) appearing here is connected to Victorian views of female sexuality (sin, demonic and wicked if not owned nor controlled by a husband) and masturbation (the ultimate sin, called “self-pollution” and “self-abuse”, and in women it was considered a “anti-social behavior”, a form of insanity (“lunacy”) and epilepsy, and was believed to increase the risk of hysteria). This connects Ellen's "epilepsies" with "masturbation", the Victorian diagnose of her character. This scene is symbolical of sexual awakening. Ellen's power (death) awakes in this scene, too. Ellen also goes to her beloved outdoors (nature) at the prologue, and doesn't give Orlok entrance into her family manor, establishing the connection between Orlok and nature in her character arc.

But this whole sequence is also connected to the novella Robert Eggers wrote about Count Orlok’s background story. Ellen’s is easier to identify, because she will mention it in later scenes with other characters. However, how is Orlok himself connected to all of this? He’s the other character at the prologue, after all. This scene establishes the connection with Ellen, Olrok and the lilacs, which will endure throughout the film, until the very end (visual storytelling), when they both, symbolically, return to their garden of lilacs, as Professor Von Franz (the only character who understands the depth of Ellen and Orlok’s connection according to Willem Dafoe on his interview to "Deadline") places their symbolic lilacs around their bodies.

There’s the strigoi haunting, and the returning to the one they loved the most in their lives. The reincarnation theme is introduced here. Ellen is the reincarnation of Orlok’s wife. It was confirmed, by Linda Muir, that lilacs remind Orlok of his human life, and we have a garden of lilacs at the prologue, associated with Ellen and sexual pleasure. Since Thomas Hutter arrives at Transylvania on the first day of Romanian winter, we can't see any lilacs flowers at his castle (since they bloom in the Spring), and the only outdoor space Thomas explores is the courtyard. Nevertheless, this seems to indicate 16th century Ellen and Orlok had a connection to a garden of lilacs somewhere, with implications of sexual encounters involved. Since 19th century Ellen swears herself to Orlok in this garden, maybe he proposed to her (marriage) in a similar setting in the 16th century, too.

"You are fortunate in your love."

Orlok will hold on to Ellen’s heart-shaped silver locket ("maiden's token") well into the second act of the film, and he keeps smelling it. It’s the scent of lilacs on her hair he treasures (not the locket or even the hair itself). There are deep memories associated with lilacs from Orlok’s part from his human life, with both sexual and romantic connotations.

[h3adlessangel]

the final sequence of nosferatu is everything. it's utterly and profoundly bittersweet. it's a multilayered metaphor. it's beautifully disturbing and disturbingly beautiful.

the agonizing tenderness of the kiss. ellen embracing orlok, the manifestation of her repressed identity that was shunned by society, binding her spirit and flesh to the desire that was seen as sinful and abhorred. a glimpse of something tragically human flickering momentarily in orlok's faltering gaze as ellen lies down for him. thomas' futile desperation to outrun the destiny of his beloved. orlok's desire to be one with ellen overcoming his parasitic predisposition to self-preservation. ellen and orlok being alive at least before accepting death as they unite eternally. her succumbing to his darkness and him burning by her light.

and the score accompanying it all...

the sequence forces you to feel the uncomfortable complexity of it all, and it gives you the relief as well.

god, what a movie.

[h3adlessangel]

Nosferatu (2024) is unquestionably a multifaceted work, but what I personally consider to be the unifying idea behind its facets is that, for Ellen, Orlok represents validation.

Her fears are dismissed and called childish?.. He's a nightmarish manifestation of them.

She is consistently disrespected by everyone around her?.. He considers her his only equal. She never uses his title, it's permitted.

She is told to fix herself, misunderstood, and always isolated?.. He knows all the darkest parts of her and is delighted by them. He wants her just as she is, so much that he will lie, kill, and cross the ocean to find her.

The scene in their death/wedding bed is a direct parallel to the scene of her waking in that bed at the beginning of the film. She complains to Thomas that the "honeymoon is yet too short" and tries to pull him down with a kiss - however, he is worried about being late for work, and so he extricates himself and leaves. Cut forward to her sharing the same bed with Orlok, similarly early in the morning; he is startled by cock-crow and begins to rise, but she guides his head back down - and, even though he knows that he will die, he stays. He is her sexual and emotional desire, realized.

Given that there is a plethora of emotions Ellen is forced to suppress on daily basis, there is no singular correct interpretation of her relationship with Orlok. To erase any one of them is to render it shallower than it actually is; but there is no doubt as to why their attachment is mutual. To each, the other is something they’ve never had before.

[h3adlessangel]

“Wuthering Heights” inspiration on “Nosferatu” (2024)

Robert Eggers revealed, in several interviews, that “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë was his main inspiration for this story, even over the “Dracula” novel itself. What Eggers did with the “Dracula” themes was, in fact, a subversion. “Nosferatu” (2024) is “Wuthering Heights” on steroids, horror version.

