This week I went to the cinema to watch Nosferatu, director Robert Eggers’ updated version of the classic vampire tale. The first Nosferatu film was made 102 years ago by F.W. Murnau. The silent, German Expressionist classic was resurrected in 1979 by Werner Herzog in a haunting interpretation. This third version is an admirable addition to the set, paying homage to its predecessors in subtle and affectionate ways but also bringing something new in its exquisite artistry and its questioning of the supremacy of reason. and ownership of truth.
Eggers’ three previous films have leant heavily into ancient and mysterious folklore and this film grapples with a stubborn belief in the supernatural cast against a science that seems powerless to explain it away. The voice of reason and rationalism, Doctor Sievers, when confronted with the irrational behaviour of the unwilling muse of the vampire, (played by Lily Rose Depp), has no choice but to consult his rogue old teacher, Professor von Franz, a man cast out of polite scientific circles due to his occultist interests and propensity to outbursts such as,
“I’ve seen things in this world that would cause Isaac Newton to crawl back into his mother’s womb!”
The film is set in 1838, in the imaginary German town of Wisborg, a gloomy seaside place with a chilling sense of foreboding around every corner. With its swirling fog, crepuscular lighting and lingering long shots, the film bears a strong resemblance to paintings by the great German Romantic artist, Caspar David Friedrich, (1774 - 1840).
Friedrich’s landscapes are enhanced by an almost translucent light, the result of weather conditions such as fog, moonlight, or clouds. Born in Greifswald on the German Baltic coast (a place much like Wisborg in the film), Friedrich travelled widely across Germany, making meticulous sketches of Gothic ruins, ancient standing stones, dead or dying oaks and towering pine trees. From this source material, he created poignant, moody landscapes, emblems of nationhood and personal suffering. His places do not exist, but can be visited in the mind. When it came to the creative process, Friedrich advocated, “closing your physical eye, so you see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light what you saw in the dark.” Robert Eggers had clearly taken this advice when making Nosferatu.
It is hard for us to imagine now, at a time when we are perhaps a bit weary of being confronted or confounded by the artist's experience and emotions, but these paintings by Friedrich represent some of the earliest examples of painting as an expression of memory or feeling. The notion that we are invited to have an emotional response to art was entirely new. We venture visually and imaginatively, even spiritually into these paintings guided by the seer-like genius of their creator. It is no accident that the concept of genius as we understand it today - one who has almost supernatural powers of creativity and invention - has its origins in 19th century Romanticism, and specifically in Germany.
It is also hard to contemplate, in a post-abstract age, the radical emptying of the canvas that Friedrich employed. No major Western artist had created canvases as empty as these and presented them as finished paintings. Perhaps the most famous example of Friedrich's disorientating emptiness is Monk by the Sea of 1810. Friedrich initially included two ships on the sea in the distance, but by the time the picture was completed he had painted them out - aware that to allude to another presence or human activity within the picture would imply a dialogue or narrative rather than the solitary contemplation by the monk of the space that stretches out in front of him. What is this space? Is it a landscape? A seascape? It is something that leads us towards a very modern concept of the inner self? Or is it an expression of the nothingness that awaits us in a world without faith? The painting was made in the early days of a philosophical movement which was to become Existentialism.
The solitary figure, or ‘Ruckenfigur’, seen from behind, became a frequent motif in Friedrich’s paintings, most famously in The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog c.1818. These figures express Friedrich’s nostalgic yearning for nationhood and a sense of belonging to the land. In 1806, 12 years before this painting, Napoleon had crushed the Prussian army and reduced the German territories to a satellite French outpost. The German identity crisis that ensued was intensely felt and the sentiment around unification began to grow. Scenes of the German landscape were seen as a secret language for those opposed to Napoleon as more overt anti-French imagery was subject to strict censorship. Friedrich absolutely refused to study in Rome, as would have been expected, and remained in Germany for his entire life. In choosing to remain in Germany, he also refused to paint in the classical manner or to imitate Italian painting and scenery. For, as he claimed,
“The beauty, the spirit of Germany, its sun, moon, stars, rocks, seas and rivers can never be expressed in this way”.
Eggers' film pits the individual soul against both its inner fears and outer reason and could be seen as a new addition to the long tradition of using the supernatural to explore our hopes and desires.
**Opening next month at the Met in New York is a major Friedrich exhibition dedicated to his vision of landscape as a metaphor for the soul.
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