vulnerable vampire

Rating: 8/10 (14 December 2005)

What makes this version of Dracula so outstanding is the profound emptiness at the center of the vampire's heart. His many guises-- the werewolf, the bat, the beast-man, the toothy old man, the courtly suitor, etc.-- reveal the absence of any one true self. While skilled and seasoned by the passing of the centuries, Dracula lacks a center. In 1462, he looses his cardinal virtue by desecrating his own god (Christ), and so he comes to London (in 1892) attempting to fill the void in himself by finding the reincarnation of his lost love. Oldman's Dracula is both a master manipulator of character and circumstance, and, at the same time, a highly emotive and reactive persona. His thirst for blood does not come from some biological nuance (as is often peddled to us by the trendy, scientistic wave of the Blade-ish, neo-vampire garbage). It is the insatiable thirst for a past that he cannot retrieve, or better, a past that he has only this one chance to retrieve via Mina-Elizabeta. Thus, the irony of this version of Dracula is that if Dracula had actually been graced with Mina's hand in the end, he would have surely ceased to be a killer.