Bram Stoker's Dracula (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Outstanding
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	strong symbolism mirroring Freudian psychoanalysis  |  screenplay  |  acting  |  camera  |  cutting
Disadvantages:	Bill and Ted's not so excellent side - stepping adventure in falling down a castle wall land

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Coppola's take on the Dracula story is one of the finest vampire films I have ever seen. No - make it thee finest vampire film I have ever seen. Its brilliance exceeds by far what other modern films tried to achieve in vain: The sheer lushness of the decorations, props and outfits alone is stunning. The psychology of the characters is flawless. The camera perspectives are ingeniously chosen. The overall quality of the scenes is densely atmospheric, and the dramatic score supports them accurately. What makes the film perfect, however, is how much of it is in keeping with the zeitgeist of the Victorian era in which Bram Stoker wrote his famous novel, condensing centuries of various myths into a cultural icon which spawned legions of books, movies, musicals, yes - and trite t.v. series...

Starting out from a somewhat cheesy opening scene that establishes the character of the bloodsucking count, this film soon gains both momentum and depht, slips the audience a couple of hints and foreboding scenes to enhance tension, sidesteps elegantly to draw the spectator deeper into a world of mystery, dark lust, and decay - and finally triples its pace before reaching its climax in a nightmarish showdown.

But lets go back to the opening scene:
Here we find Vlad of the Dracul (Gary Oldman), a 15th century crusader whose wife is deceived into suicide and who consequently renounces God and turns himself into the monstrous tyrant who will go down in the history books as >Vlad The Impaler<.
Now how is this scene set up?
Very dramatic indeed! It is not going to far, saying that it is even overly dramatic. Or, being consciously so, melodramatic. That's the word: Melodramatic. Simply because everything, from the shadow-play of the crusading knights (their hautingly dark and flickering black silhouettes fighting against a blood-red backdrop strongly resembles staged puppet fights on a medieval market), through the dissembling letter telling Vlad's wife-to-be of his death on the battleground (it is shot through an open window with an arrow, Errol-Flynn-flick style) and the princess subsequently jumping off the castle wall (shown in a 1950ies Hitchcock "Vertigo" fashion), up to the symbolistic take of the count (clad in some heavy kind of Terry Gilliam "Brazil" fantasy armor) in a chapel, stabbing the cross of Christ and drinking the blood spilt by his defying act against God in order to immortalize himself as an adversary of the church... - EVERYTHING in this scene is so grotesquely stark, and cut in such a wild fashion, that you cannot help but grip your seat and in spite of the anachronistic mode of film-making employed here for the strongest effects.

This opening scene sets the tone of the whole movie, and it truly does a great job in doing so. However, I still felt a bit awkward watching that scene for the first time, because I instantly asked myself whether the director would be able to maintain the intensity of this rapid succession of brilliant takes on the edge of tackyness. He was surely walking a thin line there...

...BUT, I have to say: He pulled it off!

Well, before I give you the wrong idea about this film, let me say that it does not go on quite like this. The range of styles employed is not at all arbitrary or gimmicky, but rather a fine blend of traditional movie-making ideas (mark: This movie came out in 1992, so you will not find any gratuitious CGI bull&";? in there); and after the first fervour of Count Dracul's raging has subsided, we are told of a young Victorian gentleman by the name of Jonathan Harker (Keanu Revees) who is going on a promising business trip to Transylvania in order to cut a nice property deal with an elderly aristocrat planning to move from his ancient Rumanian castle to good old England, for a change of air or whatever he's up to...

And, as most you will already know, this is where the mystery starts.

And if I say mystery, I say rightfully so. Because that's what it is. Not a gory hack-and-slash horror movie, and not a ooh-who's-lurking-there-in-the-shadows suspense thriller (although there will be some gory and tense scenes coming up, but just you wait...), but a good old-fashioned mystery film with some modern twists. Well, not exactly modern, but up to date in terms of good story-telling, in-depths character development, almost Freudian sexual symbolism, and last not least a very convincing setting for a film that first and foremost wants to be good entertainment.

