Perfect Things: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
It's pushing credulity to call Bram Stoker's Dracula perfect, by the majority opinion. I get it. Cineastes would probably roll their eyes, attributing this to the general hyperbole that's come to be characteristic of film criticism in the age of the internet. It's understandable, because it's definitely true. There's no small number of film sites relying on hyperbole, provocation, being intentionally inflammatory as a way to get clicks. It's unfortunate, but it is true.
The reason I am referring to Bram Stoker's Dracula as a perfect thing, including it in this series meant to recognize the works of artistic creation that bring me joy somehow, is that it is exactly what it portrays itself to be. It's not hiding anything about its intentions. Those intentions are unusual in the way they were combined by Francis Ford Coppola. They are characteristics often used in film, but rarely brought together in the same film and the result is unique, incredibly sumptuous as a cinematic experience and just plain fun.
One of the characteristics which brings me so much joy about Dracula is the degree to which Coppola is just bathing the viewer in sensuousness. Everything about the film is meant to engage the senses in the most lush visual and aural experience possible. Every second of film is gushing onto the audience, drenching them in visual and aural beauty. The costumes, the set design and dressing, the cinematography that captures them and the cast are all unquestionably gorgeous. Eiko Ishioka, the costume designer, has draped every character in costumes that are appropriate for them, in stunning detail, and gorgeous color. There are pieces of Dracula's costuming which call directly back to the robes and traditional garb of the Catholic Church, but are somehow even more garish. Of course, the costumes in Dracula are probably what it is most well known for, and there's good reason.
Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, and Sadie Frost are all beautifully costumed, and are unquestionably beautiful people. Film Twitter would suggest there's no lack of lust for Gary Oldman as Dracula, even if he's not as often referred to as conventionally attractive. When Dracula's wives show up, they're played by Monica Bellucci (regularly referred to as one of the most beautiful women in the world at the time), Michaela Bercu (in her only screen credit) and Florina Kendrick. It's not unusual for a film be cast full of pretty people, but this cast is taking it a little further. With the possible exception of Anthony Hopkins (and no offense meant to Sir Anthony at all), these people are all exceptionally pretty.
The sets are also beautiful in a simpler way. Dracula's castle, Lucy Westenra's home, the crypt we see later, every set is helps to fill the frame with texture and detail, and at the same time many of them are wide open, spacious and are allowed to fade into the background at times. They're still gorgeous, adding to this excellent atmosphere which the costumes were really creating. It's an approach almost like theater in many ways. This heightened, supernatural story end up feeling its in a setting where this would be natural for its world. What they don't do, is overpower the stunning costumes.
Coppola also uses what are some simple, interesting and beautiful visual effects. The repeated use of shadows acting independently from Dracula, as if they're part of his consciousness, is particularly effective. There are a few time lapse shots of wilting flowers as Dracula's shadow moves across them. Coppola also employs a series of simple dissolves and split shots, superimposing characters faces on one side of the screen, reading the letters that make up a significant portion of the text of the original novel, as action is conveyed on the other. There's this incredible shot of Reeves as Harker on one side of the screen, as a voiceover reads hand written text on the other side of the screen, and when the text fades out, it's projected on his face for a moment. All of the visual effects of the film are done with with techniques that would have been available in the early era of film, when the novel was originally released, and it adds another dimension to Bram Stoker's Dracula being imbued with a unique style that's memorable. Most of it is "in camera" as in being filmed as we're seeing it in the film, not something added or changed through some other technique later.
The same exacting, but expansive sense of vision is brought to all of the film's practical make-up effects too. When we see Oldman as Dracula in a bat-like form or a wolf-like form they're both grotesque, but with so much imagination and creativity in their design, they're visually fascinating and a little frightening. More than most of the other versions of vampires we've seen before, these manage to convey a sense of great strength and power. When we see Dracula as a supernaturally ancient human being, the make-up is one of the most impressive examples of the often attempted "aging" illusion. It certainly works better than the majority of digital aging examples we've seen so far. There are probably six different make-up iterations of Dracula in the film, and all of them are outstanding. They never feel like rubber and paint, and have recognizable enough from organic forms to give the designs some sense of grounding in reality as well. They convey the feeling the supernatural is just a perversion or an extension of the natural. They never seem to be reaching for otherworldly, but are instead very grounded in a natural world.
At points, simple silhouette help to convey some important part of the story, like Vlad Tepes battle in the opening sequence (before he becomes Dracula), the stark black figures silhouetted against a red sky background, almost as shadow puppets, being the most memorable. As simple as it is, there's something opulent about the lurid red background. Some of it is shadow puppetry, and it's gorgeous. There are very short, quick moments of what is obviously the performances which were shot in reverse, giving the movement of characters a decidedly unnatural, but not inhuman senses of movement, again an effect which works better in this film than a good deal of CGI does some thirty years later. There are very few optical effects, the overwhelming number of effects are in camera or multiple exposures on the negative. This was an approach to effects closer to early years of film than the approach used in 1992.
Visually, everything in this film is either stunningly beautiful or just intensely interesting to look at, even when they're a little grotesque.
Then there's the music by Wojieck Kilar, as evocative and beautiful as the film is visually. The same is true of the sound design. As Harker moves about Dracula's castle, there are barely audible, layered whispers, eerie cries, but they're so well layered they're more like suggestions than their descriptions tell. Throughout the film there are both subtle and overt of the sound design being used to help add atmosphere or to convey information.
