The worst bit of tampering with the Dracula narrative was Coppola and screenwriter James V. Hart's grafting of historical-romantic overtones onto the novel's narrative backbone. In Coppola's film, the Count (Gary Oldman) in question is a 15th-century Christian warrior-prince who, upon returning from battle against invading Muslims, finds his bride has killed herself. The prince rages against God and pledges to return after his own death to terrorize the living, till his grief is redeemed. This narrative license turns Dracula into a tragic figure, and critically dilutes the mystery and dread out of the character.
Fast-forward 400 years, and we're dropped into Stoker's story proper, as Jonathan Harker (an out-of-his-depth Keanu Reeves), a property lawyer goes to meet Dracula at his macabre castle in the Transylvanian wilds, to finalize a London real estate deal. Decked out in a bouffant hairdo and crimson robes, this is not Stoker's demure vampire-aristocrat but some fabulous (and unintentionally hilarious) Baroque diva. The Count holds Harker captive, a slave to the appetite of a trio of oversexed vampires (one of whom is Monica Bellucci) who look like they're angling for the cover of Maxim, while he goes to seek out Mina (Wynona Ryder), Harker's fiancée, in London.
Dracula's arrival on English shores more or less follows Stoker's storyline. Mina's friend Lucy (a silly performance by Sadie Frost, playing up Lucy's virgin-whore dialectic way too broadly) falls victim to Dracula, and her doctor-friend Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant) enlists the help of the eccentric vampire hunter Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins). For lack of any substantial reading into his character, Hopkins resorts to his trademark camp and half-mad bluster (think Legends of the Fall, unless you've blocked it out). Meanwhile, the others on hand -- Reeves, Grant, Cary Elwes as Lucy's erstwhile suitor Holmwood -- all make for anemic screen companions to the scene-chewing Hopkins. And with his demented appearance and gravel-voiced delivery, Tom Waits makes the right impression as Renfield, the fly-munching mental patient under Dracula's spell, but his scenes are simply sideshows in Coppola's larger malarkey about doomed romance.
The film's most tedious and undermining stretches concern the slow-brewing and perverse romance that builds between Dracula and Mina, presumably his long-dead bride reincarnated in a corset. Mina is intrigued by the Continental Count, now bedecked in brown tresses, blue-tinted pince-nez, and frock coat, as, gradually, memories of their past life together form in Mina's mind, along with a re-ignited passion for her one-time prince. I am bored just writing this, and still perplexed about what to make of their scenes together. Their spiritual intertwining is a bold departure from Stoker's blue print, but it falls flat because we feel nothing but numb indifference to their relationship. As with any vampire story, we want to feel horror and repulsion, instead Coppola wants us to feel pity.
No matter what one thinks of the film as a whole, its technical brilliance is unassailable. Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and composer Wojciech Kilar, along with sumptuous craftsmanship by the art direction, costume design, and makeup effects teams, all bolster the production to a level that merits even multiple viewings. To underscore the story's late-Victorian, early-cinema setting, Ballhaus and Coppola ingeniously evoke old-school effects (shadow puppetry, stop-motion, even simulated silent-film projection, etc.) to complement the opulent production design. And Kilar's formidable score precisely sets the story's Gothic feel. But it all sinks under the lethargy of the telling.
Sexuality is a constant subtext in Stoker's novel, but it is used to subvert ideas of Victorian sexual politics, not as a cheap bid for vampire erotica (embarrassingly long sections of this film play like Skinemax for the vampire-fixated). What the novel achieved so brilliantly was use sex as a saboteur might wield a bomb -- as a means to threaten and manipulate an unsuspecting and innocent world. Dracula is meant to be The Other, prowling the margins of society (and the narrative). He is the invader, devious and subtle enough to seduce and ruin men and women alike. He is a constant source of sexual and supernatural dread. But there is scarce dread in Coppola's film, because he and Hart opt to humanize the Count, psychologize, and over-explain him. In the process, they dull his fangs.
A new collector's edition DVD includes a second disc of extras, including half an hour of deleted scenes and several extensive making-of documentaries and interviews.
