As actors fall under his trance, as Murnau himself falls more deeply into drug addiction, the power of evil is sketched in a compelling and seductive way. And Elias Merhige accomplishes a similar play of illusions. He shoots the film using moody landscapes, stagy sets and props, and grainy inserts of faked silent film footage designed to look like the 1922 original. The overall effect is that time is compressed. It is not at all clear whether or not Max Schreck is the actor of the vampire, it is not clear whether this is a movie or a movie about a movie, it is not at all clear whether this is 1922 or 2001, and when I left theatre, I would not have been surprised had I walked out into the lobby of the Roxy and been met by a Packard waiting at the curb.
Imagination has that kind of power.
People who make film teach us that imagination conquers the limits of time and geography and physical barriers. Skilled film makers are like those who wrote the scriptures, they make you feel as if you were there, there at the tomb, there hearing Peter make his speech, there hearing the inspired words of the Apostle. Musicians and composers similarly are agents of imagination in that they open doors, stir souls, and lift hearts. They tell us the story of the resurrection in such an imaginative way that we are there. One day there will be a time when we meet the risen Christ face to face, because in our baptism, God made that promise to each of us, and that promise is grounded in the eyewitness accounts we heard today.