#count the roses

[asoftepiloguemylove]

Mikko Harvey Wind-Related in the Wheatfield // Jonny Bolduc open question @jovialtorchlight // Cheryl Strayed Tiny Beautiful Things // @/mkpoet (instagram) // Mary Oliver Count the Roses // Phoebe Bridgers Waiting Room // Fyodor Dostoyevsky // Marie Howe Magdalene Afterwards; "Magdalene: Poems"

[chrollc]

cause the best parts of a vampire besides the fangs are the (tender) hands

print available;

[hylemorph]

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.

[slothliart]

You are my affliction 🪻

Prints!

[knightlycowboy]

𝙉𝙤𝙨𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙪 - 𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘌𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴 (2024) // 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 - 𝘍𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘻 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘸𝘪𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘬 (1909)

[tuserlivia]

NOSFERATU (2024), dir. Robert Eggers

[snail-shell2335]

Do You Know What It Means To Be Loved By Death?

[glindalphaba]

NOSFERATU (2024) — dir. Robert Eggers

[moonlit-lina]

Dream of me. Only me.

[idiotwithanipad]

‘You Are Mine’

[bottle-of-harpoons]

Headcannon: Silver is the whitest boi

Blaze made him a jumper because she's tired of losing him all the time.

[madeleineengland]

Count Orlok x Ellen 🖤 (Nosferatu)

Repost with artist permission! Original by Niribaki3 on X.

[the-crooked-library]

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.

[maggieannemillerart]

"yet I cannot be sated without you."

Work in progress: "Sated."

[sahind]

NOSFERATU (2024) dir. Robert Eggers

[moldyrainbowbutter]