“It was always clear to me that Nosferatu is a demon lover story, and one of the great demon lover stories of all time is Wuthering Heights, which I returned to a lot while writing this script,” Eggers explained. “As a character, Heathcliff is an absolute bastard towards Cathy in the novel, and you’re always questioning whether he really loves her, or if he just wants to possess and destroy her.” (Robert Eggers wants you to see his Nosferatu as both a lover and a biter (interview)

“[Orlok] represents a sort of forbidden desire for Ellen […] Eggers, for his part, was eager to bring out the sexual subtext of Nosferatu, calling his version a clear “demon lover story” and likening it to Wuthering Heights (which he reread while trying to crack the script) […] the only ‘person’ that she can kind of connect with is this demonic force, this vampire, this demon lover. [And] Orlok is also alone.” (Nosferatu director needed Bill Skarsgård’s vampire to look like a creepy corpse - Interview)

"This is also a demon-lover story, like Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Is Heathcliff really interested in Cathy, or does he want to possess and destroy her? You’re drawn into that story, but it certainly is not a healthy relationship." (The Melodrama of Robert Eggers)

“Yes, it is a scary horror movie with a lot of dread and even some jump scares. But more than that, it is a tale of love and obsession and a Gothic romance. (Filmmaker Robert Eggers Talks 'Nosferatu' and Remaking a Classic)

The “Wuthering Heights” inspiration is seen in themes throughout the film:

Ghost at the Window: Orlok's shadow at Ellen's window during her teenage years;

Love Triangle: free-spirited and medicalized woman (Ellen/Catherine); beastly man (Orlok/Heathcliff) and a gentleman (Thomas Hutter/Edgar Lindon);

Locket with Lock of Hair: "haunt me, then";

Catherine’s Madness and Ellen’s Sickness: "I am Heathcliff!"/Ellen believing Orlok is a demon possessing her;

Destructive Power of Love and “Blood Plague”: Orlok forcing the characters to relive his own dark trauma through their "blood plague" deliriums;

Separated by death/United by death.

Ghost at the Window

"Come in! come in!" he sobbed. "Cathy, do come. Oh, do—once more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me this time, Catherine, at last!" The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light.

Orlok was no more than a shadow at Ellen’s window during her teenage years (she calls it “childhood” because the concept of “teenager” was only created after World War II).  As we see at the prologue, Ellen didn’t give him entrance into her family home (and her opening the window to him at the Harding household, dooming everyone inside, confirms this, she didn’t know Orlok has to be invited in, like your regular vampire). Ellen was masturbating and when he grabs her neck, she almost suffocates to death (confirming he wasn’t touching her before). The prologue also established their communications are telepathic, Orlok talks with her inside of her head/mind.

Herr Knock’s Sex Magick ritual (masturbation) will confirm its sexual energy that conjures Orlok, and he has to be summoned (invited) for these telepathic communications to happen. This will explain everything about Orlok and Ellen’s communications: the “hysteric fits” are all on herself, and she’s summoning Orlok for them to talk inside of her head. In her teenage years, she would masturbate and he would appear at her window, as a ghost, similar to Catherine's ghost with Heathcliff, calling him to his grave.

And her father caught her masturbating and shouted “sin!” and threatened to have her institutionalized because masturbation was considered the “ultimate sin” in Victorian society. It was called “self-pollution” and “self-abuse”, and both a moral and physical evil. Medical manuals adverted against this “evil”, for both men and women. In the early 19th century, female masturbation was considered a “anti-social behavior”, a form of insanity (“lunacy”) and epilepsy, and was believed to increase the risk of hysteria in women. Which is aligned with the Victorian diagnose of Ellen's character: "hysteria" ("shame") and melancholy (“abnormal beliefs”, hallucinations, delusions).

Ellen is also seen at her window throughout the film, which is both based on strigoi myth (when strigoi rise from their graves for the first time, they return to those they have loved the most in life, and are said to appear at their loved one’s windows, asking for entrance), and "Wuthering Heights" with Catherine's window: where windows (and doors, too) are usually connected with Catherine and Heathcliff’s separation, and his inability to reach her. In “Nosferatu”, we also see this with Ellen and Orlok: in the prologue, Ellen’s window is wide open (when she meets Orlok), then it’s shut (separation) until the third act, when she asks him to come to her (reunion).

The intense horror of my nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in—let me in!’… As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window […]: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’

The Love Triangle

“In this “Nosferatu,” he’s [Orlok] coming for Ellen. This love triangle that is similar to “Wuthering Heights,” the novel, was more compelling to me than any political themes.” (Robert Eggers; “Dream of Death”)

This is the easiest to recognize. The love triangle between a free-spirited and medicalized woman (Ellen/Catherine) and a beastly man (Orlok/Heathcliff) and a gentleman (Thomas Hutter/Edgar Lindon). The “demon lover story”.