For instance, Coppola, in a very nonchalant manner, has sneaked lots of vital details into "Dracula" which not only make it a proper costume film, but most of them serve also particularly well to illustrate some of the characteristics of the plot, people, or place they are put, or support some other end such as the eerie sound of an early grammophone underlining yet another gripping scene where... - but I digress.

Among these things are many inventions that were more or less novelties of that time and age (e.g. a typewriter, an early dictaphone, electric lightbulbs, a 'modern' microscope allowing the observation of blood cells, a cinematograph, the railroad, etc.), and while some of these were simply included to get the plot ahead, some are used in order to establish a certain dichotomy between science and nature.

For example, the second encounter between the Count and Jonathan Harker's fiancé Madame Mina (Winona Ryder) is shown as if through the lense of an old-fashioned cinematic camera, and it takes them to an exhibition on the progress of visual arts. This scene is especially strong, as the arrival of photography in the 19th century caused at least as much of a controversy as today's ego-shooter PC games; it was seen as a degenerating factor to society by some, while others hailed and exploited its merits of enhanced realism. (As coily hinted at, passingly, by a short side-glance in "Dracula", both sides of the medal were represented in the beginning rise of pornography...)
In this scene, a white wolf (which had escaped from the London Zoo during the arrival of Dracula on the English shore) causes a disturbance at the exhibition, just when Mina and Vlad are discussing their points of view on contemporary art and the merits of science. Here, in this ambivalent setting, the barbarian Vlad, in frock and cylinder behaves like a distinguished gentleman, wearing the thin disguise of civilisation while constantly trying to appeal to the animal nature of virgin Mina's subconscious represented by the white wolf. It is just one of many scenes with Freudian undertones, and they are amongst the strongest features of the movie as a whole.

Having mentioned the discovery of blood cells before, I'd like to point out that they are a recurring theme throughout the film whenever Dracula makes use of his mysterious force over other living beings. However, it is Dracula's most ardent adversary, the metaphysicist Van Helsing, who draws the parallel between syphilisation and civilization (Syphilis being another component of the movie's costume film potential, as this disease was endemic throughout much of the Victorian era). It is the most refined and superficially perfect characters, the women and the civilized men such as Lucy, Mina, and Jonathan Harker who are most threatened by Count Dracula's demonic force, whereas those characters that seem to be more in touch with their real nature, i.e. the rude and stout Van Helsing, the reckless opiate-taking psychiatrist Jack Seward, or his friend from America's wild frontier are almost out of harm's way.

In an ambivalent manner, vampyrism, much like a disease, brings about the decay of the fassade of civilization, and brings out the dark but strong nature lurking behind it: The vampyre acts by instinct and has heightened sensual faculties. Alas, this regression also leads to madness. Much of this ambivalence can be seen in Lucy: With the restraints which Victorian society had put on a lady fallen away, she can hear and smell unusually well, becomes sexually predatory, but on the other hand shows 'a waning of the blood' and signs of what back then used to be called 'hysteria'.

But this is clearly not a film mainly concerned with civilization and syphilisation: There are many more parallels and dualisms to be discovered; and while some of them have already been part of Bram Stoker's original novel, others illustrate how well this matter has been understood and transformed by Coppola and his crew.

One of the strongest dualisms is that between Mina Harker and her friend Lucy, here portrayed as a very sensuous woman and thus much more receptable towards the Counts demonic influence. Animal lust and the subsconscious, as well as their symbolic visual representation, play an important role throughout the whole movie, as these are the portals to the characters' souls through which Dracula exerts his supernatural power over them. He can also command all lower animals at his will, and to some extent the forces of nature (such as raising a storm - another symbol for the mental turmoil many characters find themselves in). For example, when Dracula lands on the shores of England, the forces of nature are unleashed, the inmates of a mental asylum turn from madness to rage, and even poor Lucy has a very troubled night, sleepwalking (through a maze, significantly!), and having a vivid nightmare of being raped by a werewolf.

