A Different Kind of Dracula

Rating: 10/10 (2 August 2010)

Acclaimed Oscar winning film director Francis Ford Coppola sinks his cinematic fangs into the most notorious vampire in film and literature and delivers his own unique interpretation of the wicked bloodsucker with his romantic horror chiller "Bram Stoker's Dracula." Basically, "Bram Stoker's Dracula" qualifies as possibly the fourth remake of Todd Browning's "Dracula" (1931) with Bela Lugosi. Nevertheless, despite some exhibitions of fidelity to the source material, Coppola and scenarist James V. Hart set out to differentiate themselves from the previous incarnations with elements that aren't quite identical. Dracula emerges as a protagonist only vaguely related to his cinematic predecessors. Indeed, the legendary vampire appears initially as on elderly gentleman with white hair. Unlike virtually every vampire since "Nosferatu," Coppola's "Dracula" can stroll the streets during the daylight hours without the sun cremating him into a pile of ashes. However, he lacks his full vampire powers. Originally, the silent film "Nosferatu" altered the vampire's ability to thrive during the day. Mind you, in his celebrated novel, Stoker allowed his infamous bloodsucker to circulate during the daylight hours. The Dracula in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" never turns into a bat, but he does transform himself into a hideous rodent, a horny gorilla, and he has powers that go beyond his physical presence. For example, Dracula wanders around in the foreground, while in the background his shadow assumes a life of its own in contradiction to everything that his physical presence does. Although he dresses in dinner attire, this Dracula wears a number of different outfits.
Interestingly, neither Coppola nor Hart seek to scare the hell out of their audience. Instead, they deliberately set out to make a romantic vampire movie filled with surprises, revelations, and a little soft-core nudity. An interesting prologue charts the history of the protagonist and how he lost his wife and then turned his back against God. The historical context that Coppola and Hart establish for their Dracula is unlike any other "Dracula." The performances are uniformly excellent, with Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins taking top honors. Hopkins is incredible as the vampire slayer Van Helsing and he displays a sense of humor that is refreshing. For a change, the usually stiff Keanu Reeves seems credible as a stuffy Englishman. Wynona Ryder, who brought the screenplay to Coppola after she bailed out of the director's "Godfather 3," is suitably cast as the beautiful object of Count Dracula's desire. As Mina, she is the reincarnation of his dead wife. You can separate the different Dracula movies by their fidelity to the source material by the use of the two characters Mina and Lucy. Some Dracula movies reverse the two, so that Mina becomes the weak girl who dies first, but Coppola and Hart stick with Stoker in this instance.The lush visual imagery is perfectly entrancing, and Coppola experiments with lots of ideas. According to the commentary track, Coppola sought to do something different from the earlier "Dracula" movies, and he succeeds in large part with his version that makes Gary Oldman's Count Dracula look nothing like Bela Lugosi's bloodsucker or Christopher Lee's fangster. Atmospheric, intellectual, and sexually risqué, "Bram Stoker's Dracula" is a bat of a different leather.