BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992) ★ ★ ★ ★




When I consider the films that I've seen, most hold a special place in my memory, but not in my heart. Francis Ford Coppola's gothic extravaganza, released in 1992 to mixed reviews, is one of the few that are dear to me. It's marketed as a hybrid romance/horror movie, which seems like a gamble for Columbia Pictures, but I realized after the first viewing that the studio spared no expense. That they splurged is a testament to Coppola's clout at the time. That the finished product is just shy of a masterpiece is incontrovertible proof of his brilliance. "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (the rights to plain old "Dracula" had been procured elsewhere) is entertaining from start to finish. More than that, it's a beautiful film, the sort of thing that stays with you for many years after.

If my language seems overly strong, just think of how difficult it is to work with the subject matter. The source material, Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, is a work of accidental greatness. Despite its elegant prose and sturdy story structure, translating Dracula to screen in any compelling way is nearly impossible. Those tempted by Stoker's sense of camp wind up with Frank Langella and Christopher Lee's cliched seventies renditions of the famous Count. Likewise, a turn to serious drama feels leaden and inappropriate, as in "Shadow of the Vampire" and "Dracula Untold." Something about an immortal blood-sucking un-dead guy and his three fang-faced brides makes every cinematic attempt cringey and forgettable. The only way to get it right is to find the middle ground between comedy and carnage, which is exactly what Coppola and his perfect cast managed to do. "Bram Stoker's Dracula" isn't a truly serious adaptation, but neither is it a laughable farce. Its scares weigh well against its inherent campiness, and James V. Hart's screenplay capitalized on vampire folklore's most underrated feature: eroticism. 

The movie is, at its core, a romance. Hart departed from Stoker by inserting a storyline that depicts Dracula as a deeply sympathetic character. We're taken back to 1462, the fall of Constantinople, and the war between Muslim Turks and Eastern European Christians. Dracula (Gary Oldman) is a warrior for the cross who departs from his castle to fight, leaving his anxious bride, Elisabeta, behind. The Turks send an arrow to the castle with false news of Dracula's death, and Elisabeta kills herself. This turns Dracula (we're told his family crest is of "Dracul," which represents "The Order of the Dragon") against his faith, and he swears a new allegiance to bloodshed, declaring "The blood is the life." Cue the gushing rivers of blood, flowing from the bottomless grail of Columbia Pictures' special effects department. 

From there, the movie catapults viewers through an interweaving of the novel's story and Hart's embellishments, during which a wide cast of Stoker's characters are given ample screen time. Anthony Hopkins is delightful as a sarcastic and socially inept Professor Van Helsing. Keanu Reeves is the much-maligned Jonathan Harker, although I don't think his version of Harker is nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Sure, his British accent is awkward and clearly fake, but this is a Dracula movie. It still needs a little cheese, even if it's incidental. Sadie Frost plays Lucy Westenra, Cary Elwes her suitor, and Winona Ryder inhabits dual roles as both Mina Murray and Elisabeta, Dracula's fifteenth century lover. Monica Bellucci makes an early career appearance as one of Dracula's Brides, and veteran actor Jay Robinson is given a brief scene as the head of the law firm that sends Jon Harker to his doom. 

Gary Oldman has said that he took the part just to say the line, "I've crossed oceans of time to find you." Oldman and I are of the same mind; "Bram Stoker's Dracula" is fascinating because it depicts a man who turned to vampirism in the hope that eternal life might return him his lost love. His line evokes in me a sense of wonder at the chasm of time that his character crosses, and at the implicitly romantic gesture undergirding it. When the movie reunites him with Elisabeta, it rapidly becomes clear that Hart was operating on the premise that human lives repeat themselves, almost exactly as they were before. It made me think, what if, ages after my own demise, I am reborn as exactly the same person? Would I remember that I'd been here before? Would I experience the gradual realization that Ryder's Mina does, suddenly recalling things I'd not known that I'd seen? Can a romance between two people span centuries, and be rekindled when their paths cross? 

These are but a few of the questions that "Bram Stoker's Dracula" brings to mind. I think they qualify as stepping into "deep thought" territory, and considering the subject matter at hand, that's pretty impressive. 


                                                                                                                                                    --- Bill Fontaine

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