The spectator becomes part of this raging madness, as he can never be quite sure whether what he sees is part of the films reality, a nightmare of one of the characters, or merely some sort of evil foreboding installed by F.F. Coppola for artistic reasons only (b.t.w.: He uses loads of blend-ins and overlays to symbolically garner his main shots, a technique strongly reminiscent of the cinematography by F.W. Murnau [director of "Nosferatu" - another vampire classic]).

Now, in analogy to what I said about parallels and dualisms, the same goes for many other motives familiar to contemporary readers of "Dracula" that are exhibited throughout the film: I've already mentioned the Freudian symbolism, scientific discoveries and the technical revolutions, which were much discussed issues of the late 19th century; also, the spread of syphilis, and the clash of civilisations (represented at the beginning of the film in the battle between the [western] Christian army and the host of "infidels"). The latter motif is taken up in the literary world of Bram Stokers novel as Dracula comes from the East, thus shifting the border between civilisation and wilderness westwards. In the movie, a view of the East threatening Western moral values is also represented in Mina Harkers copy of "Arabian Nights" by Richard Burton, who had also translated and printed the "Kama Sutra". Just like Dracula himself, the east is represented as mysterious, exotic, sensuous and fascinating, yet also as libertine, dangerous and somewhat degenerate. If you take a look at Victorian art and the representation of the far east therein, that's just what you are going to find - it was used exactly in that kind of fashion. And that's just what you'll find in the movie as well! Whenever the vampires are not only looming large, but also portrayed as sexually alluring, there is a bit of the eastern exotic to their portrayal. So you can well say, that apart from a few digressions, the film is very much in keeping with the attitudes of the time the book was written in.

Ah, the topic of degeneration:
Of course it features heavily, too. There's the excentric castle of Dracula, which (already grotesque in itself) looks like a bastard between a gruesome ruin and a scrapyard figure, with lots of 'prosthetic' architectual features to support its eroded shape; it is absurdly angular on the outside, whilst on the inside it looks rather monolithic, almost like one of these overblown settings of old BBC Shakespeare productions, or the dwarves' mountain hall out of Lord Of The Rings, or those architectual sketches from the German Third Reich where those crazy bastards tried to emulate what they thought the Nibelungen castles must have looked like.

I've referred to the landing of Dracula multiple times by now, as this is one of the most impressive scenes of the film ( - of the book as well, by the way. And I hereweith command thee: "Go read the friggin' book!"). Another great one (in both media) is the scene where Dracula crawls down the castle walls like a spider: Creepy!

The castle itself has some interesting features, and reminded me of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (, where everything and anything is either blasphemous, or perverted or both), withwhat all the strange niches and staircases, and almost impossible angles, with the shifting walls in the background, the water dripping upwards, and mice crawling overhead.

Unfortunately, here we also get to witness the film's only flaw, when Keanu Revees' character falls off a castle wall while trying to escape; only, he does not fall down, but sideways (and yet his "fall" leads him straight into the ditch below). While everything before was intentional and sort of made sense in the wicked ways of the movie, this is just a downright mistake - and an obvious one to boot. Well, it makes Keanu Revees look like a total ass, and I guess it serves him right for reminding me of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" in every single movie he makes (It's just that daft look of his. He can't help it: That's all he got, and wanting to make a living, he has to go with what little of resources he has in the way of acting, I guess).

