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Modern Vampires of the City, with ‘Nosferatu’ and ‘Sinners’
11 Plays2 months ago
In this Halloween-themed episode of Zeitgeist, Jordan and Niv plunge into the lore of vampires, beginning with Ryan Coogler's 'Sinners.' They investigate Michael B. Jordan's contribution to his filmography (2:23), and how it fits into the blockbuster landscape of 2025 (5:57). They talk about its relationship to the blues (9:34), black joy and storytelling (13:32), and its award-winning composer (24:54).
In the second half, they discuss the Robert Egger's reimagining of 'Nosferatu' (34:52). They discuss the historical context of what makes a vampire (48:12), the design elements (57:59), the cast (1:00:46), and how effectively the narrative structure works in our modern context (1:15:32).
Ologies: https://www.alieward.com/ologies/vampirology
Our Black Panther 2 episode: https://www.mixcloud.com/pulpculture/the-heart-of-the-modern-blockbuster-with-top-gun-maverick-and-black-panther-wakanda-forever/
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Transcript
Introduction to Zeitgeist and Vampire Lore
00:00:21
Speaker
Happy Halloween, everyone! Or happy October to those who don't celebrate Halloween. This is Zeitgeist, the show where we talk about all the latest TV and movies while we listen to the latest music. Right now we're talking about sinners. We are going to be doing vampires in the second half. We're going to get in the weeds about what is the meaning. What's the meaning of a vampire?
00:00:44
Speaker
And we're also going to be talking about a movie from last year, Nosferatu. We recorded that conversation many months ago now. So it's been hanging out in the vault while we've been figuring out kind of where to place our our vampire love. There's a couple of other things that we've wanted to talk about. Interview with the Vampire, we talk a little bit about that in the second
Ryan Coogler's Influence and Filmography
00:01:04
Speaker
half.
00:01:04
Speaker
But I think the most important vampire movie and maybe one of the most important movies of the year is a film with a lot of different inspirations, Sinners.
00:01:15
Speaker
Sinners by Ryan Coogler. If you guys remember, we talked about Coogler's movie Black Panther 2 when that came out a couple of years ago. And so we're doing our next Coogler episode.
00:01:26
Speaker
Coogler's an important director, I think. um I'm Jordan Conrad to talk about the one of the these you know seminal directors of our generation is my co-host. EvoBuzz, hi.
00:01:38
Speaker
Sorry, that took me a second. no it's okay. I'm good, man. I think I've just started having you say your name. don't know why. Usually I introduce you at the top half. You introduce me, yeah. And I'm like, hi, everyone. And I'm just not used to this. I'm not used to saying my own name in the beginning, because I always say it at the end. Sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm flexing the... Guys, podcast listeners, you are. They're going me off.
00:02:03
Speaker
I just wanted to say I've been set up by my co-host and you should definitely flame him in whatever chat forum. Oh my god, the stands are coming. You possibly
Plot and Themes in 'Sinners'
00:02:13
Speaker
can. They're coming to get me. you need to all become vampires and hunt this person down.
00:02:17
Speaker
Boom. Boom, turn it around. That's how we connected here on Zeitgeist. Okay, so one wild night in 1932, Mississippi. Have you ever been out to the south? I know that you are not a lifelong American, but you have lived in the ah United States for many years in your life. I mean, I lived in Florida and I've been to New Orleans, but I've never been to Mississippi. ahha I've never even been to Missouri, which is crazy. i literally bordered us.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, I have family in Missouri. yeah It's like a six hour, not a very long drive. I mean, if you're out in the UK, you're like, six hours is going to get me across ah several continents. But here in America, you drive six hours and you're still in California.
00:03:03
Speaker
So like... ah Speaking of Chicago, Sinners. chicagogo Pretty tight, Chicago and Sinners. The two boys, Smoke and Stack, come from Chicago.
00:03:16
Speaker
What's that? i mean, Smoke and Stack are their nicknames. The real names are Elijah and Elias. Oh, yeah. For sure, for sure. Using their government names. I honestly couldn't tell you. I saw it in theaters many, many, many months ago. This is now streaming, by the way, guys, on HBO Max. So you can boot this up right now. No longer Max. These two boys are played by one man.
00:03:36
Speaker
That man's name is Michael B. Jordan. He is known for being in Ryan Coogler's movie, Black Panther, as the villain. Really? In all of them? Yeah.
00:03:47
Speaker
I'm pretty sure literally he's been in every single Ryan Coogler movie. I couldn't think of one that he hasn't been in. Do we want to name the Ryan Coogler movies? Yeah, i oh why not? So we started with the one Fruitvale Station. He was in that.
00:04:02
Speaker
We have Black Panther. Was that the follow up? No, no, no. So I have all of them here. okay Okay. So 2013 Fruitvale Station, where Michael B. Jordan was the lead. I saw that one in a five minute interval. My roommate was watching it my sophomore year. So I saw a little bit of Fruitvale Station. great movie.
00:04:20
Speaker
But I haven't seen anything else. Creed, I think we saw that one together. No, I've never seen Creed or its sequel. Creed, he was the main character in that too. Black Panther, he was the main villain in that.
00:04:31
Speaker
Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, which we covered. he It's not a spoiler because it's a really long movie by now. he shows He shows up. Let's just say that. He shows up. You know, spoilers or spoiler not. He shows up.
00:04:42
Speaker
He's around. It's not much. He's around, but it's still important. And in many ways, one of the better scenes in that movie. I would say the best scene. Yeah, probably. And then, of course, Sinners. So Coogler, as decorated as he is, has only done one, two, three, four, five movies.
00:04:58
Speaker
And two of them are essentially like in the same universe as each other. Black Panther. And he's leading up to making Black Panther 3, I believe. I believe so. With Denzel Washington. That's going to be an interesting one. Yeah, I heard a little bit about how he like called up Denzel. That's one of the interesting things about Coogler, too, is that because he has been so decorated in such a short amount of time, Sinners, by and large, doesn't happen without somebody like Christopher Nolan, because the whole point of Sinners is that it is a very technical movie. The whole point is that he's using these very specific aspect ratios there are videos online about him talking about the aspect ratios he used for sinners there are certain scenes that are really important in the movie that he shot in imax very specifically i did watch the movie in imax when i saw it that's the only way i think i've seen sinners and i think largely to its benefit it is a blockbuster in every sense of the word
00:05:55
Speaker
It's something that did very well. It's very wide in scope without being overly wide in scope. I mean, at the end of the day, it takes place in one town with a few exceptions. It takes place in one night with very little exception. And it has its cast of characters.
00:06:13
Speaker
And that cast of characters includes Smoke and Stack, Michael B. Jordan. It includes Haley Steinfeld playing the girlfriend to one, ah Mary.
00:06:24
Speaker
ah She and Stack have a complicated past. I believe that he kind of dipped out to Chicago and left her stranded. For for Smoke, you have Annie, who is the healer and has a very similar kind of mournful past.
00:06:41
Speaker
And then you have Sammy. And I think you can't really talk about this movie without talking about Sammy because Sammy not only being the POV character, he is also the soul of the movie, Yeah, he is the heart.
00:06:54
Speaker
Maybe in more ways than one. He is. He is literally the heart of this movie, which is such a testament to Ryan Coogler's writing ability because he not only directed this movie, he wrote the movie, he wrote the screenplay. This is his only original movie, by the way. People have mentioned that because Freightville Station was an adaptation. Yes. That's true.
00:07:13
Speaker
But what's crazy is like, obviously, he very much hired Michael B. Jordan to essentially portray the two powerhouses of this movie. Obviously, he is the star power in this movie, but he still made room to give like a whole new character the ability to outshine them not in and necessarily like, again, in a star power way, but in an emotional way.
00:07:36
Speaker
And I think that's what speaks to really wonderful writing. When there is an emotional core, not just like, oh, blockbuster action, adrenaline, all that stuff. Because at the end of the day, we relate more to what's happening on screen if we're able to actually relate to a human being. And I feel like Sammy does that so well.
00:07:58
Speaker
And what's great about Sinners is that you don't immediately hit the ground running with a ton of action. it doesn't feel like a lot of blockbusters these days where even in some great, let's talk about one of the big blockbusters of the summer, shall we? Did you see Superman?
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah, we did. So then to compare Sinners to Superman, since we have the benefit of hindsight here, having covered this movie with a lot of blockbusters in the rear view, Superman has a lot of action scenes and not all of them feel super necessary
Cultural and Musical Themes in 'Sinners'
00:08:29
Speaker
to the plot.
