It's Uncanny...

Yes. When times get tough around here we turn to art; music, literature, film. It is a gateway to enrichment, and to feeding our hearts and souls. Yesterday, we treated ourselves to an early afternoon movie at the big movie palace in our neighborhood, Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu."  (2024).  It is a fantastic, fully-realized film. A work of art. Eggers has emerged as one of our favorite filmmakers. He has a painter's eye, and brings a rigorous, meticulous attention to every last detail. Reminds me of the great Stanley Kubrick, every frame of Eggers' film is suffused with grace & intelligence. It was filmed the old-fashioned way, using 35mm film stock  It stands out as an example of real film, not CGI hocus-pocus & digital fakery. I recoil from that CGI super-clear-sheen-hyper-reality. You know it's now the fashion: video-game-like movie extravaganzas. Give me that old grainy film stock feel. All of Eggers films are worth seeing, every one of them is mysterious, beautiful, haunting. What is it about Nosferatu? It's uncanny. A very familiar narrative, a tale told many times, suddenly, made new. Good folks in a land far away,  alive in the remote past, contending with ungodly forces. Why does all of this resonate so deeply? There is a plague, a pestilence, and a dark, malevolent spirit looming over the land. An evil force permeates everything and everyone. This evil is embodied in one very toxic, ugly, decrepit being. Hmmm, I wonder... why does that all ring a bell, and resonate so profoundly in our present circumstances? Funny that...