We see many similarities between Catherine and Ellen, even in her teenage years (Ellen calls it “childhood” because the concept of “teenager” was only created after World War II). Love of nature: While Catherine enjoyed being in the moors of Wuthering Heights, Ellen liked to be in the forest and in the fields. They both stopped because of social pressure (society gender expectations of them); while with Catherine this was more of her own choice, with Ellen it was her father who started to forbid it, and confined her to the domestic sphere. They were both wild and free-spirited; Ellen’s father called her “changeling girl” (European folklore) because she enjoyed being in nature so much. Both characters spiral down into madness, apparently because of Heathcliff/Olrok, when, in truth, they are done with society expectations of them.

Orlok is similar to Heathcliff after Catherine's death. He’s a literal beast, a monster, a strigoi from Balkan folklore. The two are compared to “the devil”, brutal, cruel, dangerous and unforgiving. Both are demonized by society: Heathcliff because of social class and racial issues, and Orlok because of his occult dealings, as he's slandered as a “Devil worshipper” when he’s, in fact, a Pagan enchanter worshipper of Dacian God, Zalmoxis.  However, the sinister and cold behavior of both characters hides a tragic and romantic motivation, both are deeply sad characters, filled with grief and rage, driven by revenge and tormenting everyone around them because of their trauma of losing Catherine/16th century Ellen. I’ll explain this theme in a minute. Heathcliff feels his soul is already dead, and the grief destroyed all the good left in him; he's described as a "living dead" with no mercy nor compassion.

Three representations of unbearable/maddening grief in "Nosferatu" (2024)

Thomas is extremely similar to Edgar Linton. They are both gentlemen, constant, gentle, polite and well-mannered, embodiments of civilized virtues. Both Edgar and Thomas seek to be good Victorian husbands, and fulfill their provider gender roles. Similar to Catherine with Edgar, Ellen chooses to marry Thomas when she meets him, over accepting her covenant with Orlok. Both Edgar and Thomas don’t understand what Catherine and Ellen are experiencing, but stand by them. Both will become grieving widowers at the end.

Like Heathcliff and Edgar, Orlok and Thomas are each other’s foils and opposites, in every single way. Thomas is life; Orlok is death; Thomas is beauty, Orlok is the beast; Thomas is Victorian love, Orlok is passion, Thomas is society, Orlok is nature; Thomas is well-mannered, Orlok is a monster (literally); Thomas is gentle; Orlok is brutal; Thomas is Middle-class, Orlok is a count (aristocracy). Thomas cares about wealth, Orlok doesn’t (he’s already dead).  

"Heathcliff would as soon lift a finger at you as the king would march his army against a colony of mice.”

“Wuthering Heights” is, at its core, a love triangle between Catherine, Heathcliff and Edgar; which is also the case in “Nosferatu” (2024) with Ellen, Orlok and Thomas:

Ellen and Orlok didn’t grow up together (like Catherine and Heathcliff), and their passionate and wild past as lovers happened in the 16th century (reincarnation theme); 

Ellen, like Catherine, feels ardent desire and passion for Orlok/Heathcliff while being married to Thomas/Edgar: "this demon lover that attracts her, and she doesn’t know why, but somewhere there is a deep understanding there and a deep attraction". The “why” is because she’s the reincarnation of Orlok’s wife, and she has some sort of memories of this (the lilacs, her believing they were lovers “then”, the erotic dreams of Orlok, “you could never please me as he could”);

Like Heathcliff, Orlok also disappears after Ellen/Catherine marries Thomas/Edgar, and returns with a vengeance. In Ellen’s case, she stops conjuring Orlok, and that’s why the haunting ceased (she doesn’t understand this because society doesn’t give her the language for her to understand her power, like Robert Eggers says in interviews).

Like Heathcliff, Orlok also comes between Ellen/Catherine and Thomas/Edgar. Orlok whole ordeal in Transylvania with Thomas is, literally, to scare the crap out of him (hallucinations of the Handsome Roma vampire hunter, the heaviness of his shadow, his jokes about the "torturous grave"), and the the Divorce Sex Magick ritual (which is the whole point why Thomas is there in the first place, as Orlok wants to annul his marriage to Ellen in both the physical (covenant papers aka divorce papers) and the spiritual realms. And then Orlok will go on to influence and possess Thomas.

Like Catherine, Ellen sees her love for Thomas/Edgar as social acceptable (made her “normal” and stopped her medicalization by Victorian society), while feeling Heathcliff/Orlok is a part of her (“I’m Heathcliff!”). In Ellen’s case this is very literal because she believes Orlok is a demon possessing her (because of what Professor Von Franz said, only he spoke of “spiritual obsession”).  