00:08:29
Speaker
There's a whole kaiju scene in the middle that I know was in a lot of trailers and people were like, what's going on here? And watching the movie, you do feel that similarly where the action scenes are peppered in Mostly, I think, to keep the audience in check to make sure that there is some action that we can really tie to. Now, for every one of those, there are some really grounded, great action scenes in a movie I think is largely very, very, very successful.
00:08:55
Speaker
That being said, Sinners is an umpteenth more successful because when we actually get to the action, the action is what it should be. It's so funny because I talk about musicals and musicals, you have to start singing when words no longer have meaning and i say that about action too and i've said that before on the podcast in this movie you get both you don't only get her the action scenes but you do get the emotions pouring through in two very memorable musical scenes which is a characteristic of this show that is so vehemently singular
00:09:34
Speaker
What did you think about it? The blues. Are you a person who's, we've spent time, I mean, we like lived. We lived. Right by buddy guys. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna bring that up. Did you ever go?
00:09:46
Speaker
Yes, I did. Okay. You know, like there was a time where we were old enough to go. I still remember it was crazy because they didn't let us go until we were 21. Yeah, it was a 21 plus club. A lot of places yeah in Chicago are 21 plus, to be fair. But yeah, i entered I entered it once because I love blues, I love jazz, and you know, I entered it once and it was a really cool vibe, it was really a really cool place, and we lived, again, right next to it.
00:10:09
Speaker
So it would have been a travesty not to go. And I think that when I realized Buddy Guy was the person at the end of the movie, I was just kind of like, what a weird full circle moment.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, because in many ways, Buddy Guy is the blues. And it's weird that he did have a post-credits scene, which I guess we are spoiling that a little bit. It's not really a a center point. Yeah, he's like the end of the movie. And I feel like in some ways as a person who represents blues now, especially like having Stan Lee in the movie. Yeah. You know, it it is very much like this person is the very pinnacle of what we're trying to portray again.
00:10:53
Speaker
The very pinnacle now because he's alive, he's still alive and he has so much to represent within in that world. So it made a lot of sense. It it was also like David Lynch in Fablements, you know, totally vibe what that person represents by taking up a role like this.
00:11:10
Speaker
also the best scene in the movie. In terms of The Fableman's, not in Sinners. But I think what I'm trying to say here is that what I thought about it is, when you have a movie like this, and the reason why Sinners is so successful is because it's taking a genre, it's taking the horror genre, right?
00:11:27
Speaker
But embedding it with its own unique style. One of the reasons why I love the movie Scream, for instance, It's that even though it very much plays into the horror genre, it does it in a very different way in the sense that it almost like parodies the horror genre. It actually takes stock of the history of the horror genre.
00:11:47
Speaker
And it very much is like, OK, let's subvert that. Let's subvert it in every turn and almost criticize it, but also honor it in its own way. What Sinners does is take the horror genre and also in connection to vampire genre, and then it grounds it and grounds it into sort of this Americana of blues and sort of the South.
00:12:08
Speaker
And makes it very, like, witchy and grounded and in its own sort of unique mythos. And ironically, this is what Interview with a Vampire does very well. ah could make And also True Blood did very well and certain aspects of it, too, that it takes sort of the mythology of how...
00:12:29
Speaker
dark and sort of mystical the South part of the United States really is and how funky it can be and then related to this idea of horror.
00:12:40
Speaker
I don't know. It's such a cool thing. So Sinners is not the first to do it. I think it's just the first to do it that I've seen and a movie because every other thing has done it in sort of like a television show. And of course, Interview with a Vampire was a movie first. I feel like it really explores the South portion of it.
00:13:01
Speaker
very, very well in the television show. Yeah, and I understand that that movie has its fans, but by and large, there is something about the modern adaptation that allows for a lot of the themes that, from what I gather, were present in the book to come through. And Sinners, so while being a totally new piece of material also has that level of depth wherein you see these little moments that might not even pay off right there's one particularity that I do think a lot of people will cry plot hole plot hole on which is that early on there are some Native American vampire hunters that come through the town looking for our villain who we later know as Remick who is played by Jack O'Connell and
00:13:50
Speaker
And was amazing. ah Shout out to Jack O'Connell, by the way. Great year for him. Did you see 28 years later? Love that movie. I mean, I really want to. I saw 20 days later, like just last month in preparation for watching 20 years later.
00:14:05
Speaker
And from what I hear, he's been amazing. My sister loves that series, my older sister. And she I was in Sweden just now. it was like a month ago in Sweden. And every day of the week that I was there, she was like, oh, it's 20 years later out on streaming. I really want you to watch it. I really, really want you to watch it. I'll tell you what, by the time this episode's out, um everyone, you guys can go watch that on Netflix.
00:14:28
Speaker
But that being said, so what does Remick represent? He represents vampirism and not just any kind of vampirism, but artistic exploitation, threat of soul, and threat of soul, again, and being a direct metaphor. being a a pun, effectively, because the soul is not just the soul of a person, but the soul comes through in music. And there is a very memorable scene in the movie that very clearly literalizes this, that the soul of people is, in fact, the soul of music. And Sammy playing the music allows him to access a kind of culture that he is otherwise...
00:15:06
Speaker
Not going to be as privy to, especially as a young man. So the question of the movie ultimately is about what if cultural appropriation was very clearly realized and the very well-meaning folk like Remick and his crew came through and saw... Rural Whiter initially, yeah. Yes, right. Saw this saw this and and wanted to create it.
00:15:34
Speaker
and want to appropriate it to himself. And he we see that in many different ways throughout the movie. And I do also feel like it is a nuanced conversation about appropriation. This is not the kind of thing where they are just throwing darts, because it's very easy in in the movies to do that, and it happens quite a lot now, where, you know, people just say, well, rich people are bad, and we should hate them.
00:15:59
Speaker
And things like the menu, which is like, you know, fine dining is to in this movie kind of BS. And the things that really matter are the very low class things that the chef was more tied to.
00:16:14
Speaker
In Sinners, you don't really get that. think it's also important to say that one of the... biggest forms of appropriation in the United States history has been connected to music, right? The birth of rock and roll, for instance.
00:16:27
Speaker
Like, there's a reason we remember Elvis Presley, but not... See, this is what i'm talking about. You make a good point there. Starts with a C. What's his name? Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry,
00:16:38
Speaker
i mean, there's a reason why we remember Elvis Presley, but not Chuck Berry. Right. So at the end of the day, it didn't just stem from the whole idea of rock and roll. This has been going on for years where, you know, even in the jazz the industry and the blues industry that predated rock and roll would happen is African-Americans would sing the songs. They would write the songs and then a white artist like a famous white artist would cover it and then it would become so popular.
00:17:05
Speaker
that people have started attributing those original African-American jazz songs to Caucasian artists. Well, and Niv, this is an important thing too, because movies themselves are also talking about today, right? Talking about our modern context, but it also gives us a framing on how we view the past.
00:17:29
Speaker
And, you know, there are a lot of still prominent movies, pieces of propaganda like Birth of a Nation that to this day shape the way that Southerners talk about the Civil War. This media is so important. When you think of Chuck Berry, the first time you heard a Chuck Berry song, was it Back to the Future? Do you think it was? ah For a lot of people, it probably was. Maybe, but I also... And what's interesting about Back to the Future, and you can tell your personal experience, but I'll guess that a lot of people, for me, my first time hearing Chuck Berry was in Back to the Future.
00:18:02
Speaker
And in Back to the Future, what happens? A white kid is playing a song that Chuck Berry hears and goes, that's a hit. So they have... inverted history so that all of a sudden the black people are appropriating the white song not what is real which is the other way around now love to back to the future it is not necessarily a perfect trilogy by any stretch of the imagination but it has its charm and i'm not trying to dig in on that one specifically just to say that throughout movie history there has been a tradition of white people
00:18:41
Speaker
taking a lot of ideas and spitting it back at audiences being like, this is what we should remember as this period of history. And that is a absolutely deliberate curation. Now that deliberate curation is never not going to be there, but it's an important thing to have other people speak that truth.
00:19:00
Speaker
In a space like Sinners, where the slave trade is not necessarily history, but it's also not directly a presence,
00:19:11
Speaker
there is still indirect presence happening within the first hour of this movie. You see a lot of sharecropping still happening in this world.
00:19:22
Speaker
And so you get something that is not so dour as 12 Years a Slave, but you're also not getting a version of the South that is totally sanitized either. You're getting a black person telling a story of black joy. Yeah, and I think that's really important because we live in a world, at least in the world Senus is showing, a world where we can be like, okay, this is very much like an African-American story. And that's amazing. You know, it's rare to see that. It's similar to when you watch Everything Everywhere all at once, where it's like an Asian-American story.
00:19:54
Speaker
And you're seeing that culture being brought to the forefront and not just that culture, but just those characters, those as human people. and how you know we get to see that, we get to see those specific stories.
00:20:07
Speaker
I think there are times where and inclusion is so important, where you have shows and movies that you're able to see all different colors, all different races being the same story together.
00:20:20
Speaker
But there is something to be said that certain stories should be reserved to certain cultures and races because that's the story you're telling. There should be no sort of criticism or shame towards that.
00:20:33
Speaker
And I would even say that to like white stories, too. Like Brooklyn is a really good example. because it deals with Irish Americans, right, who are white. But it is an Irish American story, and it's like a good story. Well, I think that many white people have been telling uniquely white stories for generations. We just don't absolutely think of them as white stories often. But I do think it is important to recognize that when, let's talk about like one thing we've just mentioned on our podcast, just to keep the conversation kind of small.
00:21:06
Speaker
The Fablemans is a white story, is it not? It is. I mean, it's a story of a white boy. It's like a Jewish American story. Yeah, sure. So he's Jewish. And so he is a boy and he travels across the United States. But that is a uniquely, let's say, ah uniquely white Jewish story.
00:21:26
Speaker
You know, he is yeah more or less that. And so you get these very specific stories if they are being told from that personal place. Now, that personality is something that was very important to Coogler when he created this movie.
00:21:41
Speaker
He also got a first gross deal, which was not very well reported at the time. It was, I think, the white press largely were critical of Coogler and this act of respect that warner brothers took to the film but i also think that that respect was largely predicated on the fact that there was a huge bidding war on this movie and if ryan coogler hadn't gotten that first gross deal with warner brothers he could have very easily walked to a different studio and very possibly gotten the same thing so that's important to recognize when we talk about the fact that he got his first gross deal this was not in an act of charity this was
00:22:22
Speaker
a person who has created very valuable properties. He's worked only within the sandbox, minus one movie of IP, and he has created two parallel intellectual properties that are essentially liquid gold. Really highly successful. And so being able to create Sinners was a huge opportunity. And look how it paid off. He made a lot of money. The Warner Brothers studio is talking about making a sequel, possibly without Ryan Coogler's involvement, which that would suck. But it would be crazy. Yeah.
00:22:53
Speaker
But the fact of the matter is the story is uniquely a black story. And the white characters he also wanted to be specific about. He only wanted to cast the character of Mary, who we mentioned, it Haley Steinfeld, with a character who did, in fact, have some kind of heritage in that line. Now, you can't just be like, this is one actor, and we have to place this one actor.
00:23:17
Speaker
Granted, Michael B. Jordan was probably that, but he had that, you know, rapport with Michael B. ah Fun fact, I don't know if you know this, so Halsey, the i i did now the singer Halsey actually auditioned for the role. And that obviously ties directly into that ethnic connection because Halsey is also part black. Now, Haley Steinfeld, I believe in the movie is canonically the same racial makeup as she is in real life. I think that is a new trend.
00:23:45
Speaker
To Hollywood, that is not something that has been replicated, which is that in time after time, we are generally seeing actors portray, even sometimes in rather extreme ways, characters being twisted to be something they're not, or having a character just outright play a totally different race.
00:24:07
Speaker
That's something that's happened for decades and still happens occasionally in modern contexts, which is a shame, but... does happen, which is ah ah just a matter of fact. But Coogler is, i think, uniquely interested in working, first of all, with people who fit the reality of the characters in some way and are able to connect with those characters more deeply. And I think that makes it for a better film.
00:24:30
Speaker
But he also is someone who really respects the people that he has already worked with in the past. So this is the fifth collaboration with Kugler, Jordan, and also the composer of the movie, Ludwig Goranson, who has already won an Oscar for Oppenheimer, his score for Oppenheimer.
00:24:49
Speaker
Ludwig Gorenson is as much a seminal part of this movie as anybody else. but Let's talk about the score, man. So I'd like to open up the floor. What did you think about the score of Sinners? Amazing, because again, there's it's a movie also about music, right? So music is such an integral part, not just of the atmosphere and the tone, but part of the story.
00:25:09
Speaker
So if you didn't get a good composer to compose this movie, this movie would objectively not work. And again, this is not just a testament to just it being good music, but it's just a testament of how like music is so naturally.
00:25:25
Speaker
weaved into the story and and sort of what the movie even represents, because it not just represents blues, but it represents this culture's relationship to blues and how vibrant it makes both the culture and the music.
00:25:42
Speaker
I think watching it, I was like, part of the reason why it's so unique is because you don't see this in like a major studio movie. This is just not something you see. And i was kind of like amazed that I was like, even though it's Ryan Coogler, i was just kind of like, this is insane. that This not only got greenlit, but under an insane first dollar gross final cut privilege, because that's something you didn't say, that it was purely Ryan Coogler's directive to be like, I have final cut.
00:26:12
Speaker
on whatever this is, i don't care what executives say, i say what this movie is going to be, and an ownership of the film 25 years after its release. He owns this film.
00:26:23
Speaker
So I was just kind of like, this is insane an under a hundred million dollar budget to make a movie like this in 2025? Sorry, like this doesn't exist.
00:26:36
Speaker
And the fact that it was successful just proves that a movie like this should exist all the time. Right. But unfortunately, it still doesn't. I'm hoping that indeed that this will shift the paradigm. And it has been shown this year, if you look at a lot of the hits, Warner Brothers has bet big.
00:26:52
Speaker
as a general principle on a lot of stuff and there's more to come by the time this podcast comes out we will have another warner brothers big bet which is an over 100 million dollar budget with paul thomas anderson one battle after another the hope is that this movie also plays big now i have my concerns you guys can have me eating my words on that because this will be this be out in uh October here. But that being said, let's also talk about maybe what else influenced this movie, because this movie doesn't exist in a vacuum either.
Creative Storytelling in 'Sinners'
00:27:24
Speaker
I saw a major influence with Tarantino in Sinners, right?
00:27:30
Speaker
I mean, the the ending felt very Django. Obviously, there's From Dusk Till Dawn in here. Yeah, I did feel like Till Death's Tall Dawn, especially because what I appreciate about this movie that we haven't touched on yet is that and I'm glad you brought up the Superman comparison.
00:27:47
Speaker
Superman felt like a theme park, right? And I keep thinking of how that's true when, you know, they especially go into that weird like alien river, no time stream river thing.
00:27:58
Speaker
I was just kind of like this was made to be like a 4D ride. This is not made to be a movie, which has pros and cons. But what I appreciate about Sinners, for instance, is that it was so succinct.
00:28:11
Speaker
The entire action happens during literally one day and one night. And that's it. That's all this is It doesn't go over that. It goes directly from like the brothers arrive And then ah just continues on from there.
00:28:26
Speaker
It never skips a beat in terms of time. And I think that that's what I really appreciated because it just naturally kept you into the action. and when the true action happened, when the big set piece happened, it lasted a really long time.
00:28:41
Speaker
because it was all about the action. It wasn't about multiple action scenes sort of like clipped together that were separate from each other. it was just one huge action scene that sort of developed into a larger one and a larger one as time went by. That is ah great sign of pacing because you're just allowing it to naturally grow.
00:29:04
Speaker
with tension pays and and stakes. And I think that ultimately that's the big difference here. Sinners operates under this idea that it is a major blockbuster movie, but it feels like an old blockbuster movie like Django, like Till Dusk Till Dawn.
00:29:25
Speaker
In video game terminology, you have three different sort of categories. You have indie games, which are small. You have double A games that are like medium. And then you have triple A games that are these huge blockbuster games. Sinners feels like a double A video game sometimes where it's still personalized. It's still like it has a high budget.
00:29:48
Speaker
It has absolutely sort of mainstream qualities to it. But it also feels like it's not mainstream at all. It feels like its own thing because it has the ability to be its own thing.
00:29:59
Speaker
Am I making sense? Absolutely. And that is, I think, tied in the way that a movie is tied to, to the talent, which is kind of nice because in a video game, you are more or less largely tied to the developers. And in the movie world,
00:30:15
Speaker
you do get more of the human element. So this movie doesn't happen without generational talents like Delroy Lindo. It doesn't happen without a talents that have been working for decades, like Jack O'Connell, with movie stars that are going to be like the seminal movie stars. When we think of the 2020s, we're going to be thinking about Michael B. Jordan and people like Haley Steinfeld.