Well, even Keanu "I can at least act better than Steven 'One-Face' Seagal, so you'd better idolate me for being Neo in Matrix instead of him" Reeves has a strong scene in this film, namely when Jonathan Harker is too much of a coward to confess to his newly bewedded wife that he has given in to the oriental looking vampyrettes in Count Draculas castle and slept with all of them - at once. It's one of those very rare moments where you realize how much a brilliant director and an experienced cast of co-actors can get out of even the shallowest mimes in the business of Hollywood. And this scene, albeit short, is also brilliant, from the stark contrast between its onset and the previous scene ( - 'Van Helsing slicing the meat' is all I'm gonna say here - afficionadoes will be in the know, by now) via the awkward moment (for the audience, at least) of Jonathan playing over his 'mistake' straight to Van Helsing's faux pas of being being truthful and factual (not to say blunt and rude) even at a dinner table and in the presence of a lady who has recently lost her best friend.

Mina Harker: >>Doktor, how did Lucy die? ... ...Was she in great pain?<<
Dr. Van Helsing: >>Ja, she was in great pain. Then we cut off her head and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace.<<

A typical reaction for the principled, self-assured (maybe too much so), and somewhat haughty 'scientist' Van Helsing, who seems to strive after Nietzsche's ideal of the übermensch - and admires Count Dracula for his strong, compelling personality. Always in the know, always in control, and of a very sharp wit only matched by his blunt manners, he makes a strong counterpart to the distinguished bloodsucker, weighing in his mental capabilities against the Count's charisma.

For it is his charisma rather than physical force that poses the real threat to the pure yet somewhat naive Mina Harker (in another strong sequence of takes is the parallelism between her marriage to Jonathan in a Romanian chapel and the bloody union of Vlad and Lucy on the sensuous woman's deathbead). How will she come out of the affair with her secret lover?

Well, I won't go into that...
Only let it be said that, apart from all the historism, the symbolism and the Freudian innuendo, there are also some hair-raising scenes included, and also some blood-spilling going on - and at times in quite an explicit fashion. However, it always serves a purpose, and the same goes for the sexual scenes (no hardcore). So, there you have it.

One scene even features a vampyre and a baby; and if you remember the parallels established by the film between vampyrism and syphilis and you know what kind of superstitions some Victorians had about curing this veneral disease, it makes the whole bit even more haunting...

The Acting (leading roles):

Winona Ryder
- does a really good job portraying Mina Harker as a young and earnest Victorian woman surpressing her darker sides in order to become the perfect wife she aspires to be.

Sadie Frost
- does an outstanding job portraying her friend Lucy, a more sprightly, sensuous woman who falls victim to her darkest desires as she is turned into a femme fatal under the influence of the vampyre.

Keanu Reeves
- does a fairly decent job portraying Jonathan Harker, a stiff businessman whose curiosity might just prove fatal to him and his wife...

Anthony Hopkins
- does gives a seasoned deadpan performance as the Dutch vampyre hunter Van Helsing, bringing even more cult to that already culty figure. He carries off the old coot with much panache. Some of it seems to stem from his typical nonchalant manner as an actor who sees his job mainly as routine work. You wouldn't believe he actually said that, but he did (more or less...) - check out the DVD features on the Making of.

Gary Oldman
- brilliantly embodies the mysterious, ambivalent, and constantly morphing character of Vlad Dracul a.k.a. Vlad The Impaler, a.k.a. Count Dracula, a.k.a. Vampyr Nosferatu, a delicate and tortured soul as well as a cruel force of evil. Also he cuts a very sharp figure in any kind of costume he appears in (and there's a whole bunch of 'em). His Dracula is a very deep and mystical type, with uncountable facets and nuances hidden in the crevices of his soul which he only rarely visits himself. Oldman not only manages to express all these idiosyncracies deftly; moreover, he also brings all of them in line to shape a mutable yet stable character: Outstandingly brilliant!!

Ah, and he fought it out with F.F. big time to get that wicked bat costume and so he could do some things differently, characterwise. Kudos to him for having the balls to do that!

Tom Waits
- gives an all-out-there rendition of Reinfield, once a successful solicitor in the real estate business but now inmate of a mental asylum, who has been promised eternal live by his master Vlad Dracul in exchange for getting the whole story moving...

