Brilliant Updating Of An Oft-Filmed Classic

Rating: 7/10 (2 May 2005)

Count Dracula, a fifteenth-century Romanian nobleman, is overcome with grief at the death of his beloved wife Elizabeth. Renouncing Christianity, he pledges his soul to the Devil and is cursed to walk in limbo forever as an undead vampire. Four hundred years later he is meeting with Jonathan Harker, a London solicitor's clerk, when he sees a photograph of Harker's fiancée Mina, who looks the image of Elizabeth. He imprisons Harker in his castle and travels to London to woo Mina, but his vampire attacks draw the attention of the eminent Professor Van Helsing. Mina is seduced by the Count, but does not yet know his true identity, whilst Van Helsing and his friends are closing in.
What to say about this movie ? It's brilliant - it's the work of an extraordinary director. It's visually sumptuous, extremely well made and one of the more faithful adaptations of an oft-filmed book, but it also takes far too many liberties with certain characters and story aspects, which can prove distracting. Let me take the good points first. Visually and aurally, this is a sheer delight from start to finish; it was all filmed on stages and the sets are just stupendous, as is the powerful bass-string score by Wojciech Kilar. The photography by Michael Ballhaus is simply stunning - every classic horror trick is used; up lighting, candles, reverses, extreme lenses, fake shadows, mattes, different speeds, iris pulls, partial dissolves, what have you. Almost every shot, particularly in the first three reels, has some brilliant effect going on - perhaps my favourite is the moment when the mysterious coachman quite literally picks up Harker. Equally creative are Eiko Ishioka's amazing costumes, which transcend time and place and push traditional garments just slightly over the edge into fantasy; Dracula's clothes alone are worth watching the movie for. Coppola manages to direct with seemingly wild abandon but never once is the story sacrificed for arty pretension. He also captures beautifully the feeling of the ages passing in Dracula's world, contrasting his medieval castle in Transylvania with modern London, full of new inventions and engineering marvels (wax-cylinder recorders, typewriters, the cinematography, etc). The cast throw themselves into their gallery of lunatics with admirable gusto, though slightly varying success. Oldman is terrific under several different complex makeup jobs and brings out the romantic melancholia of Dracula perfectly, but also his terrifying feral side. Hopkins lends gravitas to Van Helsing without too much hamming (though he does keep adding an unnecessary letter "i" to Dracula's name), and Grant and Waits give solid horror-movie stock-character performances. Ryder and Reeves, as the young lovers Jonathan and Mina, try their best and are very pretty people, but are a little out of depth. So what's the problem ? It's that over-inflated title. James V. Hart's script is good and he has carefully adapted the novel closely, but this movie is also greatly influenced by the many previous film versions (essentially it has the look of the 1922 F.W. Murnau / Max Schreck version and the heart of the 1931 Tod Browning / Bela Lugosi version) and invents some new mythology for itself, and as such it is not a definitive movie of Bram Stoker's great book. So for the record horror fans, where does it differ ? Well, for a start there's the middle-ages prologue, based on the legend of Vlad Tepes, which is good and bookends the story nicely, but is a bit fanciful. There are some important plot points not in the book (the business with the locket where Dracula sees Mina's image, Renfield's preceding Jonathan as an emissary to Transylvania) and a few key omissions; there are no rats in the coffins at Carfax Abbey when there should be thousands (this is done brilliantly in the 1979 Werner Herzog / Klaus Kinski version) and the mark Van Helsing puts on Mina's forehead with holy wafer symbolising her unclean spirit is significantly absent. Where this version goes completely loopy though is the relationship between Dracula and Mina - here they are star crossed, infatuated lovers, separated by the ages. In the book he sees her as just another one of his victims and she is revolted by him. Their lengthy courtship in London is completely fabricated, as is the finale within the chapel of Castle Dracula - in the book Jonathan and Quincey kill Dracula just as the sun is setting, and he fades into dust. I guess what irks me most about this version is the emphasis on romanticism - in Stoker's book, Dracula is a monster, a fiend, a selfish, greedy, vicious, horrific creature of the night, and his presence instills only dread horror. He is like that too in parts of this movie, but in the middle-section particularly he is also a bit of a soppy, flowery-shirted wet blanket. However, whilst the title may annoy me, in the end this is a great adaptation of Dracula and a fabulous horror movie.