The Best Dracula Movie Ever

Rating: 9/10 (4 May 2009)

Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula is the most ambitious and technically-impressive adaptation of Bram Stoker's much adapted novel. It's the only version I know which keeps the epistolary structure of the novel: letters, diaries, logs, newspaper clips, etc. form the complex narrative of the movie. I think it's also the one that tries to put so much of the novel's original plot in the movie.
Visually, it's a feast. Particularly impressive are Eiko Ishioka's Oscar-winning costume design, which produced medieval armors unlike any I ever saw and the Count's long, brilliant costumes. The make-up also has an important place in the movie, considering they had to age a 34-year-old Gary Oldman into a vampire who seemed older than time itself. It's the best horror make-up after The Exorcist's. The art direction turned Victorian London and Transylvania into sinister places: whether it be a derelict castle full of rooms, or a madhouse, the sets are always heavy with dread.
And then there's the cinematography. As much as the novel was about different types of writing, this is a movie about different styles of film-making. We have scenes that evoke old German Expressionist movies; we have scenes that seem like they were shot with an old 19th-century camera. Coppola uses the iris in/iris out technique, and even uses fast-motion, and makes it look good.
Much has been said about Keanu Reeves' poor acting, but what does that matter when he's barely in the movie, and when the movie focuses mostly on Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins? Bram Stoker's Dracula is not just a great adaptation of the novel, it's a great movie, and arguably the last great movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola.