As our gentle reader know, I am a horror nut from way back. When I was kid my grandmother and I would stay up late every Saturday night watching “USA’s Saturday Nightmares” and while other kids were playing baseball I was in the Freddy Krueger Fan Club (no really, I had a little signed picture and a card and everything!).
Despite this well-balanced and completely normal childhood, I did manage to make it into my teenage years, and when I did, my friends and I would get together every weekend and (you guessed it) watch horror movies. Passions like this don’t just appear; they are nurtured and grow over a period of years. They develop sophistication and clarity.
It is with this clarity I look upon Bram Stoker’s Dracula, one of the finest of the vampire movies produced in the early nineties. Since then, vampires have become passe and boring, as they were during the eighties. But in the nineties the vampire enjoyed a return to popularity, with several great films with big budgets hitting the screen to rave reviews.
The movie does its best to follow the novel. We all know the tale. Young and clueless London clerk goes to Transylvania to meet a local count who wishes to purchase land in England. This count happens to be a vampire, and not just any vampire, but the biggest bad of them all, Dracula. Dracula moves to London and wackiness ensues. Nothing new here.
But wait…there is something new. Francis Ford Coppola, with his normal tendency for grand and epic gestures, decides to link up the tale and the history, giving Dracula an only slightly incoherent origin tale. This allows for the incredible obsession the count has for Mina, the young clerk’s fiance, to be explained in a way that makes Dracula more than a monster or a man. It makes him a lover. Played by Gary Oldman, Dracula moved from ancient to young effortless, winning Mina (Winona Ryder) over to his side far more completely than ever in the book.
The music is part of what makes the film so compelling. The soundtrack, filled with haunting winds and deep bassoons, is haunting, chilling, and often full of sadness. This is a vampire film that makes you weep for the monster, because it is so clear that his monstrosity is a clear and understandable reaction to the situations he finds himself in. Admittedly, not all of us would curse the heavens and become immortal fiends for love, but we can definitely empathize with the intensity of his feelings.
While the movie is a gorgeous and deep version of the tale, one flaw stands out. Jonathan Harker, our hapless clerk, is played by none other than Keanu Reeves. His wooden and stilted acting and horrible attempt at an English accent make you pray for Ted “Theodore” Logan to make it all go away. But even with this, the film is compelling and powerful.
Anthony Hopkins as vampire-hunter Van Helsing is delightful, the exact combination of warrior chief, scholar and old kook necessary for the tale. His constant jokes and playful manner allow for a bit of relief to all the doom and gloom, as do the antics of young Lucy (Sadie Frost) and her suitors. Renfield, played by none other than musician Tom Waits, jumps from manic to forlorn in his desires to please his master, and is both heartbreaking and infinitely amusing.
This movie is classed best as a horror film, but there aren’t really many scares. The gore is minimal, and always in context. The true tale is the epic love story perfectly summed up in the words of Dracula himself: “I have crossed oceans of time to be with you.” These are not the words of a monster, and when he is slain in the end, you are compelled to weep with Mina. Even the wooden Reeves manages to convey the hollowness of this victory with his expression. If you like your horror full of gore and panic, pass this one by; if you want an epic tale that will live with you for years then buy, do not rent, this classic.
You won’t regret it.
Till next time, fright-fans…keep a light on!
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August 1st, 2008 at 8:36 am
Great review of one of the most atmospheric films of the 90’s. Gary Oldman brings so much depth to the character, best Dracula ever.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
You can’t go wrong with Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman, and BOY are you right about Keanu Reeves in this! And I thought Winona Ryder was just as bad…what was Coppola thinking? But I didn’t think as highly of this movie as you did; I thought it really violated the spirit of the book. I know a film can’t stick to the book perfectly, but it CAN keep the general themes the same, and I didn’t think this one did.
August 4th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
I thought that Winona Ryder was able to just be passive and pull it off far better than Keanu Reeves. At the end, when she goes all Evil-Lynn, that gets a bit cheezy.
I do have to disagree about the book vs. movie issue. When you take into account the basic differences between the media, novels have room for introspection and development through dialogue, and in Dracula’s case, letters. Bram Stoker was a big fan of the “narrator” trope, and that by definition doesn’t carry well in a film. Because of this, I think the film carries the spirit of the book in its feel and overall interaction. It is, fundamentally, a gothic horror piece in the classical sense.
If you want to do a deeper reading of Dracula, however, addressing the symbolism of degradation and syphilis inserted, I do have to agree. Vampirism is not seen as fundamentally degenerative as it is in the novel. As with all great literature, there is at least two novels to discuss, and if we are discussing the surface reading, I would say the film does an admirable job of preserving its spirit. If we are reading the “deeper” novel, a statement on English mores, social isolation, and decay of the person, then no, the film ignores those themes.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Stoker also has a lot to say about how turn of the century society has so completely caved in to science that it leaves no room for the unknown–and is therefore in danger from it. He seems to be implying that a healthy grounding in science combined with a healthy respect for the unknown is the best way to go–typified in the VanHelsing character. But the movie doesn’t deal at all with the other characters’ inability to believe what’s going on in front of their own eyes, or with society’s obsessive need to explain away things we don’t understand (something that hasn’t changed much in a hundred years). Instead, they added this weird time travel plot and made it nothing but a shallow love story (and I LIKE love stories!).
I think I was most disapointed by the denigration of Mina’s character. In the book she is truly heroic, resisting the pull of the Count on her soul, trying to walk the line between two worlds at great personal cost, just to help defeat the evil–evil that it would be more pleasant for her to succumb to. In the movie, she realizes that she like sex, likes it even more with the Count, and jumps in with both feet. Not a lot of character development there, and no heroism at all.
I don’t think a movie has an obligation to be faithful to the details of a book–that would be impossible. But I think it does have an obligation to be faithful to the themes and the major plot and character markers. Especially if you’re going to title it “Bram Stoker’s Dracula–” which it clearly wasn’t.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
August 14th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
August 15th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Hey, thanks! This was an interesting conversation; it’s great to combine my two loves–books and films–into one great dialogue!