Bram Stoker's Dracula

Bram Stoker's Dracula takes its crack as the oft told tale of the blood sucking count through delivering the most faithful adaptation of the source material as written, taking the more complex plot of the book, with the multiple suitors and multiple liaisons to Dracula, and actually making the only a major change an addition. The addition being trying to add some humanity to the villain by having Mina Harker (Winona Ryder) be the reincarnated long lost love of Dracula's whose death spurned him to embrace Satan and become a vampire in the first place. I will actually say that aspect of the film is a weaker of it, well except for Dracula's monster cry of sorrow over her at one point. This is perhaps because such a romance requires a bit of sincerity, and how this film thrives is Francis Ford Coppola's direction of the film. Coppola seems to know the material is absurd in some ways and plays into this brilliantly by playing up the camp by going through a broadly operatic tone. This fits the material actually quite well and enlivens through Coppola's mastery of the technical aspects of the film. The film looks amazing in every regard particularly its special effects and makeup, and he has the right type of fun in the madcap visuals that represent the story. Now the only thing Coppola doesn't take a strict control of in this regard are the performances where you can have fun picking out who understand the tone and who does not. Gary Oldman as Dracula gets it, Sadie Frost gets it, Anthony Hopkins gets it, Tom Waits really gets it, but Keanu Reeves doesn't nor does Winona Ryder. They seem to be in a different film however they really don't get in the way too much. Coppola's tone, which is perhaps his last great hurrah as a visionary, masters the material brilliantly by making the insanity of it wildly entertaining.
4.5/5