Bram Stoker's Dracula

After The Godfather, what is Francis Coppola's biggest box-office hit? It's Bram Stoker's Dracula, a 1992 film that earned about 215 million domestic. I've seen it multiple times, and took a look again last night.

With a script by James V. Hart, the film, as the expanded title suggests, is the most faithful screen adaptation of Stoker's novel. It also throws in some of the historical sources of the legendary vampire--he was a Wallachian prince, Vlad, who had a thing for impaling his enemies. Coppola and Hart make a few deviations from Stoker, the most important when they shroud the whole thing in the velvet of romance. It seems that Dracula did all this for a woman, and she kind of loves him back. This is not Stoker--the Dracula of his book is no matinee idol.

Though that may offend my purist sensibilities, this film is a joy to behold. The colors are beguiling, and the costumes and sets are Oscar-winning. Shot on soundstages, Coppola once again, as with One from the Heart, replicates a place and by doing so makes it not authentic, but instead suggestive of dreams (or in this case, nightmares).

Prince Vlad, played to the hilt by Gary Oldman, is a warrior who, after winning battle, loses his bride, who commits suicide when she falsely believes he is dead. The church won't give her a proper burial, and he defies god, and becomes an immortal member of the undead. When we pick up the story centuries later, he is buying up property in London, and also making good use of the solicitors sent to him. One of them, Renfield, (Tom Waits) is locked up in an asylum eating insects, and his replacement, Harker (a wooden Keanu Reeves) ends up a prisoner, fed on by gorgeous girl vampires (one of them is a young and luscious Monica Bellucci).

Dracula goes to London and finds Mina, Harker's fiancee, played by Winona Ryder at the height of her babealiciousness. She is a dead ringer for Drac's long-lost beloved, so he courts her, while also munching on her friend Lucy (Sadie Frost), turning her into a vampire. A specialist is called in, the vampire-hunting Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), and after seeing the bite marks on her neck knows that a vampire is in town. Hopkins spares no scenery to chew in his performance, and is the beneficiary of a great edit by Coppola, when he cuts from a beheading to Hopkins carving some rare roast beef.

This is all great gothic fun. The novel, of course, was about the Victorian attitudes about sex. There's a scene in the book in which Mina feeds on the blood from Dracula's chest that, with a few words changed, could be about oral sex. There's some of that in the film, but mostly it's a love story, as we are led to believe that Mina is Dracula's bride reincarnated, and he's really not such a bad guy. These scenes drag the film down, and seem to me to be a cynical way to make the film palatable for modern sensibilities.

But Coppola sure has fun with this. The early scenes in Dracula's castle, when his shadow doesn't precisely obey physics, are wonderfully spooky. There are a couple of nods to the Tod Browning 1932 film, as when Dracula says, "I don't drink--wine," and, hearing the howling of wolves, "Ah, the children of the night. What sweet music they make." Otherwise this film would have shocked 1930s audiences--there's plenty of sex and gore.

Dracula is one of the most frequently rendered characters in cinema, and this is the closest thing to being the definitive version. It's a feast for the eyes, as well as the ears--the creepy score by Wojciech Kilar is stunning, and the closing theme song, "Love Song for a Vampire," written and performed by Annie Lennox, is a perfect wedding song for a goth couple.