Toddy someone say me this:
"Robert Eggers does not have the final word on what defines consent. He might have been going for a gothic marriage/gothic romance, but what he was going for between Orlok and Ellen was not what he achieved. He was just a torturer to her. I understand the movie. Eggers did not accomplish what he was trying to. The fact is, the true lovers in that movie are Ellen and her husband, much like the true lovers in Dracula are Jonathan and Mina. Ellen does not want anything from the count except to be left alone. Her real partner is her husband! She wants nothing from the account except for him to leave her alone! He tramples the line of consent of both her body and mind."
The bad takes about Nosferatu (2024) never stop...
Thomas was originally conceived by Eggers as a much less appealing character — stingy, hypocritical, a product of the pre-Victorian era, looking at women the way it was customary to look at them at the time. However, the studio, which had the “multiple wish willow” in its hands, naturally sided with the narrative “nice guy” — because the main protagonist must always be a “simple nice boy” whom other boys can identify with.
Here is an excerpt from the 2016 script, the one Eggers had in mind when he said that “both films are the same.”
Or here is another wonderful excerpt — about where Ellen would have ended up if Count Orlok had not taken her with him into eternity:
That is why it is both funny and disgusting to read takes like, “Thomas is her true love, her true partner and husband!” I would like everyone spreading that take to read at least a few excerpts from the 2016 script.
All right, you might say, that is an old script, and the 2024 version is already a different film — even though Eggers has confirmed that it is the same one. But what about the film we actually saw on screen?
“The true lovers in the movie are Ellen and her husband!” said the Big Important Man at the studio, and broke the Wish Willow.
Except that the Wish Willow does not work that way, and you cannot simply cancel out the author’s intent. No, of course, on a superficial viewing of the film, naive viewers who know nothing about Gothic romance really did decide that “her real partner is her husband!”
But let me ask you — are you serious? Her husband, who does not understand her, is her true partner? Her husband, who will never accept either her darkness or her essence, is her true partner? Her husband, who does not hear her and does not even try to? All she hears from Thomas is, “Shut up, you are insane, I love you.”
True partners share the same goals. But Ellen and Thomas have different goals and different values…
However, to Thomas, all of this seems like mere “female emotionality” — after all, he is not used to taking women’s words seriously; his era taught him to behave in exactly the opposite way.
And to top it all off: no, Thomas could never have satisfied Ellen sexually. He simply would not have had enough passion or courage for that. After all, he is an ordinary human being, and his era taught him to perceive sensuality as something dangerous. Ellen’s essence, however, is darkness and the inhuman: a monstrous passion that can only be satisfied by a monster.