“Nosferatu” Symbolism & Ending Explained

Comments · 750

• BO

  @BookandHearth · 1 year ago · pinned

  Just found out that Nosferatu was speaking in Dacian with Ellen, not Latin!! That&apos;s honestly even better, I can&apos;t believe the amount of research he did for this movie.<br><br>Also, after filming I heard some people are saying Nosferatu &quot;groomed&quot; Ellen??! Y&apos;all 😂 It&apos;s not meant to be romantic, and Nosferatu represents death&apos;s lure on her, not an actual person. Do people not understand metaphors anymore?

  747

• MR

  @MrMelick · 1 year ago (edited)

  Robert Eggers is really into occultism and history, and it really shows in his movies. His next movie will probably be a medieval piece or a biopic of Rasputin. Either way I&apos;m in

  854

• GD

  @gdonut9902 · 1 year ago (edited)

  I remember reading in a book of folklore as a child that a naked virgin on a horse will always lead to a vampire. My childhood self was ecstatic to see that scene since it was something that made my friend and me laugh for years.

  735

• PO

  @Poimanders · 1 year ago

  Willem Dafoe&apos;s characters is Swiss and named von Franz, just like Marie Louise von Franz, the swiss student of Jung who carried on his studies of alchemy and fairy tales after his death. In the film von Franz says &quot;if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists&quot;. The first step in doing shadow work.<br>I loved all the jungian references in the film. Great video.

  314

• AV

  @avecserr · 1 year ago

  Really appreciate your take on this from a psychological perspective. I want to take the shadow/depression concept a step further. When I saw this movie, I had a very strong sense that Nosferatu was, among other things, a metaphor for CSA. People who suffer from this trauma often have nightmares abstracting their abuse into monsters, experience hypersexuality in combination with intense shame, depression, and somatic symptoms as well (represented in her seizures). Traumas at a young age can also &quot;thin the veil&quot; between the person and the unseen. The way she talks about having been visited by him as a child, being found naked, referring to him as her &quot;shame,&quot; her hypersexuality, her simultaneous attraction and repulsion and sexual attachment to Nosferatu, etc. just felt so indicative to me. The marriage helped to lessen the pull of that trauma through love and creating a new attachment/dependency as a distraction. But without that distraction, when she was left to her own thoughts again, the memories returned. In this interpretation, one could see the ending as her actually integrating her trauma instead of running from it. I definitely want to see it again because I feel like there&apos;s so much this story can represent. It was so stunning.

  546

• KE

  @kevintse2870 · 1 year ago

  When the doctor said you have to know evil to defeat evil, &nbsp;I think often we need to have faced certain demons in order to empathize with others’ demons.

  296

• CH

  @chesterwilberforce9832 · 1 year ago

  Rose-Lily Depp completely stole this movie. A+. A beautiful reinterpretation of the original with a dash of Stoker thrown in.

  334

• TH

  @thedudewhoeatspianos · 1 year ago

  It&apos;s nice to hear a perspective that isn&apos;t focused on the (admittedly brilliant) technical elements. I read Count Orlok a little differently - as a metaphor for her shame and guilt over her unfulfilled, repressed ,and pathologized sexual desires. In this reading, the embrace of the count at the end is the embrace of these desires, guilt, and shame within her, ultimately killing both that shame and guilt and the version of herself that was ruled by them. <br><br>Which is all to say this is a rich text that has the flexibility for different viewers to extract lots of different meanings from it. And I really appreciate the willingness to explore the movie from a psychological and literary perspective, rather than the thuddingly literal interpretations that dominate YouTube.

  295

• KE

  @Kenro200x · 1 year ago

  I loved the film, and Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz said it best when he said that had they lived in any other time, Ellen would have been seen as a priestess or similar religious figurehead instead of a social nuisance. Her connection to that other world wouldn&apos;t have been dismissed so quickly, which fits many folk horror films I&apos;ve seen. In many ways, this, more than the prior iterations, can be seen as a feminist film. Eggers announced that an extended cut is on the way and I&apos;m very much into seeing it.

  119

• MR

  @MrRizeAG · 1 year ago (edited)

  Wow. I&apos;ve been watching random Nosferatu reviews, and yours popped up in my feed. To my surprise, I got way more than a review. The title is kind of selling this video short (maybe &quot;Romanian Occult Expert Analyzes Nosferatu?&quot;). I&apos;m kind of shocked someone could do such a complete and well synthesized analysis like this so quickly after the movie released, and with such detailed and specific knowledge. You&apos;re very well-read, intelligent, and passionate, and it shows. Keep it up!

  195

• MO

  @motorcitymangababe · 1 year ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R4XMmnKIIc&amp;t=265">4:25</a> I&apos;m pretty sure the virgin on a horse was a symbolic representative of the role Ellen plays. The &quot;willing maiden&quot; going to the vampire so he can be vanquished. &nbsp;Note she&apos;s similar to Ellen&apos;s actress as well, save that Ellen keeps getting paler throughout the movie. &nbsp;To me that hallucination(??) was like a prophetic warning he didn&apos;t have the knowledge to comprehend.

  88

• JO

  @JordanVanRyn · 1 year ago

  One of the things that made this Nosferatu reinterpretation symbolic is that Orlok is meant to be a representation of Evil in the world. I saw a theory that the reason he had this mustache is not just that it references both the book version and Vlad Tepes, but its to emphasize that he once was human and every horrible action he&apos;s committed manifested himself into this monster and everyone who fears him is ironically looking into a dark ugly hideous part of ourselves. He also is the embodiment of Plagues/War/Famine/etc. since &quot;Orlok means &quot;War&quot; in Dutch. Since Ellen knows what she&apos;s up against, she&apos;s willing to sacrifice herself to save the world from suffering. So in a way, she became a savior figure and a hero. Because both the original 1922 version and the Herzog version did it before, its very rare to have the Innocent Maiden character have agency and bravery in a Gothic Vampire story.

  108