‘No, it was not because I disliked Mr. Heathcliff, but because Mr. Heathcliff dislikes me; and is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity."

"I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do!"

"You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine."

Locket with Lock of Hair

"I shouldn't have discovered that he [Heathcliff] had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse's face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair [Edgar's], fastened with a silver thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine's neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own."

After Catherine’s death, Edgar spends the day at the chapel with her coffin, while Heathcliff goes there at night. He opens the necklace-locket she has on her neck and places a lock of his own hair inside (tossing away Edgar’s) as he begs Catherine’s ghost to haunt him.

Ellen does her “maiden’s token” in front of her symbolic window, and the next after is Herr Knock conjuring Orlok to communicate with him. Ellen has premonitions and just had a dream about Orlok after the prologue, she knows Thomas will be sent to him. Her heart-shape locket is an invitation for him to haunt her again (because he needs to be invited).

"You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Catherine Madness and Ellen’s Sickness

"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

When Edgar forbids Catherine from seeing Heathcliff, she locks herself in her room, and isolates into silence and starvation, confined to her bed. According to Nelly, she’s delirious, hallucinating and inflamed with declarations of madness. She becomes consumed by her passion for Heathcliff and death. Catherine is mentally devastated by the constant fighting between Edgar and Heathcliff, and, then by being separated from him and him running off with Isabella. Catherine’s mind and body are consumed by her passionate feelings for Heathcliff, and she’s not able to control herself. When he goes to visit her, behind Edgar’s back, they finally confess their love for each other and Catherine blames him, and says he killed her, comparing her passion for him with murder. In her death bed, Catherine, after giving birth, calls out for Heathcliff, saying she won’t ever rest until he’s dead by her side.

Catherine famously declares she’s Heathcliff, as in they share the same soul, the same spirit, they are soulmates: “he’s [Heathcliff’s] more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” For his part, Heathcliff feels the same, as he declares he can’t live with his soul in the grave, nor without his soul, after Catherine’s death.

Ellen resurrected Orlok when she was 15 years old (confirmed by composer Robin Carolan in an online interview, alongside Robert Eggers), and, through her prayer, she commands “a guardian angel, a spirit of any celestial sphere, anything” to come to her (enchantress). She unconsciously brings Orlok back from the dead (necromancer). There’s an immediate recognition from Orlok’s part: he not only knows what she is, but who she is (reincarnation theme: strigoi haunt the one they loved the most in their life). After her father caught her masturbating, she’s medicalized by Victorian society as hysteric (“shame”; connected with female sexuality) and melancholic (delusions, hallucinations). Orlok stopped haunting her when she met and married Thomas because she stop masturbating and conjuring him in the process.

However, and like Robert Eggers tells us in his interviews: “Ellen has an innate understanding about the shadow side of the world that we live in that she doesn’t have language for. This gift and power that she has isn’t in an environment where it’s being cultivated, to put it mildly. It’s pretty tragic”. Ellen doesn’t understand her power, and Victorian society tells her sexual desire and expressions outside of marriage are sinful and demonic. As such, at the beginning of the story, she believes it was Thomas who stopped her “sickness” (and consequently her medicalization). But, she never forgot Orlok, and she most likely has memories of her past life, to the point she mixes the two in the narrative (16th century and 19th century). Catherine goes out into the pouring rain searching for Heathcliff; Ellen does the same, but runs into Thomas, as sees him as her “lifeguard” (sort of speak).

As the story progresses, Ellen, like Catherine, also becomes consumed by her passion for Orlok, as she keeps having these “hysterics fits” to conjure him and communicate with him (telepathically, inside of her mind). Like Catherine, she can’t control herself. And, like Catherine, she will also put the blame on Orlok/Heathcliff; here motivated by Professor Von Franz saying she’s “obsessed of some daemon” (spiritual obsession). Ellen interprets this as Orlok being a demon possessing her and forcing her to have these “hysterical fits” (“I have felt you crawling like a serpent in my body”). Ellen can’t accept she’s the one who keeps summoning Orlok because that’s too shameful, and her sexuality is owned and controlled by her husband, which is why her answer to Orlok “it is not me, it is your own nature” is “no, I love Thomas”.

Professor Von Franz also began to give Ellen answers about her power, mainly that she’s a medium and can communicate with the spiritual world through her trance mediumship. But she thinks she can only communicate with Orlok specifically; which she discovers it’s not the case during the “possession scene”. This scene is important to her character arc because it’s when she realizes Orlok is not a demon possessing her, it’s all on herself (which is why she declares “I’m unclean!” because that’s what Victorian society tells her about her sexuality). In this scene she sees Thomas will always call the doctors to deal with her, too; he will always medicalize her.

