BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA
A film review by Robert Dorsett
Copyright 1992 Robert Dorsett
Gary Oldman stars as the vampire, who's been simmering away in his castle for several hundred years. He invites Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) to his castle in Transylvania, to sign and deliver a real estate deal: the count wants to move to London (happy hunting grounds?). While Harker is there, the Count learns of the existence of Mina (Winona Ryder), who is Harker's fiance, but who also bears an uncanny resemblance to the count's betrothed, who died in tragic circumstances, several hundred years earlier. The count feels his destiny drawing him to London; the rest of the movie revolves around (a) his attempts to seduce Mina, (b) the vampire-killer Van Helsing's (Anthony Hopkins) attempts to find and kill him, (c) Harker's attempts to escape from the er, vamps holding him in the castle, and (d) a major plot-crisis involving Mina's somewhat ah, flirtatious friend, Lucy.
Before proceeding, let me confess that I've never read Stoker's novel, which the hype says this movie is faithful to. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't know. I have seen just about all the *movies*, though, my favorite of which, by far, is the Frank Langella version. Just so you know where I'm coming from.
So, does this one work? Not really. It's an attractive movie, but very choppy; several audience members confessed to some confusion, after it, as to what they had just seen. Some scenes are just plain BAD (especially the opening scenes introducing Mina and Lucy), so contrived that it's embarrassing to see them included.
I didn't see much in this movie that lived up to its hype (net or otherwise). When I think "Dracula," I think three things: "tragedy," "love story," and "horror," in about that order. This movie reversed the priority, and didn't really make much of the first element, until the *very* end.
I would suggest that for a Dracula movie to work, you have to have a sympathetic vampire. And this vampire wasn't sympathetic. By playing up the horror, they had to de-humanize the vampire: the movie deals more with Mina than Dracula. And Mina's a fairly one-dimensional character.
The problem is, the horror didn't really work: it was more repulsive than frightening; Lucy wasn't a particularly endearing character to get worked up about, and Mina was a tad bit whiny; Harker's exploits were of interest, but his eventual escape just wasn't terribly believable. Even Hopkins's Van Helsing fell flat, his flippant remarks in "polite" company about chopping off heads and removing hearts quickly becoming old (very nice sense of menace, though, as to what he MIGHT do if the various characters didn't answer his casual questions in just the right way). Perhaps I'm getting old, but I'm just not impressed by crosses spurting blood, or latex masks, anymore: effective horror movies, to me, emphasize the monsters *within* men (or women).
The music is monotonous, and doesn't help the story along any: this is an opera, but only has episodic theme music.
How about the cinematography? It is unique; I'll give it that, and often visually attractive. Did it help the story along, any? Not reaaaaally.
Acting? I don't see why people are commenting about Reeves: he was perfectly adequate for the part. Hopkins was interesting, but a bit flat. Oldman had a great deal of fun as Dracula, but, again, failed to convey that essential "something" to divide our loyalties between him and the "good guys."
So what did this movie add to the canon? Namely: the nature of Dracula's fall from grace, and his intense interest in Mina. Dracula is also explicitly identified as Vlad the Impaler (the "Draculs" were a line of "defenders of Christianity," who were "betrayed" by the church). The aggressiveness of Mina's behavior late in the movie was of interest, but the metaphysical relationship between her and her predecessor (and why she apparently *rationally* found the vampire so interesting) was not well established. Of particular interest is how Vlad's trial as a vampire ultimately ends in absolution, thus giving a meaning, of sorts, to all the madness...
It is worth seeing. The second half is much better than the first half; if the quality of the last 30 minutes had been sustained for the rest of the movie, this would be very good, indeed. 2.5 stars (out of four), +1 on the [-4,+4] scale, a 5 on the 0-10 scale. Catch it matinee.
--- Robert Dorsett rdd@cactus.org ...cs.utexas.edu!cactus.org!rdd
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