00:30:38
Speaker
You know, these people are the, and Ludwig Goranson, these people are the culture, right? And it's important to touch into the culture. Yeah, they're the zeitgeist. And the zeitgeist, right?
00:30:50
Speaker
And not move away from it. And not try to recreate something that has already been done to try to capture this kind of magic in a bottle. ah That's something that I think time and time again,
00:31:02
Speaker
These movie studios are trying to, instead of reaching into what might be some kind of magic, there's magic all around us here in Hollywood.
00:31:13
Speaker
There are YouTubers. There are so many different types of people. And now some studios, to give them credit, like A24, are calling upon YouTubers and finding these people and seeing what their stories are.
00:31:27
Speaker
But it's not happening often enough. And I think when it does happen, that's where you get these movies of the year. One of my top five of the year is from A24, is from the Filippo brothers who created a movie called Talk to Me and their follow-up this year, Bring Her Back, very easily in my ranking of the year.
00:31:47
Speaker
Now, Sinners is definitely up there too. Looking towards the end of the year here, what are you going to remember about Sinners? What's interesting about this year, before we get into the actual like award cycle,
00:31:59
Speaker
I feel like this jumpstarted the award cycle in so many ways, right? Because it felt very much like a unique movie that came out pretty decently early in the year.
00:32:09
Speaker
i believe it came out in April, something like that. And we're covering it now because, again, it just fits to what we're doing. But at the same time, it's still felt like it was precursing so many things.
00:32:22
Speaker
It precursed sort of the summer with Superman and the Fantastic Four movie that dominated sort of that that season. And it's precursing essentially this award season with Hamnet and...
00:32:36
Speaker
Like, sorry, baby, that hopefully we're going to cover eventually soon. Hint, hint. But the point I'm trying to say is that the reason why Centers is memorable was because it came out what at a time where I felt there was a drought in terms of like the quarterly system of the year.
00:32:55
Speaker
And so in that way, and specifically that way, it was really successful because if anything, as I said in a different episode, there were once upon a time things like water cooler projects where you would walk over to a person at work.
00:33:12
Speaker
And then say, oh, did you catch you know that that episode last week or that movie last week that's out just now? And then it would become a conversation piece. The nice thing about Sinners is that it is a conversation piece. It's a very powerful movie that sticks with you for all the right reasons, because it does something wholly original and it happens to be entertaining.
00:33:34
Speaker
And I think that's such a great combination to have when something feels very refreshing and fresh, but also just entertaining. And I think so many people in our industry try to chase after this thing of like, it needs to be entertaining, but it still needs to be safe.
00:33:51
Speaker
Sinners is not safe, and it still manages to be entertaining. Booyah. And with that, we're going to take a quick break and listen to some music, and then we're going to crack open that container that Mr. Nosferatu has been hiding in, and we'll see what's going on in terms of the broader vampire lore of the past hundred years.
Exploration of Nosferatu and Vampire Mythos
00:34:11
Speaker
Stay tuned, guys.
00:34:18
Speaker
Yes, this is a break. no not the music you were promised. That involves a thing called licensing, which happens on the Zeitgeist homepage, which is on Mixcloud. I personally curate the music for every single episode. It's easy to start the episode in this exact spot and pick up where you left off.
00:34:37
Speaker
If not, no worries. Let's just pretend you were listening. And we're back. Did you like those lyrics? I, for one, love my covert spying device disguised as a smart speaker. Can't wait until one of those dystopian tech companies decides to sponsor the show.
00:34:52
Speaker
who Speaking of all knowing, we're talking about the vampire Orlok in Nosferatu. That's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. You'll hear me in this section make some outdated references. Some audio is a little less hi-fi in this section. I still think that this is a really good conversation and worth forgiving the drops in fidelity. Hopefully you love hearing it as much as we loved making it.
00:35:12
Speaker
Enjoy.
00:35:19
Speaker
I'm actually hemophobic, meaning that I am afraid of blood, meaning that I actually really dislike vampire movies. Really? Yeah. But you and I have been wanting to do a vampire episode for a while. yes And maybe that's also because the initial thing that we wanted to talk about was a TV show that for the reasons of it being a TV show, I guess is pretty light on blood, which was the AMC interview with a vampire we'll be doing hopefully soon. Yeah, one of these days. But you know, vampires are part of the zeitgeist.
00:35:53
Speaker
It was only a matter of time that we got to them. What is interesting is that you and i will often chat about my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but is there anything in that realm of the monster of the week that you grew up watching?
00:36:06
Speaker
Or are you more in line with... Other types of entertainment. Did you kind of skip that whole thing? Twilight? I mean, you could have gotten on at any point. I know my buddy who lives next door to me, Rafi, he likes the original interview with a vampire.
00:36:23
Speaker
And he likes the old movies. He's probably seen the original Nosferatu. Niv, your relationship to the televised vampire early on or the filmic vampire, whichever is the best. Did you watch the 1990s Dracula that Francis Ford Coppola did?
00:36:39
Speaker
whether Was there another kind of vampire that I wasn't mentioning that was kind of your initial touch into the world? A few questions to answer because you also asked me was there a Monster of the Week show I watched and there was one actually with Smallville. That was sort of my Monster of the Week show on the CW. i In terms of like actual vampires, the reason I dislike vampires is because my older sister, when we had moved to India, I was six years old, she was 10.
00:37:07
Speaker
Like our parents would leave us alone at home all the time. And she was obsessed with horror movies. But she didn't want to watch them alone. So she forced me to watch with her these movies.
00:37:18
Speaker
And one of them was the Francis Coppola Dracula. I watched it. i was terrified. And I remember back then we had a shared room. So we went to sleep and all night she would like knock on the bed frame and be like, Niv.
00:37:37
Speaker
Someone's here. I'd be like, no, you're lying. It's you. And she's like, no, somebody's really here. All night. Every night. It was terrifying. But to answer the other question, what was, I think, the most emblematic vampire experience I had was True Blood.
00:37:54
Speaker
actually really liked watching True Blood on HBO. My sister got me into it. I didn't think I'd get into it, but I just thought it was so ridiculous. And the blood didn't seem scary at all.
00:38:05
Speaker
and So it was a way to like get me out of that funk of like, hey, I really hate this genre. Because I was just like, wow, this is weird, but in like a very schlocky sort of way, which I appreciated. Could you become a true blood vampire? I understand the context of that show. Is that they have like fake blood that they eat? Is it still like red? Does it still look like blood? You would probably not be... It's like synthesized blood. But no, like, I would not want to be a vampire.
00:38:34
Speaker
I've actually thought about this. Like, in video games, when it gives you the option to be like a werewolf, I'm like, yeah, let me be a werewolf. Woof, woof. That aesthetically makes sense for you, man.
00:38:45
Speaker
The werewolf is like very much visible. And one of the big things about the vampire is that they are like these shadow creatures, you know? And in that way, actually, the vampire really feels like the truest creature in a logical next step for one of my favorite filmmakers working right now, ah Robert Eggers.
00:39:06
Speaker
He is a director who I've been following for several years, not as many as some. I wasn't on the witch train. i actually watched his debut film, The Witch, from A24 on a plane more recently.
00:39:20
Speaker
But I was a really big fan of The Lighthouse, which is second movie. It was also with A24. Saw that in theaters. Did you catch that one? No, I did not. But we talked about it ad nauseum. The only Robert Eggers movie I've ever watched was Northman because it's Hamlet.
00:39:37
Speaker
Oh, that's an interesting one. So that was his first movie that he made with Universal. It was kind of a meeting of the minds in a way. It's kind of a tenant of...
00:39:49
Speaker
studio filmmaking where they were like we want to work with these big filmmakers but we also want to be able to sell movie tickets they had a big hit i think it was the viking tv show that they had been doing which i know you're a little bit of familiar with a little bit yeah but also alexander skarsgård who was in the north man like he's arguably one of the most famous swedish actors and So, also, he was in True Blood.
00:40:16
Speaker
Just saying. That's where he started his career. Shout out to that! all comes around. The Northman was interesting because i think Robert Eggers does this really well. He takes certain historical inspiration and combines it with a story we already know.
00:40:31
Speaker
He does that here with Nosferatu. But he did it in also The Northman because he takes like the story of Hamlet and very much attaches it to its core. The Danish inspiration behind it all, anyway.