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free… Why am I so changed? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills."

Several Feminist literary critics have interpreted Catherine madness in “Wuthering Heights” as a result of her imprisonment. This topic is explored in the book “The Madwoman in the Attic” by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Themes of childhood vs. motherhood, freedom vs. imprisonment, home vs. outdoors, society vs. nature are present in Catherine perceived descent into madness, as Nelly becomes the representative of patriarchal authority to report her behavior.

When Catherine meets the Lintons, she’s “domesticated”, robbed of her independence, nature and individuality, as she seeks to become socially acceptable. She decides to marry Edgar Linton, and struggles to define her identity as a woman in her husband’s household. Her confinement in Thrushcross Grange (society) makes her life unbearable, she wants to return to her Wuthering Heights and to Heathcliff (nature), and this leads to her premature death. To Gubar and Gilbert, it’s Catherine’s marriage to Edgar that causes her to feel trapped, she can no longer make sense of the world, sees things entirely from her own perspective, and ultimately is confined to her bed with illness. This connection between mental breakdown and imprisonment is common to many Gothic tales and Romantic poems, notably Lord Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon”and some of Emily Brontë’s Gondal poems.

We see something similar with Ellen in “Nosferatu” (2024); she has a clear connection to nature, in her teenage years she enjoyed being in the forest and the fields, and now she wants to go to the beach. Society wants to keep her imprisoned in the domestic sphere, which is represented in her marriage to Thomas, as he seeks to buy them a bigger house and a maid because that’s what Ellen deserves. Like Catherine, Ellen is also “domesticated” when she meets and marries Thomas, as she represses her power because of societal expectations of her, until it eventually explodes and she keeps summoning Orlok to her. And like Catherine, Ellen’s desire for freedom will also lead her to her premature death (in a different context). And while Catherine and Heathcliff had their Wuthering Heights, Ellen and Orlok have their garden of lilacs (like we saw at the prologue, when he revealed himself to her; which is probably also a reference to their past life since these flowers are native to the Balkans, and both Ellen and Orlok associate them with each other).

The Destructive Power of Love and "Blood Plague"

"One of the tasks I had was synthesizing Grau’s 20th-century occultism with cult understandings of the 1830s and with the Transylvanian folklore that was my guiding principle for how Orlok was going to be, what things he was going to do, and the mythology around him. I was synthesizing a mythology that worked with all of that." (Robert Eggers; Dream of Death)

Theme of the all-consuming, obsessive and self-destructive passion, wrecking the lives of everyone around them and only stops when they are both dead.

Robert Eggers' Count Orlok is a strigoi morti from Balkan folklore, with roots in Dacian mythology, and that's his lore and what explains his actions/motivations in this story. Strigoi haunt one person (usually the one they loved the most in their life), and the rest like unfortunate collaterals. In “Nosferatu” (2024), it’s Ellen who’s the target of this haunting; as Orlok’s every action in the story is connected to her. Having her soul by his side for all eternity (“you shall be one with me, ever-eternally”) is his sole motivation.

"May she [Catherine] wake in torment!' he [Heathcliff] cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings!"

Strigoi feed on souls (“life force”, soul in the blood), they are the original “psychic vampires”. As Orlok is feeding on his victims, he’s gradually trapping their souls inside of Nosferatu (the rotten corpse), alongside his own. This is a sort of reversed “possession”; where the victim becomes part of Nosferatu, taking residence there until Nosferatu is destroyed and the souls are set free (including Orlok’s); because strigoi are sustain by the souls of others  ("I will drink upon thy soul"; "I relinquished him my soul").

Besides the physical symptoms of the “blood plague” there’s a notorious change of behavior on Orlok’s victims, as they seem taken by madness and delirium. This is interpreted as “fever”, but it’s them having access to Orlok’s soul inside of Nosferatu, and vice-versa. He's dragging these characters into darkness (Nosferatu) alongside him, forcing his own pain and torment upon their souls, like Heathcliff did with the characters of “Wuthering Heights” after Catherine’s death.

In his own essay to “The Guardian” about his “Nosferatu”, Robert Eggers writes: “what are we to make of stories like this? What kind of trauma, pain and violence is so great that even death cannot stop it? It’s a heartbreaking notion. The folk vampire embodies disease, death, and sex in a base, brutal and unforgiving way.” The answer to Orlok's dark trauma, connected to Ellen, that death cannot stop it, is on the story itself.

Orlok is forcing all of these characters to relive his own trauma throught their "blood plague" deliriums, which fits the “demon lover story” in a, indeed, brutal and unforgiving way. He compells Ellen to confront her own power (death), destroy her Victorian self-deception (“You deceive yourself”) and for her to remember their own shared trauma, at the same time.

