We’ve mentioned Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula before, but now it’s time to really get into it. Ever since the 1890s, it’s proved a work open to litanies of interpretations—be they about Victorian sexuality, xenophobia, or something else entirely. The story is straightforward enough, about a cast banding together to try and put down a great evil, which of course lends it to countless adaptations over the decades. From Bela Lugosi to Christopher Lee, icons have been made over a story of a rich bloodsucker and his proclivity for biting necks.
As for how the book itself holds up? A lot of it is of course that sort of Victorian wordiness that may seem overwrought to current eyes…but there are bits that certainly hold up and will resonate to any age, like one grim moment where the main figures are essentially helpless to watch the character of Lucy slowly succumb to vampiric disease. That kind of thing, of being forced to witness predation of a sort that you can do nothing against, is that kind of horror that stirs the primordial anxiety no matter the age.
So how well did today’s subject do in translating any of that, or even making its own mark with the source material? It does occur to me that this is still thirty years on the last major motion picture adaptation of the book—sure there’s been other movies with the Dracula character, but nothing on the big screen that set to transplant its own defining take on it. But with a title like it has, it certainly seemed bent on making itself a definitive one—from Coppola, it’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The plot is—for the most part, and we’ll get to that later—relatively faithful on paper to the novel, with a couple of rather major deviations. You have young Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) delve to the less settled parts of Romania to finalize a housing deal with a certain count—played by none other than Gary Oldman. Naturally, Dracula here isn’t too keen on just sticking around in the Carpathians, and soon relocates to London, setting his sights on Mina Harker (played by Winona Ryder…because it’s the nineties, so of course it has Winona in it). Harker and others from Quincy Morris (Billy Campbell), Dr. Seward (Richard Grant) and Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) all soon ally to stop him…except there’s a little bit of a twist here that, one that’s a little bit divisive.
First of all, for the most part, I really do so enjoy the look and feel of the film. Coppola went out of his way to keep the effects old-school—lots of rear projection, models, and use of silhouette against backdrop, in an effort to combine the timeless old with the new. There are some very well done creature effects, some memorable vistas, and some striking use of color, especially at the start. Some of it has a slightly surreal feel as a result, but one that certainly complements the gothic atmosphere that is clearly being crafted here.
Of course, not everything lands. In his initial appearance, Oldman’s Dracula has an…interesting hairdo. At first I didn’t quite see the mockery…and then he turns around, and, well…
 |
| I guess it's a werewolf movie now because there's a full moon out tonight... |
But of course, Oldman is all kinds of exuberant fun in the role—as anyone who’s seen Leon and Fifth Element will know, you can’t go wrong with him in a villain role, even as he spins and chews his way through the scenery. The rest of the cast? Well. Keanu Reeves seems to be doing his best to emulate every high school student putting on a misguided ‘thespian’ voice in their attempt at Shakespeare. Hopkins clearly just goes out as an unhinged lunatic, and everyone else is doing some sort of overacting or slightly awkward uncertain stab in the middle.
Then we get to Coppola’s attempt to put his on stab at the story, so to speak. Here, Dracula is in fact some sort of tragic figure, losing his wife in his life as a king of Carpathia, and, apparently, Mina here is some sort of reincarnation of her he falls in love with. And, of course, she reciprocates. Most of the other characters seem to be dweebs or lunatics in their own right, with it all framed as a love story doomed to fail through a knife in a coffin. For some audiences, it might work—and at least it’s not as insipid as Bella Swann and Edward Cullen. But…well, the fundamental character of Dracula is that of a predator, in every sense, and even here, he remains at the end of the day a murderous undead terror. It’s not a take that I exactly love, especially when you have to invoke some fuzzy reincarnation palaver.
 |
| Hey, it's not every day you get given another chance after 500 years. |
You’ll have to be the judge of whether that works for you. And that’s why this version remains a mixed bag for me—not one without some fun for the eyes, from hyperreal Transylvanian landscapes to luxuriant costuming, nor one without some entertainment from having everyone from Oldman to Hopkins unleashing their disrespect for subtlety. But with that comes awkwardness and plain odd decisions that doesn’t leave me going away with a feeling of full satisfaction, to put it one way.
Not long after this film came a similar attempt to adapt Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein, entitled, well, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Like this one it had some solid casting, with Kenneth Branagh and De Niro as creator and monster, but although I haven’t seen it in a while, I do recall it being earnest but also flawed. Circling back to Dracula, it also had a novelization—yes, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, had a novel called Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It’s almost as bad as Street Fighter The Movie The Game.
Anyway. Whatever the case, I do think it’s time for this generation to have its own serious attempt to adapt this perennial story—some books of yore, from Dickens to Austen to Verne, will always have someone rise up to present their own reinterpretion through the visual medium, and there’s plenty of imagery and mood in Dracula that a modern filmmaker can make work for current audiences. After all, much like the titular vampire potentate, some things never truly die…
Comments
Post a Comment