It's a Coppola film.

Rating: 8/10 (1 July 2001)

Perhaps Coppola's true genius lies in his ability to totally mold his style to his subject matter. With some directors, no matter what the film you always know you're watching a film by that director-- Woody Allen comes to mind, or even Martin Scorsese, most of the time. Quentin Tarantino or Oliver Stone, definitely. With Coppola, and it's going to sound strange to say this about a director with such an outsize personality--Coppola always submerges his personal style in the story he's telling. Maybe a better way to put it is that his personal style consists in reinventing his approach with every story.
That's why, for me, even his less popular movies are interesting: each film, from One From The Heart to Rumble Fish to Gardens of Stone, creates a completely unique mood, extending to every detail of set design and cinematography. The man has perhaps the greatest range of any modern director--and exhibit A would have to be this: that the same man that gave us the incredibly subdued, tight Rainmaker a few years ago had only five or six years before that made Dracula, as over-the-top a film as you can imagine. And it works. Brilliantly. The lavish sets and costumes (courtesy of Eiko Ishioka) are only the most visible of the effects Coppola creates in this movie. Just as important is the way he puts together the narrative--all those elaborate transitions, the image overlays, the diary and letter readings. They all contribute to creating a slightly stilted, starched-collar, almost operatic atmosphere that perfectly suits the material. In this respect, I find Keanu Reeves's limitations as an actor working in the interests of the material for once: his stiffness actually contributes to his character's believability. It's easy to see why Mina would prefer Vlad to him.
Coppola's respect for the material manifests itself in the technological subtext. To a modern reader, 1897 feels like the ancient past, but Stoker's London audience was on the cutting edge of modernity--they must have felt just as much in control of their environment, on track to conquer the last mysteries of existence, as we do. Coppola brilliantly succeeds in making new "wonders" of the period such as the cinematograph and the typewriter seem thrillingly up-to-date, which just emphasizes the horror of this unnatural, unexplainable thing that has swept in from beyond the pale of civilization. Note the heroes' pride when they believe that they can outrace the Count by taking the train, a recent innovation--and of course they fail. Perfidy can always trump technology.
Another master stroke is the way Coppola suggests a repressed erotic undercurrent to the straitlaced culture of the Victorian age.
The briefly-glimpsed kiss between Lucy and Mina is a wonderful touch--is it erotic or completely innocent? They probably don't know themselves. Sadie Frost is fantastic in her role, managing to maintain this balance between innocence and wantonness all the way through, even as her character descends into horrifying depths.
Performances: uniformly excellent. Anthony Hopkins is a hoot as Van Helsing--almost as creepy as Vlad himself, and a joy to watch.
Winona Ryder gives perhaps her best performance as a woman who embodies the repressions of her age--she really doesn't seem to know which she wants, Vlad or Jonathan. Rather, she seems to sincerely want both, alternately.
And Gary Oldman is transcendant. His performance is the romantic core that makes the movie work--we fully believe that he is evil and must be stopped, but at the same time we can truly sympathize with him. Oldman makes us believe that Vlad's condition is a result of his love--he takes that motif from a mere plot enabler to the central, supporting element of the film. A great performance (even if we can't understand what he's saying half the time!).
The only reservation I have about the film is kind of hard to put my finger on. It has something to do with the fact that _everything_ is there on screen--there aren't enough shadows, there isn't very much left unseen or unsaid. In a sense that feels true to the conception of the film, a sort of old-fashioned aesthetic in which light and dark are clearly delineated, just as there's no confusion in Van Helsing's mind between his admiration for Vlad the man and his hatred of Dracula the monster. A noir approach would have injected too much irony, too much cynicism in what is, finally, a very old-school sentimental, romantic story. But having the monster waltz across the center of the screen in all his red-caped, white-bouffanted glory is a bit of a departure from the conventional image of evil lurking in shadows. Maybe a little disconcerting.
Still, I give it 8 of 10.