In this way, Bram Stoker's Dracula is part of a long line the kind of prestige dramas which are normally lauded with praise and attract Oscar nominations. It has the same attention to detail found in Bernado Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, Milós Forman's Amadeus or Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon or even 2001: A Space Odyssey, in its own way. It's a tradition brimming over with beauty. It's opulent, it revels in the beauty of film in a visual and aural sense. They gushing over the the audience in this intense level of sensuous beauty. The result is that it becomes overwhelming in a way, the colors, the textures, the cinematographic technique, and through this overwhelming of the senses, it helps break down the barrier, the distance between the viewer and the story.
It's when this is combined with the other significant element of the film, that it approaches it story, characters and performances with the same maximalist instincts Dracula moves into unusual territory. Coppola approaches the all of this with a sense of overwrought melodrama. Over the years, there have been no shortage of reflections on Keanu Reeves attempt at a British accent, as well las Winona Ryder's. Coppola obviously wasn't bothered by how plainly poor and over the top they are. In fact, I'd bet it was part of what he wanted. Considering Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman are obviously encouraged to chew the scenery (and it is glorious to see them do this), it's clear this was Coppola's intent. Hopkins gets a few moments of comedy in plainly, straight forwardly stating the necessities of vampire hunting to the other incredulous characters. He seems to be enjoying himself, as does Oldman. Coppola is pushing the performances, and bringing out the over the top melodrama in the story, as a recognition to the old Universal monster films, but even more to the history of the theater of the Grand Guignol. This is both gothic horror and gothic romance at its most accessible, recognizing the history these things all share. Its populist entertainment, lovingly swaddled in the kind of beauty usually reserved for works that aspire to be high art. It's the recognition things which have often come to be the standards by which high art are measured in narrative storytelling (especially film), have often begun as things looked down as because they were populist entertainment first.
The romantic aspect of the story is an invention of the film. It wasn't part of the novel. This version of the screenplay also draws a direct connection to Vlad Tepes, who of course was part of the inspiration for Stoker's original character, but it never referenced in the novel. Both of these things, apparently additions from writer James V. Hart, add to this sense of melodrama, taking the film out the parameters of what would more strictly have been considered a horror film and a more traditional retelling of the story.
It comes together and ends up feeling like Coppola is just having a whole lot of fun playing with things he loves. We look at The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, and it's become almost tired to refer to them as being high on the list of the greatest films of all time. Apocalypse Now is often in conversation as one of the greatest war films of all time. They've become a victim of their own success to some degree. If we go back and we look at those films though, they are grand, exaggerated melodramas. They may be among the best examples of what they are, but it is what they are. All of those films have phenomenal casts, as well. They are some of the best people working in film, at the time, doing some of the best work of their careers. They end up being considered in this canon of great American film, reaching that rare summit of being, monetarily successful, critically lauded, loved by audiences and considered works of cinematic art.
Coppola, by reverting back to the earliest visual techniques of the film, giving it this ultra lavish costume design, and beautiful cinematography, is treating this Grand Guignol tradition of gothic melodrama, this sensuous, visceral horror as being as worthy of being part considered in the tradition of cinematic art, instead of being considered something lesser, low brow and not capable of producing works of real artistic merit. He's giving that level of artistic attention to something which is a bit silly, but is also very fun in its overwrought love stories, and titillating moments of sexuality or gore, and having bathed in this visceral beauty. It gets at some of the positive things which have made Bram Stoker's Dracula, as a novel, a foundational part of literature. There are the much larger themes, and there are aspects of Dracula that are troubling and problematic, not the least of which is how terrified it obviously is of immigrants, and what that says about Western (especially English speaking) civilization at the time and how this continues to be something we draw terror from. All of these are things we should recognize and discuss, and one of the great things about storytelling is the way it reveals can help reveal these societal fears to us, even when we may not mean to reveal them, but Dracula as a novel and as this film, is also really fun. One doesn't necessarily negate the other.
In fact, this version, in the way it locates the romance in the story, Vlad Tepes becomes Dracula, essentially because he's wronged by a cruel, uncaring God and the machinations of a power hungry Church. "My war for your church cost me the woman I love, and now you're telling me her soul is damned? I renounce all of you," is the basic origin story Dracula is given here. It's slightly subversive. Dracula isn't just this monstrous other, invading London, terrorizing and corrupting good Christians. He's the precursor to the wealthy aristocrat Lord Holmwood, and Van Helsing's soldier in the Army of Christ, battling the forces of evil, but Dracula is an evil created by God. It isn't the God of the church which redeems him either, it's love. As much as that is very much the stuff of simple melodrama, it's also slightly subversive in its suggestions about organized religion, and patriarchal society. It also locates the true power, the thing which draws both Van Helsing, Jonathan and everyone but Dracula, in Mina. When Van Helsing remarks to her, in a moment when he seems like he might just kiss her, "There are darknesses in life my child and there are lights. And you are one of the lights, dear Mina, the light of all light." Renfield, whose pledged his loyalty to Dracula in exchange for immortality, reacts to seeing Lucy by begging her to run. These seem odd and out of place, until we come to realize later she's the source of Dracula's redemption. Of course, this is all muddied by patriarchal notions of purity, which is derived from the novel, and appropriate for the time period, but hopefully in the years to come, we'll be rid of these malignant notions. This version at least tries to create something more interesting from the titular character than to just be some otherworldly, Satanically empowered other.
These are the many reasons Bram Stoker's Dracula is a thing of joy to me, one of those comforts I can turn to repeatedly, giving me some slight sense of uplift and inspiration in the joy and care taken in its inspiration. It's fun to luxuriate in it's lavishness, it's slight hints of lasciviousness, it's sensuousness, and to enjoy the fact that one of the great filmmakers of the 20th century felt all of this was worth bringing their reputation and their talents to. It's gorgeous, fun and the love for the medium jumps off the screen as much as the visual beauty does.