Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
Sympathy for the Devil
The mummies in the opening sequence are real, it's explained in the commentary, as are the gypsies, the bats, the castle, the countryside. There is nothing false about this version of Dracula, no vestiges of Hollywood. Nosferatu doesn't belong to the Bela Lugosi tradition; it belongs to Werner Herzog.
The film is slow, naturalistic, and similar in tone and theme to other Herzog works (Aguirre, Cobra Verde etc.). They're films characterized by despair and struggle -- ultimately futile -- against cold, unyielding forces. Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) and Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) try to stop the vampire, Dracula (Klaus Kinski), Lord of the Rats, a plague in human form; those that he doesn't kill, disease does.
But Kinski's Dracula is remarkable. Though monstrous, with an appearance modelled on that of Max Shreck in F.W. Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu, he has an air of melancholy. As he explains to Jonathan, there is nothing worse than being denied the freedom to die. In his final scene with Lucy he displays a terrible, plaintive love, born of loneliness; his death is a tragic, unfair end to a pathetic existence.
The monster is dead, but...?