the difference between how Nosferatu (2023) and Dracula (2026) approach the vampire’s love and “claim” on a woman is super interesting
(fyi i have not seen the original films of either or read the source material yet so this is just entirely based on these adaptations ☝️)
In Dracula, Mina is Vlad’s deceased wife reincarnated. He does not trick Jonathan into coming to his castle, so he can hold him hostage, giving him ample time to steal his wife. He finds Elizabeth through Jonathan’s locket of his fiancée. And then holds him hostage. Vlad’s voyage to Paris to reclaim his lost love is filled with carefully placed connections, but more spur of the moment than premeditated.
In Nosferatu, Ellen was claimed by Orlok when she gave herself to him when she was still, essentially, a child. Orlok tricks her husband, Thomas, to his castle, knowing well who his wife is, and holds him hostage, so that he can make his voyage to her without Thomas’s interference.
But above and beyond, both films tell you who Ellen/Mina want by how they speak about Thomas/Jonathan while they’re gone.
Mina confides in the doctor and priest that while she loves Jonathan and cares for him, she feels as if she is “not from this time”, a deeply ingrained sentiment spurring from the hidden memories of her past life. She is unsure of their engagement, because she feels she does not belong — in this time, with him. Vlad is not a factor until he physically appears in Paris, but Mina’s security about her impending marriage is rocky on HER end. Jonathan will never be enough for her.
Inversely, Ellen is stricken with anxiety and stress over Thomas’s absence. While memories of Orlok plague her with fits and night terrors, Ellen remains focused on Thomas when she’s conscious. Though, she is very upset that he left so soon after they just married. Her conflict with Thomas stems from the idea of purity. She is not a virgin, she laid with a vampire as a young girl, and now she feels rotten, impure, and unfit/unlovable for Thomas, as the societal standards of the time would suggest. She believes the only love she is deserving of is harsh and filthiest, like Orlok, or what she tries to bait Thomas into. And while Thomas is understandably upset by the news of her past, he does not love her less for it. They fight, and then they start to recover, but Thomas loves her just as much as he did before.
Jonathan/Thomas and Vlad/Orlok are inherently the same characters, but while narratively Ellen and Mina are similar, they are by no means the same.
I often think of those song lyrics “he is stable, you are deep”. For Dracula, Jonathan is Mina’s stable, acceptable option. But Vlad is deep; he knows her soul and who she is now. But for Nosferatu, Orlok does not love Ellen. And Ellen does not love Orlok. Orlok feels like he has a claim to Ellen’s heart and soul because she promised herself to him when she was young, hormonal, and still learning herself. But Thomas is the one who loves her, and she loves him, not despite of what happened in the past, but in spite of it.
I’d like to call attention to both Vlad and Orlok dying in a bed, held by the woman they sought after.
Vlad dying in Mina’s arms is a tragedy, because it’s self sacrifice for love. because it’s a tragedy of love lost, found, and lost again.
Ellen dying with Orlok is not a romantic tragedy. It is not tragedy because lovers died in coitus. It’s a self sacrificial tragedy, but not for the same reasons. It’s a tragedy of self. It’s a tragedy because Ellen, a young woman with her whole life ahead of her, needed to die to save people. She died because of something she did when she was a teenager.
anyway this post is sponsored by me being pissed off whenever someone lumps Ellen into monster lovers/lusters of the year, because she fucked this man ONCE and he took that as owning her for her entire life. I hate him
