Beautifully dark 'Nosferatu' goes on too long

 

   Nosferatu has acquired a considerable amount of baggage since F.W. Murnau’s creepy classic debuted in 1922, establishing its bona fides as a German Expressionist take on a vampire tale that evoked memories of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). In 1979, Werner Herzog took a bite out of the vampire apple with a much-admired remake of Murnau’s movie, Nosferatu the Vampyre.

  Beyond all that, recent years have seen the emergence of a vampiric bull market as various directors tried to infuse fresh blood into the genre with entries ranging from swooning teen romance (Twilight) to Renfield, a comedy starring Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage.

  Now comes Nosferatu from director Robert Eggers (The Northman, The Witch, and The Lighthouse). A specialist in  eerie atmospherics, Eggers works in collaboration with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, who knows how to evoke a silent-era feel that pays homage to the original.

   Eggers's Nosferatu exudes dark beauty. When the ambitious realtor Thomas Hutter (Hoult in his second vampire movie) approaches the Transylvanian castle of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard), Eggers's images become ominously suggestive. When we finally encounter Orlok, we hear his thick, stilted accent but shadows all but conceal his hideous countenance.

  Mood and a knowing sense of humor underscored by inflated melodrama make it clear that Eggers is swinging for the fences, which — I suppose — is the only way to approach material so steeped in cinematic history. 

   A few words about the cast: Lily-Rose Depp portrays Hutter’s bride, Ellen, the woman brought to Orlok’s attention by fate and primal yearning. 

   Willem Dafoe turns up as Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, a rogue scientist who accepts the possibility that paranormal forces may be at work. Simon McBurney goes way over the top (who would want it otherwise?) as Orlok’s devoted servant Knock. Among other disgusting proclivities, Knock enjoys biting the heads off live birds.

   Hutter visits Orlok to close a deal for an estate in Wisborg, Germany, where Hutter and his bride live.  Disenchanted with Transylvania and sick of the brooding locals, Orlok aims to consummate his fated longing for Ellen on fresh turf.

   Eggers deftly mixes operatic flourishes and thunderous portents, and, yes, lots of rats, creatures that are blamed for the plague Orlok brings to Wisborg, where the movie concludes with a crescendo of sex, death, and sacrifice.

  I’ve waited until now to venture a judgment about Eggers's enterprise. I was with the movie for a long time, even noting that, at times, that Eggers approaches masterpiece levels. 

  But somewhere along the line -- I’m guessing around the three-quarter mark — I felt as if the bottom had dropped out; the movie’s two hour and 13 minute length began to work against it. The story felt drawn out, as it inched toward is inevitable climax. 

   The longer Nosferatu went on, the more its creepiness felt self-consciously expressed. By the time it ended, I was ready to bid farewell to Wisborg and its terrified inhabitants. 

   Skarsgard's Orlok qualifies as memorable and Eggers's locations, sets and atmospherics represent a top-rank achievement. Vision aside, I eventually found myself wishing Eggers would just get on with the story and let it speak for itself.

 

'Magic' shines a very pale light

A yawn of a movie from Woody Allen.

Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight -- another Allen-directed bauble set in Europe -- is a minor addition to a long list of movies that includes a handful of major films, not a sum to be sniffed at.

In setting magic against reason and extending the idea of magic to all matters that might be deemed spiritual, Allen's latest suggests that an oft-visited thematic well may have run dry.

Beautifully shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji and equally well-crafted by production designer Anne Seibel, Magic in the Moonlight is not without its virtues, notably Colin Firth's supremely irritable performance as Stanley Crawford, a magician who has devoted his life to perfecting his act and debunking faux spiritualists.

Visually, the movie -- much of it set on the Cote d'Azur during the 1920s -- is appealing enough. But the ideas in Magic in the Moonlight adhere to the movie's surface like a series of philosophical Post-it notes.

Is there a God? Is this life and what we're able to perceive about it all there is? How should we react if the universe is an uncaring mechanism in which we are random occurrences? What role does love play in all of this and can love and attraction ever be explained?

Those are interesting questions, but in Magic, they're something to be debated by the characters rather than perplexities woven into the movie's fabric.

Put another way, there's plenty of craft in Allen's movie and not enough sleight of hand.

The plot of Magic in the Moonlight may have been better suited to one of Allen's short stories than to a full-blown movie. Firth's Stanley -- who performs as a Chinese magician named Wei Ling Soo -- is asked by a less-accomplished illusionist (Simon McBurney) to visit a wealthy widow who has fallen under the sway of an American spiritualist (Emma Stone) and her ambitious mother (Marcia Gay Harden).

Stone doesn't seem quite up to the task of playing a mysterious woman who claims to be able to commune with the dead. A young Mia Farrow might have pulled it off or certainly Cate Blanchett, who starred in the much better Blue Jasmine.

Predictably, Stanley -- the great rationalist -- finds himself stuck in the muddy waters of infatuation. Despite the fact that he's already engaged and despite his commitment to pure reason, he's enchanted by Stone's Sophie.

At the same time, the wealthy but shallow Brice (Hamish Linklater) also has fallen for Sophie, offering her a life of great material ease.

Additional characters make appearances, but the core of Magic in the Moonlight rests on Firth and Stone's shoulders.

Performances aside, the movie's core feels depleted and overworked, dimming what might have been the gem-like quality of a well-appointed period piece.

I don't mean to suggest that Allen is finished as an artist. I've thought that before, and subsequent Allen movies (Match Point and Blue Jasmine, for example) have proven me wrong. But Magic in the Moonlight has a familiarity that makes for tedium.

Once again, Allen seems to be arguing with himself about contradictions many of us have learned to live with. Rather than leading the way as an artist, in Magic in the Moonlight, he seems to be chasing his own tail -- or is it tale?