Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (8 June 2001)

I can 't say much more than I regard it as the perfect movie . It is a beautiful Gothic fairy tale . The success is not much due to the script . The plot based of course to Bram Stoker 's book is not very original . The fact that the monster falls in love with a woman who wants to save him is a well known formula . But the direction is so powerful and the actors gave larger than life , poetic performances who enhanced the power of a story and made the film divine kind of an ancient Greek drama . Sometimes overacting is not necessarily bad .
The direction is very good on the acting side but I believe that the real kudos will have to go to the technicians : first of all the sets and costumes create a convincing victorial London and a haunted / scary Transylvania . The make ups of Dracula are very good . But the gothic cinematography and music score are the ones which steal the show 70 % of the success of the film is due to the atmosphere which photography and music create . Who can forget the beginning sequence ? Who can forget the marriage scene (with the most intense music I 've ever heard) . Who can forget the finale ? Coppola made a splendid job for the supervision and guidance of those professionalistic jobs . The SFX are credible . One of the greatest charms is that you can 't easily designate who is the lead . The center moves continuusly . The movie starts with Jonathan (Keanu Reeves) who visits the tour of Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) . Then the count comes to London and approaches the beautiful Mina (Winona Ryder) . Mina and Dracula are somehow the focus until the middle of the film Dr Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) enters and becomes the lead . The acting is uniformly beautiful and very effective . As I said overacting was the only way to give this story the biblical proportions it deserved . Oldman and Ryder are very good , the underrated Keanu Reeves is quite credible (and stop those silly complaints about the bad accent-he IS half British in reality you know) Hopkins is somehow the scene - stealer because his character is wise and funny . Coppola exploited to maximum the make-up facilities and gave all the sides of the vampire with the transformations : the monster , the aggressive hunter , the eternal being , the human who needs love , the loneliness , and the hopeless life of living in the dark . The good direction is also apparent in some contrived (written) scenes which become chilling and powerful .E.g. when Dracula reads the letter and learns that Mina is gone he cries from anger and orders winds to blow. The winds obey and a room full of candles goes to the dark . In the end we have shots of the sunset which are also chilling . If you like romantic stories then stop reading and see it now It is pure masterpiece .
10 / 10