Good but not great - some strange changes to the story line

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2005)

While I feel the film is very good, and certainly a competent retelling of the tale, I feel that it falls short of reaching the status of a "classic".
Coppola has given us an operatic "Dracula" One almost expects Van Helsing to break into a rousing baritone aria when he realizes that he is chasing not just a vampire, but "THE" vampire; and a final desperate duet between Drac and Mina at then end as they share a final kiss before she cuts off his head.
I found the bits of narration through the first half of the movie a bit irritating. Coppola's a master story teller - why did he need help with narration for exposition?
The sequence of Harker's imprisonment in Dracula's castle was, for me, the best part of the movie. Oldman's performance is quirky, spooky and fascinating as the near corpse-like count. The licking of Harker's razor after he cuts himself shaving is wonderfully disgusting. The cinematography and special effects in this sequence are great - especially the Dracula's somewhat disobedient shadow, almost an entity unto itself, sometimes with Dracula, sometimes apart from him.
The casting of Keanu Reeves as Harker disappointed me. So many terrific English actors, and we get the man most frequently associated with the California inflection of the word "Dude"? He was adequate in the part, and I really think he was miscast.
Lot's of exposed breasts throughout the film, but especially in the first half. I couldn't help but think of Terry Thomas' admonition in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World", "What is this American preoccupation with bosoms?"
I can just see some executive production meeting where a rep from distribution was saying, "look Frank, the Dracula thing's been done to death - if you want to do it, fine, but make sure you've got something to bring in the 15-25 year old boys..."
Honestly, I'm not a prude, but most of this stuff was pretty gratuitous. On the IMDb, one listed anachronism was "when Dracula bites Mina, her 20th century bikini briefs can be seen beneath her sheer 19th century night gown." In consideration of everything else, it makes you wonder if it WAS an accident.
Lucy was a little too "tartish" for me. A tease, to be sure, but her line, "Oooh, Quincy, what a big knife you have..."? Just doesn't fit into my idea of a Victorian woman of privilege.
Mina, as portrayed by Winona Ryder, was beautiful, innocent, torn between her two lovers, yet I wasn't completely won over by her character. I think this is more the problem with the story line (see below) than the actress.
The character of Dr. Seward, played as a borderline drug addict in charge of a mental institution was wrong for me. The character is far from the Dr. Seward of the novel and the play. When faced with good versus evil, the original character was a skeptic who must come to terms with the limits of science. As depicted in this movie, he's neither skeptic nor scientist, he's mainly just there as a vehicle to bring Van Helsing into the story.
I liked Anthony Hopkin's Van Helsing, although there were aspects of the character that didn't make sense to me. Why would a man, seemingly advocating an open mind to the super natural, almost in the same moment be almost callously scientific in his dealings with other people?
When Mina asks if Lucy was in great pain as a vampire, Van Helsing's response is, "Yeah, she was in great pain! Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace." It's comic, but hardly the spiritual kind of response we'd expect from Van Helsing.
Tom Waits turns in a very good Renfield. I think they could have backed off on the make-up just a little bit, but he does a good crazy. The scene where Renfield asks to talk to Mina, and and ends up blessing her was terrific. We fear for Mina, and we want to find some way to help poor Renfield, but know he is doomed.
For me, the fundamental flaw in this production is changing the main themes of Dracula - good vs. evil, faith vs. science, chastity vs. pleasure, sanity vs. rationality; into a love story that transcends time.
Coppola has lifted the a minor point in the original story - that of Mina asking for Dracula's executor's to be merciful, and extended it to a doomed love story.
I like my Dracula's bad, lustful, and irredeemable, but Coppola gives us a Dracula to understand. After all, he's not such a bad guy, he only turned away from God because his wife committed suicide.
Personally, I reject the idea that love is not only blind, but amoral. At it's core, Dracula IS a morality tale. We cannot give entirely to lust, for it robs us of our humanity, and makes us the same as not just animals, but the lowest carnivores - blood sucking bats, or wolves howling in the night.
In sum, I rate this as a good Dracula movie, but not a great Dracula movie. The scenes with Harker and Dracula in his castle are among the best in screen literature. The women are beautiful and sexy, but a little too sexy to be virtuous, The men seem somewhat two dimensional, with the exception of Renfield and Dracula himself. The cinematography is excellent, as are the special effects. The music was fine. The sound could have been better, but was certainly adequate.
For me, the problem is an unsupportable point of view, that has changed the story line to a kind of Gothic "Love Story", where love is never having to say your sorry, even if I bite you in the neck and steal your soul.