Unbearable guilt: Thomas blames himself for everything that is happening, he believes he was the one who unleashed Orlok because he sold him a house in Wisburg. He thinks Orlok is already getting to Ellen the same way he did to him once he arrived at Transylvania. He's now on a vendetta against Orlok ("I'll kill him!") and wants to be forgiven ("Please, it is my fault! Forgive me my dear, sweet friend!” as he’ll say to Friedrich).

Burden of reproduction: Anna feels her pregnancy is eating her away, because her unborn child is hungry like their father, and asks Ellen for explanations;

Maddening grief: Friedrich Harding blames Ellen’s diseased mind for his grief, and he'll go on to blame himself when Thomas proves Nosferatu is real.

"I’ll kill him! He shall never harm you again. Never! [...] Please, it is my fault! Forgive me my dear, sweet friend!" "Suffocating… I… feel so weak… I… I fear little Friedrich is so strong and hungry, he’s eating me weary." "Anna, my love. Our son … our little son… forgive me. I shall never sleep again. Never."

And we also have Herr Knock's delirium, which is "death wish", and wanting to be executed because Orlok broke their covenant in favor of Ellen.

The “blood plague” victims are mimicking Orlok’s dark trauma: 16th century Ellen either died on childbirth or had a pregnancy-related death (like Catherine in "Wuthering Heights"); which embodies disease, sex and death. Which will find parallel in Thomas, but mostly in Friedrich Harding blaming himself because of his wife’s death. Which is also expressed in Anna Harding saying their son is so strong and hungry (like his father) and it’s eating her away. Orlok’s appetite is the culprit of his wife’s death. He kills the two Harding children as revenge for the burdens of reproduction. Like Friedrich Harding, Orlok was also an extremely wealthy man (count; ancient line of nobility; etc.) but his greatest treasure was his wife. Without her, he didn’t want to live anymore, and this will resonate in Herr Knock seeking a violent execution to punish himself. He was either executed because of witchcraft or committed suicide. The symptoms of the "blood plague" (shortage of air, lung infection) and Orlok's "wheezing" indicate he died by suffocation (drowned; hanging or strangled).

And this also makes sense with the strigoi myth where “bad death”, violent, like execution or suicide is believed to be one of the reasons why a person becomes a strigoi after death. And since Orlok calls Ellen his "affliction" (sickness; plague; sorrow of all sorrows), his death is related to her.

Olrok targets Friedrich and Anna Harding because they are the mirror pair to him and Ellen, which indicates they were a similar couple to the Hardings in the 16th century (only Ellen was more sexual than Anna, because she’s similar to Friedrich Harding).

"I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep and throw the church down over me, but I'll not rest till you are with me. I never will!”

Orlok possesses Thomas during the "possession scene" after Ellen begins to "remember", as she says "you could never please me as he could".

Separated by death/United by death

After Catherine’s death, she’s buried in the churchyard, near the moors she loved. While Edgar’s grief is quiet sadness, Heathcliff is pure desolation, suffering and anguish, which will set him on a path of self-destruction. Edgar will be buried next to Catherine. Later, Heathcliff bribes a sexton to unearth Catherine’s coffin and remove the wood on one side, so when he’s buried next to her, their corpses will be together, with not even a piece of wood between them. After their deaths, peace returns to Wuthering Heights and the people swore they saw their ghosts, together, in the moors. The last scene in the book is Mr. Lockwood seeing Catherine and Heathcliff ghosts approaching the window.

Given all the context, it was Orlok’s maddening grief and unbearable guilt over his wife’s death that caused him to be cursed to become a strigoi after his death. Reincarnation is one of the main beliefs in Zalmoxis worship, and so, he died believing he would find his wife on another reincarnation. Only this didn’t happen; he became a strigoi, and his wife’s soul (Ellen) moved on to the next reincarnation. When Ellen calls out, he’s resurrected and immediately goes to her window, asking for entrance, truth to strigoi folklore.

Orlok’s actions with Ellen are very much rooted in Balkan folklore of the strigoi: he’s dragging her to her grave (“you are not for the living. You are not for human kind”); and he needs to have Nosferatu curse removed from him in order for them to be together in the Afterlife, because his soul is trapped in that rotten corpse. At the end of “Nosferatu” (2024) we have two strigoi legends; if a strigoi haunting isn’t stopped, the haunted will, inevitably,  die, broken hearted and insane. In some legends, strigoi return to their widows to have sex with them, until they die of an excess of intercourse (exhaustion); and Ellen literally dies of a “broken heart” because he fed off her heart blood. At the end, Ellen is possessed by Orlok, as their souls are one inside of Nosferatu, she has access to his soul, and her blood plague delirium is love.

'I wish I could hold you,’ she continued, bitterly, ‘till we were both dead!'