The Cinematography

- by Michael Ballhau is very versatile in its funtionality but always spot on perfect: Totals, subtotals, closeups, filters, birds-eye-views, stills, tracings of movements, racing up stairs or searching out victims while Dracula eats himself up the food-chain in order to regain his strength, echoing a macro vision of the bugs Reinfield ate in his cell, step-by-step zooming as a new vampyre's sight enhances... - You name it, you got it. Its all in the bag, and it falls into place as if conducted by magic. Which is exactly what you expect from a thriller of mystery and myth.

The Settings

- are very atmospheric, which to me is more important than downright realism. They follow an interior logic, for example the garden of Mina's house is a recluse of some sort, almost paradise-like, and painted in mild colours; it is like her sphere of purity. Vlad's castle on the other hand is uninviting, with dominant shades of grey and blue.
Whatever the place, however, the lighting adds a lot to the scenery, and quite often the colouring of the settings seems dominated by the emotional state befitting the scene taking place there rather than the respective place itself. Colours are very important in this film.

The Score

- is, all in all, like a good score is supposed to be:
Enhancing the atmosphere, while staying in the background for most parts of the moview; having said that, it is still quite dramatic at times, which goes very well with the overall tone of the movies. Plus: It features an Annie Lennox song in the end titles.

Francis Ford Coppola

- is a fucking genius!
(Nobody will have born with me through all this rhubarb, so I might just as well use an expletive here.)

When you watch the making of of this movie, you'll also find that he must be a very demanding director, to say the least; maybe even a pigheaded bastard dictator impossible to work with, at least not when he is stressed out withwhat all the pressure of a big-bugdeted mainstream production and shitloads of money to burn but no freakin' time to blink your eyes twice when once might do the job to keep your eyes in sufficient health long enough to finish the project.

He did get the best out of everybody, though. And he did so by ordering everybody to get together for a week in advance reading the whole book out loud taking turns (inside character). Ain't that cool? You bet your neck it is!

Style-wise, he listened to his dad's motto:
>If you are going to steal, you gotta steal from the best.<
So what you'll find apart from Bram Stoker, is some Bela Lugosi, some F.W. Murnau, some Phantom of the Opera, heck even a tad bit of Giger, and of course some large chunks of Coppola himself...

And he also left some space for improvising.

One more good thing about the film:

Most of it would also have worked as a silent movie.
I'd say, it's a bit like a stark and strong picture painted with a big brush by a young artist with a keen vision, where the additional details have been put in at a later stage by the same artist having grown older and wiser.
Okay, I lied: Two good things. Because it is not only as a movie that this film succeeds, but also as an adaptation, in that it carries the same spirit as the novel which was considered pulp fiction at the time it came out, and nevertheless it was one of the most successful bestsellers ever written; and this film mirrors that in using techniques which were already considered outdated in Hollywood by the time the movie was made, techniques of older blockbusters, or b-movies even, but techniques that worked nevertheless. Some might call this mannerism, I call it grand style.

So,

SUMMING IT ALL UP,

Coppola's "Dracula" is a lush and opulent film for everybody interested in any of the following:

- Vampyres!
- a compelling story
- great directing
- great acting
- great camera work
- great cutting & arrangement of scenes
- good old-fashioned special effects
- mystery movies
- historical movies
- dramatic movies
- arty movies
- gory movies
- movies in general
- dreams / Freudian psychoanalysis
- identity, birth and rebirth
- cultural history
- Tom Waits.

Lines to remember:

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>>I have crossed oceans of time to find you.<<
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>>There is much to be learned from beasts.<<
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>>Absinth is the aphrodisiacum of the soul.<<
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>>An Autopsy? Autopsy?<<
>>No. Not exactly. I just want to cut off her head, and take out her heart.<<
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>>I am nothing. Lifeless. Soulless. Hated and feared. I am dead to all the world.<<
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>>We have all become God's madmen. All of us.<<
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