00:40:42
Speaker
Which is really cool because usually when you see Hamlet, it's very hoity-toity, as they say. It's very Shakespearean. But here it's very brutal, which is very much like here with Nosferatu.
00:40:54
Speaker
He takes like a story like Bram Stoker's Dracula that is considered quite a sexy story that inspired a bunch of like sexy stories. And he turns it into something very gross and very visceral and very realistic to its time period, which I really, really appreciate it. And I know like where we're talking about before we actually bite into it, so to speak.
00:41:18
Speaker
but But it's definitely a style that you see from what I understand in all of this. Am I correct in saying that? I would say that his vantage point is largely... I mean, he's said more recently that he doesn't want to make a movie where he can see an iPhone in it.
00:41:36
Speaker
That's just not really where his head's at. He started out as a production designer and then moved into making movies because he likes this particular time frame. He likes to be able to make stuff that feel... very like old, very much something that lives in history, that feels of a particular time. The witch had particularly really attuned to using old English, the kind of old English that's like pre-full colonial settlement. There were like the seven or eight colonies that had arrived in America. I don't know if they had even really...
00:42:13
Speaker
formed the full colonization by the time the witch came around in the history of America. But it sort of talks about the like religious fear that happens in this like early colonial time. The Northman takes place way, way, way before that.
00:42:29
Speaker
Now, I actually totally forgot until we got on Mike, bro, but we actually did a podcast on the Northman. That was our second episode. You remember that? Oh my God. wow I forgot until we recorded this. I didn't remember that. This is actually our second Eggers episode. I really doubt that most of you listeners were around for that episode, but it's on our feed. You can check it out now. We actually covered that alongside. And it's a very different vantage point because we're talking about it in the context of being a Shakespearean adaptation.
00:42:58
Speaker
And Nosferatu is an adaptation as well, but in a very different sense because it's directly adapting a piece of film history in many ways, which is the German expressionist Mornau who created the movie Nosferatu.
00:43:14
Speaker
Which we also covered, I believe, but Expressionism in The Northman, because if it was a Shakespeare episode, yeah we talked about Macbeth. We did, which was very, very, very heavily influenced by German Expression, but actually in a very different way, because the way that they do it in the Macbeth movie is actually really spare.
00:43:33
Speaker
and Which was yeah something that Murnau did touch on, but I do think Murnau was a little more, especially in stuff like his like Beauty and the Beast, overstated. I would say it was incredibly stylish.
00:43:45
Speaker
But it's it's interesting how it has come full circle. And I think Robert Eggers is the first like creative that we've done two episodes. am i Am I correct in saying that? Which is also like a weird yeah full circle moment. Actually, hold on. a quick Quick note for her the viewers. Murnau did not do the Beauty in the Beast movie. That was another kind of film created in a German expressionist form, but it was actually a French filmmaker.
00:44:10
Speaker
But all that being said, yeah, Nosferatu was F.W. Murnau, who is a a well-known German expressionist. If you are not familiar with his work...
00:44:24
Speaker
I suppose that this was kind of his biggest, come to think, because there were a lot of other German expressionist films. You really set yourself up. He did. I mean, he did ah an adaptation of Faust later in his career. Yeah, that's the other thing people might know. I guess. Just purely on an adaptation alone. i know Faust more than most people, unless you're like really into the like German theater.
00:44:46
Speaker
In any case, so this was kind of Renaud's biggest thing. He used a stage actor for his adaptation of Nosferatu, I believe, as well as Schriek. Yeah.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yes, which also directly is in tandem with the fact that the Dracula movie adaptation created by Universal utilized the stage actor who played Dracula. And you get this very kind of like big theatrical performance. This is very common in these days because stage actors were predominantly what they thought of as actors.
00:45:19
Speaker
You know, film was still a very new medium. and not a medium that had much in the way of sound yet, or in the way of coloring. Although there is a little bit, and the German Expressionists like to play around with the color usage. And symbols. Yeah, and symbolism for sure. But also, more broadly, if you wanted to talk about Trip to the Moon and was a film that used color and used shadow and stuff like that, but it was much more kind of whimsical.
00:45:45
Speaker
But Nosferatu very much wants to be like horror based and it's very clear that that is something that was a direct inspiration for the stuff that Robert Eggers wanted to do. So Robert Eggers started with his version of it and is now moving back to paying direct inspiration to something that he knows and love. That's how Nosferatu has kind of continued to live in the cultural zeitgeist, to be totally honest, because Werner Herzog did the exact same thing in the 70s.
00:46:15
Speaker
You know, there is a 70s adaptation of Dracula that's very well known that Christopher Lee played part in, but In direct tandem, you had Nosferatu, Werner Herzog. So for every generation, there was a vampire. For every generation, there's also a Nosferatu adaptation. But what's crazy is that Nosferatu is an adaptation...
00:46:38
Speaker
of something else. Nosferatu is an adaptation of Dracula. It follows the same storyline, but it's just stylistically different. That's what makes it Nosferatu versus Dracula.
00:46:49
Speaker
It's an unlicensed adaptation in reality. It's sort of... of like a very Potter musical is to Harry Potter. It is an unlicensed adaptation. They change some actually really important parts of the film in my opinion, but parts of the film that are ultimately kind of novel and the estate behind Dracula was not very happy about Nosferatu. No, they sued them and won Right, exactly. Now, all of that stuff is in the public domain, but back then it was still very new and the copyright infringement was definitely not taken lightly. Well, they sued and won and they actually ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed, but several prints of Nosferatu actually arrived.
00:47:32
Speaker
And because of it, it became like this cult classic. And that's why it sustained itself in the cultural zeitgeist. Because it was, as you said, an unauthorized piece of media that completely survived copyright infringement.
00:47:46
Speaker
Which is just insane. Bram Stoker's actual widow was alive during that time. And she actually like the leading person to sue them. So it is crazy that there is like two versions, two really famous versions of the Dracula story.
00:48:02
Speaker
And to this day, they're still being adapted like the original and the copy. You know, that's so rare that a copy gets adapted. So to kind of get into the specifics of Eggers version of Nosferatu, I also want to talk about broadly.
00:48:19
Speaker
what a vampire actually is. And not necessarily like they suck blood, they tend to be pale, they only come out at night, but what actually is a folkloric vampire? And for that, I'm actually going to be referencing a podcast that you too can find the same places that you would find your next episode of Zeitgeist, which is a podcast by Ali Ward called Ologies.
00:48:45
Speaker
And in this episode, she interviews a professor and Professor Holdeman is a vampirologist and studies and lectures about vampires in some university in Ohio, I think. So vampires and what they represent.
00:49:02
Speaker
So Nosferatu and Dracula are both noblemen, right? They are a particular type of vampire. And that specific entity would probably be more tied to the literary vampire. And that would specifically be where the vampire short story came from, which was in talking about the same guy that was close friends with Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein. They had a bet with each other.
00:49:30
Speaker
When they went to like their friend's house in the countryside and basically from that sort of vet. You're exactly right, but you're thinking of Lord Byron. Lord Byron is the actual person who the modern vampire does pay a lot of tribute to.
00:49:49
Speaker
So Byron was a man who, and this is all in the Ologies episode, so I'm gonna do kind of ah summation of it. Byron was a man who is known for being kind of a player, kind of a cad, slept with a lot of women, some of them married, some of them unmarried, and his friends began to look down on him in a lot of ways because He really was kind of morally ambiguous, very rich, had a lot of utility. But at the end of the day, his friends couldn't really stand him a lot of times and got really mad at him. And one of his friends was, i believe, Polidori was the guy who wrote The Vampire, which is a story that was published in 1819, which was actually then retroactively credited towards Lord Byron because Polidori was so
00:50:40
Speaker
little known in the English literary circles. So despite the fact that Byron was actually the person that's essentially like, it's as if Kendrick Lamar wrote, not like us, and it was credited to Drake. You can kind of and think like that. The...
00:50:55
Speaker
The story of the original vampire is obviously predating the general gothic traditions, right? And a lot of these people probably did know each other in some way, shape, or form, but the folkloric vampire actually isn't a nobleman at all, but a spirit, and it was a force that you would feel more than you would see. It's an idea of a vampire. The vampire reaped the flesh as a farmer reaps the harvest, so if you think of a bad harvest, what would you blame?
00:51:23
Speaker
If you didn't know anything about the science behind why a harvest would go sour, you might blame a different entity, right? And that entity was often the vampire. So a vampire could drain resources from the land. It could also drain morality from a person. It could drain um resources. If somebody in a community drank too much...
00:51:47
Speaker
They would often be thought dead, right? it's Alcohol slows your heart rate. So when someone who has drank too much is found on the street the next day and their heart rate is really low, the town doctor probably thinks they're dead.
00:52:00
Speaker
So what do they do? They put them in a coffin. Well, the next day, this guy sobers up and wakes up and gets out of the coffin and starts walking around again. He's come back from the dead. That's a vampire. So a vampire is born from excess. Too much food, too much drink, or too much power.
00:52:15
Speaker
And in the case of Orlok, the vampire of this story, you really do see that specific depiction of depletion. And that is where we get into...
00:52:25
Speaker
the depletion of the gothic era which is ah lot about physical depletion and the way in which disease is closely tied to the vampire whether that disease be in the era of dracula That would be probably
Vampires in Historical and Cultural Context
00:52:44
Speaker
syphilis. That could be the plague.
00:52:46
Speaker
And in the modern era, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, you see a story like Interview with a Vampire. In Interview with the Vampire, that probably would be AIDS, right?
00:52:57
Speaker
So you see a lot of the vampires coming up again and again as a plague. way to disseminate something that we feel right it's a feeling more than an idea per se and it's a reconstruction of what our fears are culturally in the moment and holdeman says this again and again a vampire is created by the society that needs it and what about the original template of a vampire which is vlad dracula tell us a little bit more about that So, Haldeman does touch on Vlad the Impaler, and I would say that Haldeman's perspective is somewhat limited. ah He actually has a very positive belief in Vlad. Vlad was a man in, I believe it was around Transylvania, and that's why a lot of times people directly link him to Dracula as a character. Vlad was actually not a nobleman, but a, like, true leader, right? He was a politician.
00:53:56
Speaker
And Vlad, the reason why he was called Vlad the Impaler is because he was a deeply religious man who killed a lot of people that he believed were trying to usurp his stature and move the area he was governing away from the church.
00:54:10
Speaker
I'm not going to talk too much in detail because I'm not much of a historian, but I will say that Vlad himself was largely, I think, hated by people in the European world Because of where he was located, i think he was Eastern European in some faculty. you might be able to touch in exactly where the Impaler was ruler of. He was like basically the leader of Wallachia, which is now a part of like modern day Romania. He largely, I think, is a victim of racism. Like, Vlad the Impaler did do some pretty awful things in the sense that he killed a lot of people.
00:54:49
Speaker
But I think the reason why Holderman is so soft on him is because in those days, that's kind of what you did. Well, he was like a ruler of a small nation surrounded by much larger nations, and he constantly fought in order to keep the independence of that smaller nation. That's why he's actually considered like a national hero in Romania, even though he did a lot of terrible things.
00:55:10
Speaker
He was the underdog, which is a little crazy to say. he It's interesting because, you know, like he is a template for Dracula, like the villain of a story. But in his story, like even though he became sort of a villain, he's also considered hero.
00:55:25
Speaker
And I feel like that's actually true to a lot of Dracula stories we see today. Like in a lot of adaptations of Dracula or ah vampires in general, even though they still represent a plague, which is what you were describing, they are either heroic characters, like the characters we see in True Blood or Interview with a Vampire, but they're also villainous characters. Like we see in a lot of Dracula adaptations in Nosferatu, for instance,
00:55:54
Speaker
They are just, I think what's really interesting about vampires is they represent a lot of sort of conflicting things, ironies, so to speak, because they are both sexy and disgusting.
00:56:08
Speaker
They are considered creatures, but also human. But the best vampire characters are people who've been deprived their humanity. I just find it fascinating that part of the reason why we're talking about this is because i don't think vampires are ever going to leave the zeitgeist because there's so much room to play. They're the ultimate creature. They're the ultimate monster because they're the most human monster there is.
00:56:32
Speaker
All the other monsters that we've seen sort of lose their human features altogether. But vampires retain them because they are human, but they're also not. I love that term, the ultimate monster. the ultimate monster implicates that it can be shaped in many ways, and that is totally true. When you have a vampire like Nosferatu, he means something very particular. But if you look at Twilight, the way that you have to look at Twilight if you wanted to break it down to its core components, Twilight is more in line with a lot of modern romanticy than it is something like Nosferatu. But I do think it does break down to the core components of Lord Byron being a not so moral character and people like reckoning with
00:57:32
Speaker
The idea of someone who is sexually liberated or liberated in ways that make us uncomfortable. And I mean, it's no secret that the writer of Twilight, which is, I would say, probably the 21st century vampire supertext, was like very, very, very hardcore Christian.
00:57:51
Speaker
And the way that she approaches that story is radically different from how Skarsgård plays Nosferatu. Now, I want to talk about Nosferatu or Orlok himself here, because you were just talking about how the concept of the Vlad the Impaler is a military man who is both considered a hero by some and someone who is not considered considered a hero by others. He's a baron made monstrous by war and he has a pretty unique design. do you have any opinions on the way he was designed? Did that work for you? Did that not work for you? I want to ask you before I kind of give my two cents here. Well, I read about Robert Eggers' like decision to shape the costume of Orlok, and I thought it was actually stylistically sound. he wanted to take it to something more authentic,
00:58:45
Speaker
and the root of the inspiration because we need to talk about the fact that this has been Robert Ager's like passion project. This is what inspired him to be a filmmaker and a cinematic storyteller. So he very much was like, okay, this is the root of who I am.
00:58:59
Speaker
So let's take it back to the root of what it was in terms of storytelling. So what he's doing is that when he's creating Orlok, he takes it back to like what Vlad the Impaler would have worn back then, like the original inspiration of the vampire we know today as Dracula.
00:59:14
Speaker
Basically, the design had to do with creating this look, this Hungarian noble look that is dirty and imposing and very heavy looking.
00:59:25
Speaker
It's essentially dirty rags covering a decomposing corpse. Which is another thing, when you look at Orlok, he is literally decomposing. Because he is meant to be a monster. He is not meant to be what we know of as vampires today. And I like that, because it's very much taking it to what Eggers wanted it to be. What his vision was. Which is, i am making a proper horror movie.
00:59:51
Speaker
A very gross, plague-ridden horror movie. And i want that to remain love Eggers intention with the choices and I'm totally on board with the concept around it but Nosferatu came out the same month as Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and his mustache looks exactly like the Dr. Robotnik mustache bro there is no way this is something that Eggers actually said there is no way this guy can't have a mustache in old Transylvanian culture all men who could grow a mustache would have a mustache
01:00:26
Speaker
So he very much wanted it. And he's right. Authentically speaking, like these were men who were very much like part of like the Ottoman Empire and facial hair was very key of status.
01:00:39
Speaker
So it makes sense. Like he would have a mustache if he was a nobleman because it's status symbol. even though it looks ridiculous. But it's also, it should be stated that, because we should also talk about who plays Orlok, right?
01:00:53
Speaker
We talked about Alexander Skarsgård. Yeah, Bill Skarsgård. and We talked about Alexander Skarsgård, who was in True Blood, Eric in True Blood, and also the main character Northman.
01:01:05
Speaker
And his brother, Bill Skarsgård, plays Count Orlok. And he's also famous for playing It, like Pennywise in It. And he breaks the mold. I mean, it's hard because I think a lot of people will always see him and think, oh, he looks like Pennywise. And that's a good sign, right? That's because it was such an iconic movie for when it came out, which is only a couple of years ago. But I think a lot of people will see him and they'll be like Pennywise. But he really does transform.
01:01:31
Speaker
And that is one major boon to his performance. I mean, my comment about Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a nitpick, I would say.
Performance and Style in Eggers' Nosferatu
01:01:40
Speaker
He is still really, really, really good.
01:01:42
Speaker
And I would say broadly, this cast is stacked with talent. Not every performance works at the same level for me, but I do think that my positive attribute, I could say, is that everybody goes for it. Yeah, they really do. Whether or not I think every single performance works is like debatable, but it is all through the lens of Eggers really knowing how to make a movie look beautiful and really know how to make a movie effective.
01:02:07
Speaker
So even if the performance specifically is something that is going to be divisive, i mean, i want to talk about speaking of divisive, Lily Rose, who she was in, I mean, her biggest role was starring in HBO's The Idol.