And that “final look of love” she gives Thomas isn’t about him at all, it’s about her and Orlok, as their joined blood/souls are pouring out of Nosferatu and ready to ascend to the Afterlife, together forever. Like Catherine and Heathcliff, their bodies are united in death.

Heathcliff grieving Catherine: "Wuthering Heights" BBC Minisseries (2009)

At the end, Ellen and Orlok return to their spiritual garden of lilacs, like Catherine and Heathcliff went back to their Wuthering Heights. Both pairs were separated by death, and are united by death. In both, we have Mr. Lockwood and Professor Von Franz looking out of the window, smiling:

‘They [Catherine and Heathcliff’s ghosts] are afraid of nothing,’ I grumbled, watching their approach through the window. ‘Together, they would brave Satan and all his legions.’ As they stepped on to the door-stones, and halted to take a last look at the moon—or, more correctly, at each other by her light.

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Spoilers: Eggers' Nosferatu

There's a lot of debate right now on if Count Orlok represents Ellen's shame/trauma/abuse, or if he represents her repressed erotic desires, and in turn there's debate on whether or not viewers who find the Ellen/Orlok dynamic alluring are "missing the point." Eggers and Lily-Rose Depp have both said in interviews that there's a mutual pull between Ellen and Orlok, and even that there's a love triangle element, but obviously the experience is terrifying for Ellen. How can we reconcile the sexual tension and the horror?

I think the broader theme is that Orlok represents everything in a woman's inner world that men refuse to acknowledge and accept - fear and shame and trauma, yes, but also our appetites . After the prologue, the story starts with Ellen begging Thomas to stay in bed with her; she says "the honeymoon was yet too short" and tries to pull him in and kiss him (obviously trying to start some nuptial bliss). But Thomas is anxious to meet with his boss and get his promotion, because he has a narrative he's going to fulfill: he's going to pay Friedrich back, buy a house, and then start having kids (he and Friedrich touch on this a bit later. Notably, Friedrich discloses Anna's pregnancy to Thomas before Anna has made it public.)

It's the start of Ellen and Thomas' married life and she just wants him to prioritize her sexual desire, but he chooses to focus on his ideal of success, which sets him on this path to confronting Orlok. We know Ellen doesn't care about having a house or fine things and she begs him not to go, but Thomas listens to Herr Knock and Friedrich, who tell him that as a husband he has to provide materially. He ignores Ellen's stated desires, and so fails to provide sexually and emotionally. When Thomas gaslights her about her nightmares and calls them childish fancies, he shuts down her vulnerability, which kills the intimacy she was enjoying in the literal honeymoon phase.

On a related note, there's a defence in here for Aaron Taylor Johnson's performance, which I've seen a few male critics call "over acting." In this story Friedrich represents the masculine ideal of the time, he's a rich business owner with a beautiful wife and kids. Thomas clearly looks up to him and wants to emulate him - he wants to give Ellen the life "she deserves." But Friedrich's elevated masculine status is why he refuses to listen to Ellen's "hysterical, sentimental" worries, he's too rational for all that of course. And his stubborn "rationality" leads to the death of his entire family. Friedrich IS the patriarchal ideal that crumbles when confronted with nuance and uncertainty. Some people see Friedrich and assume that a character like him is meant to come across as dignified, and that Aaron Taylor Johnson is messing up by making him look annoying, but really he is giving a great portrayal of a really common, annoying kind of guy. The kind of guy who melts down and has childish tantrums whenever they lose control of a situation, or their manly skills and values are shown to be irrelevant.

The men in the movie (excluding Professor von Franz) frame Ellen as childish for speaking about her dreams candidly, but their own childishness is revealed when her dreams manifest in the form of Orlok and become unavoidable. Ellen (partially? possessed in the moment by Orlok) tells Thomas how "foolish and like a child" he was in Orlok's castle. In the literal context that's cruel, and obviously that shit was scary as hell, but it hits on Thomas' failure in the metaphorical reading. He was a child playing house: 'I'll be the husband and make money, you be the wife and make babies.' When it came time to confront his wife's inner world and all the scary, traumatized, lustful complexity of it, he was completely inept. The message isn't that Orlok is what Ellen really needs, or that Thomas is a wimp, but he's not a perfect husband either. I think "the point" is that a real healthy marriage with sexual, emotional, and spiritual mutuality is impossible in that society with Thomas/Friedrich's ideals. In that kind of society, a spiritually and sexually potent woman like Ellen ("in heathen times you might have been a Priestess of Isis") will always be caught in a "love triangle" with her husband and her own inner world.

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“Nosferatu” (2024) simplified

Robert Eggers is subverting every theme in the “Dracula” novel, and playing with canon and expectations: “My influences are all very clear, and Nosferatu is a remake, after all,” Eggers says, yet he plays with the canon, with expectations and clichés – “hopefully subverting them to do something unexpected”.

Robert Eggers has said a thousand times already this story is a Gothic romance, heavily inspired by “Wuthering Heights”, which he read and re-read while writing the script, and Ellen and Orlok are similar to Cathy and Heathcliff. This Ellen wants this Orlok;

This is a Folk Gothic horror movie: Count Orlok is a strigoi from Balkan folklore; isn’t merely blood he feeds on, it’s souls (that why he drinks heart blood; heart as center of the soul). His lore is Balkan folklore and Dacian mythology. He’s not Vlad the Impaler and he’s a subversion of Count Dracula in many ways. He’s an entirely new character created by Eggers, as are the rest of the characters here.

The “possession” are the blood plague victims. Orlok can only “possess” those he feeds on, and traps their souls inside of Nosferatu (alongside his own). This is why Thomas was exorcised but he’s still lost in Orlok’s shadow like the Nuns warn him, he doesn’t listen (Orlok still has influence over him, as we see; not kicking out Ellen of the bed, and Thomas is the one who gets possessed in the “possession scene”);

Ellen and Herr Knock are more similar than you think; Knock is the character who tells the audience what Ellen has been doing in her teenage years (masturbation; Orlok has to be conjured for telepathic/mind communication to happen, via sexual energy). Orlok can only possess those he fed on (Thomas, Anna Harding, Friedrich Harding, etc.). He only “possesses” Ellen at the end;

Ellen is confused about her own power, she’s a unreliable narrator, because she doesn’t have the language to understand it. It’s a character outside of Victorian society which begins to unravel the mystery behind her “sickness”, but she’s comes to the answer on own. At first, Professor Von Franz thinks she’s a victim of spiritual obsession by some daemon (she’s having these “hysterical fits” because a daemon tells her to, a daemon is influencing her behavior because of what he says to her, inside of her head). Ellen doesn’t have the knowledge to understand what Von Franz means, and interprets this as Orlok being a demon possessing her body (“I have felt you crawling like a serpent in my body”). He isn’t because he never drank her blood (soul). She also keeps mixing up her 16th century incarnation with her current one;

Thomas is the character who tells the audience the “true story” in the “possession scene”; he says it’s “impossible” for Ellen and Orlok to have been lovers “then” because he was actually possessed by Orlok, he had access to his soul, he knows what Ellen is talking about can’t possible have happened in her current life/incarnation (because it didn’t; he was only a shadow at her window during her teenage years, and she’s the reincarnation of his wife, she most likely has flashbacks memories of this);

Most scenes are characters talking about opposite things and people dying as a result;

Ellen and Orlok “first night scene” at the Hardings is Ellen accusing him of being a demon possessing her, while he thinks she knows she has been conjuring him this entire time. He also believes she remembers their past life together because of the lilacs;

The “possession scene” between Ellen and Thomas is her talking about her past with Orlok (she unleashed him; lovers), and initiating a communication with the spiritual world because she thinks Orlok will possess her like a demon; Thomas knows this is impossible, truly believes he was the one who unleashed Orlok because he sold him a house in Wisburg and now thinks Orlok is getting to Ellen the same way he did to him when he arrived at Transylvania (nightmares and hallucinations);

The “vengeance” at the ending is Thomas. He’s on a revenge mission against Orlok because he wants to avenge Ellen, the Harding and himself. He blames himself for everything that has happened. Only this is what Orlok wants because he has been influencing Thomas into killing him with a “spike of cold iron” (Thomas-Handsome Roma vampire hunter).

Friedrich and Anna Harding are the mirror pair to Orlok and Ellen. That’s why they are targeted by Orlok. Orlok and 16th century Ellen were like Friedrich and Anna (but Ellen being more sexual);

Ellen’s shame is connected to Victorian views of female sexuality and womanhood as a whole. Orlok doesn’t only represent her repressed sexual desire, but also nature (vs. society/domestic sphere/Thomas) and education/knowledge (enchanter; occultist; worshipper of Zalmoxis, owner of the secrets of life and death, and immortality). Passion isn’t the only thing he has to offer; he represents liberation and power. Everything that was off limits to women in the early 19th century. This story deals with Historical Feminism.

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listened to punish by ethel cain on the way home from the theatre after seeing nosferatu and genuinely almost had to pull over and sit in the emotional turmoil because that is ellen's song

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Victor Hugo

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Rinat Voligamsi, various works, 2007-2023.

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Gustavo Díaz Sosa, various works

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Rinat Voligamsi, various works, 2007-2023.

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Daisuke Yokota, various works.

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Alfred Kubin, selected works.

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Antony Gormley, selections from the “Cosmic” series.

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David Lynch, selections from 2021’s “Distorted Nudes” photogravures.