01:02:22
Speaker
and now she's doing Nosferatu. And I would say both roles were incredibly big and broad. And while I know I'm probably in the minority for thinking that ah she was like a little hammy in this role, I understand that I think a lot of people were much more into the performance that she's giving. And think largely because the writing is so there and so much hangs on her in the movie itself. Well, I also think she plays very well with expressionism, right? If we talk back what expressionism is, it's essentially taking a character and that character doesn't represent a human being necessarily anymore.
01:03:02
Speaker
They represent a symbol, something that represents a much larger story or theme in the actual like story it's trying to tell. So the fact that she's overly expressive, I think, plays very well with expressionism.
01:03:15
Speaker
And a lot of the characters are overly expressive. I feel like Emma Corrin and Aaron Taylor Johnson, these are movies like that you don't necessarily see them in. I feel like Emma Corrin is usually much more reserved, although that has changed with Deadpool because she really hams it up in Deadpool. To be totally honest, I know her from Deadpool. So coming after Deadpool, i mean because it was only a matter of months between these releases, I had seen Deadpool in the summer, which, hey, y'all, we covered that episode too. So check that out. It's only a couple of episodes back. We covered Deadpool. And Aaron Taylor Johnson, who was also in Marvel, and technically in Marvel twice, because he also yeah played Kraven the Hunter yeah and a movie that came out the same month as Nosferatu.
01:04:02
Speaker
Again, all the actors ham it up. I feel like it's really interesting because Nicholas Holt is really the straight man here. He like plays at the most serious and he's very much like overwhelmed. But it all works because is the emotional core anyway. He's sort of like the audience purview because he's the main character. But everybody around him is just the best way I can describe it is they're very loud. They're going through the motions.
01:04:27
Speaker
And he's very much like, you know, something is very wrong here. And I really want to key on this because if we really want to talk about expressionism here and how Hammy is that in like the best of ways, I could literally reduce the storytelling. Ellen Hutter, played by Lily Rose Depp, is stalked by her ex-boyfriend, who's just really, really jealous of her current husband. That's the best way I can describe this movie, because that is what this is. Orlok is just a jealous ex-boyfriend.
01:05:01
Speaker
who just is like, yo, your new man, he can't compare it to me. Don't even try. And let me prove it by killing everybody around you. Also, you talked about Nicholas Holt. Before we get into sort of the like plot mechanics of Lily Rose's character, Ellen,
01:05:18
Speaker
and Nosferatu, also known as Orlok, and the kind of their dynamic, which I think is, you know, really cool. And I think that the actual, like, mechanics of the story are worth discussing. But we also have to talk about Nicholas Holt just because he's been in so many vampire movies. yeah And, like, come on. Okay, so Nicholas Holt, his boss in the movie is Harnock, and Harnock is a veiled reconstruction of the character of Renfield. The movie Renfield came out last year, and that starred,
01:05:48
Speaker
Nicholas Holt as Renfield. Two years ago. oh two years ago. years ago. Two years ago, he played Renfield. And this just shows like the vampire industrial complex is real. And I was talking about Twilight recently, like just a minute ago. And he was in a Twilight kind of like movie. It was not necessarily like a rip off because from what I gather, Warm Bodies was kind of its own thing. He plays a zombie in that one That's different.
01:06:16
Speaker
Oh, you're so right. He does. How could I be so doubt? I mean, but it makes sense because when you think about like Nicholas Holt, an amazing actor, one of the best of our generation, he's in everything. He's in everything like buzzworthy. He is always touching the cultural zeitgeist.
01:06:32
Speaker
Again, if we talk about, know, what is the cultural zeitgeist? Superhero movies. Okay. So he was also in the X-Men franchise. He did Marvel. He was in Marvel before it got co-opted. It was like in Fox Marvel. by the disney corporation and now he's now that x-men just isn't as hip and cool anymore now he's moved over and he's doing the hip and cool thing over at dc and he's doing the reboot of superman he's like super is make a billion dollars well we'll see we'll see but it's also important to say that another cultural moment he was in
01:07:06
Speaker
was Mad Max Fury Road. He played a massive character in that one. It's also important to say that he was in the movie with Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes.
01:07:17
Speaker
The Menu, yeah. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, for sure. Yeah, great movie. I mean, in some ways, his entire career is full of vampires because Ray Fiennes, I kind of vampire-like, you know? comparing kind of to shows up at night and you know he is a nobleman of many ways sort of lost in the sauce yeah we're talking about conclave in mad max dreary road you got the people who are draining life force in the early parts of the movie there's like the the women and their kind of situation going off the rails
01:07:50
Speaker
There's favorite, you know, and so that this sort of also gives light to the energy vampire, which I think the favorite is all about an energy vampire. yeah I'm not going to talk too much about that movie because i don't want to get off track here. But the point is, is that I think that Nosferatu itself does lean into this more esoteric view of a vampire.
01:08:10
Speaker
and the way that Nosferatu interacts psychically with Lily Rose shows that they have this interlinking kind of semi-sexual dynamic and I would say in large part the opening of the film with Nosferatu and Ellen meeting showcases that there is this underlying current of talking about the way in which we view sex and in many ways sex and sexualization is something that is still taboo you know in many ways there is still a lot of people who do feel that they have to keep stuff buttoned up and i think that's largely what this film plays towards
01:08:52
Speaker
And Ellen herself doesn't feel like she can really be her true self because there are these two very different parts of herself. The part that really jives with Orlok and the part that really doesn't. And it's that arc that she continues...
01:09:08
Speaker
to dodge in many ways. In some points of the movie, she is one with Orlok and she is unreachable to the world. And in other parts, she really wants to be different. She wants to change. And that's the part of the movie that I think really speaks to me, is how she struggles with that feeling of sex and sexualization. And in particular, because she gets to have these great scenes with Emmer Korn and Erin Taylor-Johnson while ah Nicholas Holt spends time in the Nosferatu's castle. And that's cool in its own right. yeah But in many ways, that is a marvel of design. And I feel like in many ways, that showcases Eggers sort of as like a horror Wes Anderson. So how would you kind of compare, especially that first half of the movie, the time that Orlok and Thomas spend together in Orlok's mansion and the way in which we, and sort of like, I guess more broadly, the more like horror aspects and the more kind of like visual aspects of it versus this like more quiet kind of like walking by the sea and kind of talking about the way in which Ellen is like struggling with her relationship with her, as you said, her ex-boyfriend.
01:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, like what's really interesting is this movie is a great template to show like the midpoint of a movie because we've talked about this before. I think I brought it up. Jaws is the most famous example of a movie being split into two movies. That's what the mid midpoint sort of indicates. Because in Jaws, for instance, the first half of the movie entirely on the island. You don't see the shark. So it feels more like a horror movie because the threat is unseen.
01:10:41
Speaker
And in the second half, it's entirely underwater. The main characters chase the shark. We see the shark, so it becomes more thriller. It's a different feeling altogether. In the first half of Nosferatu, the characters are very much separated.
01:10:53
Speaker
You know, like Nicholas Holt is Nosferatu's castle. And then in the second half, they come together to fight the monster. You know, like there's still like a mystery in the first half. And in the second half, it's more like true horror because the monster is actually around them. And we know who that monster is now.
01:11:10
Speaker
But what i really liked about the first half is that sort of like tone. It builds so much on tone, really unnerving tone, because we don't really understand what's going on.
01:11:21
Speaker
Like if you know Dracula, if you know like even a little bit of Nosferatu, you understand the broad strokes of the story. But what's interesting about the first half is that it's not interested in necessarily selling you on that story.
01:11:33
Speaker
It's interested in selling you on the tone. Because in the beginning, we're introduced to sort of Ellen Hutter, who she is, and that there's something sort of connected to her or possessing her, something that is obsessed with her. There is some kind of force.
01:11:48
Speaker
And then we clearly like understand, slowly but surely, that it's not necessarily malicious. I know that's crazy to say, because it is. It is it is malicious.
01:11:59
Speaker
But what i mean by that is that she brought it upon herself because she was lonely. because she feels very much like disconnected from things, including, you know, her friend played by Emma Corrin, Anna Harding, and of course, her husband, Thomas Hutter, played by Nicholas Hall. So it's interesting, because it just talks about the loneliness a woman has, you know, in traditional relationships, especially like in that time period when they had absolutely no power.
01:12:28
Speaker
The nice thing, the awesome thing about like Nosferatu and it being sort of an adaptation of else, that they're monsters, but they're also rooted in in something more human. Here, the story is very much, again, supernatural horror flick, but it's rooted into something very real, which is this journey of this young woman being very lonely and ultimately having to conquer the monster spawned from her loneliness.
01:12:54
Speaker
So is your view that Nosferatu himself is in some way only bolstered by Ellen's relationship to him? that Yes. If he and Ellen did not make that kind of connection, that it would be sort of a nothingness? Because my view was more so...
01:13:13
Speaker
that Ellen sort of exists in the early, I mean, at the beginning of the film, her openness, right? Her need for something new. She opens up her third eye and she says, bring me some spiritual awakening.
01:13:29
Speaker
And what she gets is a corrupted version of that. I mean, it's interesting that I made reference earlier to Faust and how Murnau was interested in that story as well, because in many ways, Nosferatu brings,
01:13:43
Speaker
the same faustian contract both i suppose in some way to ellen but later to thomas as well he brings the contract and he says here sign this contract and of course the contract is only written in symbols so you don't really get the same level in the story of faust just to be clear it's about the deal with the devil where he brings a contract he says you sign this contract with your blood and then you become essentially doomed immortal You become immortal, but you also become damned. I take your soul.
01:14:15
Speaker
And in term, I give you all of these wonderful things. And this Faustian contract is something that Eggers, to not spoil any of his other movies, has brought up in another movie somewhere along his career.
01:14:27
Speaker
Pick three. There's only three other movies, so it's in one of those. But in any case, the whole thing of the fashion contract in this story, I think, is that Orlok doesn't play fair. He plays dirty.
01:14:41
Speaker
And in both cases, his fashion contract is on his own terms, and he knows something that the other character doesn't. And so to blame Thomas, I mean...
01:14:53
Speaker
Ellen does later in the film blame Thomas for signing this contract that was brought to him on terms that he wasn't aware of. I think Ellen was similarly bamboozled. She didn't know what she was signing when she was signing it.
01:15:08
Speaker
And... her journey in the film and ultimately the finale of the film is her not only coming to terms with that, but actually finding her own agency and being able to make peace with her first true love in some ways, Orlok, on her own terms.
01:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. But I think the key word here is the word need. She needs that. She needs that connection. But it's important to say that characters, as we know, have wants and needs.
01:15:36
Speaker
But two-dimensional characters just have wants They have really, really, really powerful wants because they don't have needs because they don't change. There's nothing pushing them or motivating them actually to change.
01:15:49
Speaker
Orlok is a really wonderful example of a two-dimensional character because his want is absolutely insane. and is the most motivating thing for him, and his want is Ellen. He specifically wants her.
01:16:02
Speaker
That's why he does everything he does, because he could literally eat anyone he wants with his powers. But he specifically goes through this ordeal. He literally damns himself.
01:16:14
Speaker
He is his own downfall just as much as Ellen is. At the end of the day, it takes two to tango and two to create a conflict to push a story along. For sure. Now, talking more broadly about Nosferatu as a film and how it works, right? We've obviously covered a lot of the major plot beats, but now I just want to hear a little bit about what you thought about the broader act of actually watching this movie. Now, I know for me, obviously I had my reservations, but I was ultimately really engrossed with the way that Eggers was telling this story. Now, do I think that this is like the best thing that I've seen him create? Like, no. I think that this is in many ways a pastiche to something that he loves and beloveds. And it seems more like the kind of thing that he felt he needed to make than something that he needed for everyone else to watch.
01:17:01
Speaker
But I think in that exercise, he has created something that is Really wholly amazing and beautiful and worth exploring. In many ways, like the way in which the Macbeth adaptation that we covered really, really, really early in our podcast was like really beautifully crafted, but ultimately not necessarily a seminal version of the story being told. I would say this is the same. where I don't feel that this usurps or redefines Nosferatu retroactively, but I do think that this is a phenomenal exploration and absolutely genius work of filmmaking. And I really enjoyed it watching it just kind of line
Optimal Viewing Experiences for Nosferatu
01:17:40
Speaker
by line. Like I found it to be a fun watch. What did you think? So before I answer that question, did you watch this movie in the theaters?
01:17:47
Speaker
Yes, I did. All right. Oh, and you watched it at home. so I watched it on a laptop. How did you start this conversation that Eggers did not want to make movies for iPhones? That is very much felt when I was watching it on my computer because I felt like I wasn't watching it. i Actually, I'm just going to stop there.
01:18:07
Speaker
I felt like I wasn't watching it because this is the kind of movie. It feels like a ride. It feels like an amusement park ride because it's all mood. It's all tone. It's all shot very beautifully. I'm talking about the fact that it's so tonal.
01:18:21
Speaker
It's so mood generating that I very much felt that I wished I was in an atmosphere, like a proper atmosphere I could watch this movie in. And that would be a cinema, not in my house, because I cannot generate the correct atmosphere to appreciate the tone this movie is trying to project.
01:18:42
Speaker
And I think this is an important point to point out because it just proves that some movies are not meant to be watched at home. And that's both a strength and a weakness. And I definitely believe that Nosferatu is one of those movies.
01:18:55
Speaker
I would say that that is a broader take that I would extend to much of Eggers' movies. But it is important to note that, like, I found The Witch. I watched that on a ah plane and I found it to be...
01:19:07
Speaker
as engrossing as probably any other viewing. And so there is a version of being able to watch something, maybe at home even, that could be better. So I would say that, you know, maybe, and feel free to co-sign this or adjust it if if you need to, but say now that we are in a world where the theatrical world model is, you know, declining, right?
01:19:30
Speaker
You can watch a movie, but you're gonna watch it the first two weeks it comes into theaters. Otherwise, it's gonna be on video on demand, it's gonna be on streaming. And I would say that, you know, if we were to recommend to our viewers to watch this, if we were to say, hey, go and watch this, or if someone who has already viewed the film comes back to our podcast to hear what we thought and is mirroring what you said, Niv, which is, I watched this on my phone and I didn't find it to be particularly engrossing. and Maybe it's about you know finding the best viewing habit for you, whether that means having as big of a TV as you can, turning the lights off, really being able to focus on your TV.
01:20:07
Speaker
Or you know what I've been doing here at my home, we have a little projector hanging out in our living room, and we watch our television predominantly via projector. And I'll tell you, that is great for when I am podcasting about a show because it lets me really engross myself.
01:20:22
Speaker
We actually set up our projector just in time for the episode that you and I covered about this time last year, a little later, which was when we talked about Shogun. And watching that on the big screen was such a huge difference, I thought, because I was really able to immerse myself.
01:20:39
Speaker
Now, would you say that that is the optimal experience? And i guess more broadly, let's just talk about since we're already going there. Now, what exactly would be an optimal experience for watching a movie like this, in your opinion? How would you be able to offset all of the distractions that we have now in our modern world in order to watch a movie like Nosferatu? Well, I was just going to say, if you have to watch it, if you have to watch it with an iPhone, I suggest flying to Transylvania, getting an Airbnb in one of the castles, watching it there.
01:21:09
Speaker
ah but It's about just putting yourself in a space where you can watch it. In order to fully appreciate it, I think you need to recreate that space. Whether or not doing it with a projector or you know, watching it on like a big screen TV with surround sound. It's less that and more like watch it when it's October and it's a little bit spookier because it's also it's so much about mood. This movie is so much about mood that you also need to be in the correct mood to watch it. It's a heavy film. It's a very beautiful film.
01:21:41
Speaker
It's very gory. It's very it makes you feel gross because that's the whole like aesthetic of the movie. I mean, what kind of movie would you expect in terms of like tone, mood and atmosphere when it has 5,000 trained rats in it, you know?
01:21:57
Speaker
So I think the best way to answer this question is you need to build, when you watch a movie and you feel like it's projecting a certain tone to you, you just need to drive with that tone and get the most out of it.
01:22:10
Speaker
That's what I would say.
Closing Remarks and Next Episode Teaser
01:22:17
Speaker
And that's the show. Special thanks to my co-producer, Jalan Reyes-McKenley. Music is by The Power Knobs. Next episode, we'll be talking about something a little bit different. When we started the show, one thing Niv and I agreed upon was to only touch on one single TV show or movie once.
01:22:31
Speaker
But what happens when that show lives on past our coverage? That's something we're solving with a new segment that we call The Mulligan. To learn more, check out our very first Zeitgeist Mulligan on... Hey, yeah creepy computer voice, what day does that episode come out?
01:22:46
Speaker
November 23rd, 2025. You heard him. Until then, don't forget to check us out on Instagram at zeitgeistpulp, one word. Stay critical, and see you again soon.
01:23:11
Speaker
Baby
01:23:14
Speaker
I'm coming to the end of
01:23:25
Speaker
Because the power, power, power.