Movie Review of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

There is something very strange about this client.  A foreign nobleman, all he wants is several properties dotted around London.  It could be a very lucrative business deal.  But when Renfield traveled out to Transylvania to deal with the paperwork, he returned utterly insane.

Now Jonathan Harker has been dispatched to apologize for his colleague and to get signatures on the dotted line.  He has no idea what horrors await, nor the manner of thing that sent Renfield mad.

Moreover, Harker is about to lead the monster right into the heart of his own city circles.  Imprisoned and unable to intervene, he knows that Count Dracula is heading straight for Harker's own fiancee, Mina Murray.

Yet there are bigger stories here.  There's the tale of a love which defies death and centuries.  Count Dracula has been waiting for his own beloved Elisabeta to be reincarnated, and now he thinks he's found her. 

Meanwhile Dr Van Helsing has made vampires his life study.  When he's consulted on the mysterious symptoms of Lucy Westenra, he realizes that he's finally on the trail of the real thing.  But can he act fast enough to stop this Romanian monster over-running the city of London?  Can he save the young women, who would give the vampire their virtue and soul?

And do they actually want to be saved?

In book and film, Dracula visibly changes aspect on a regular basis.  He can be young or old.  He can be nearly human or beast.  He transforms into a bat, a wolf or a green mist. 

Gary Oldman was equal to them all.  It almost goes without saying, because I'm happy to add my voice to those who'd say he's one of the best actors of his generation. His versatility was pushed to the limit in this role.

On the IMDb forum, someone asks if Dracula was Gary Oldman's best performance to date.  It's difficult to say, but only because he's generally this good.  However, he certainly pulled out all the stops to capture the dark essence of the vampire.

Gary Oldman is a method actor.  When the script called for him to utter a few lines in Romanian, he went and learned Romanian.  In rehearsals, he and Winona Ryder got on really well.  By the time they were filming, Winona felt some kind of threat.  Something wasn't right, though she could never put her finger on it.  She complained to the director that she instinctively picked up on the danger.

He was Dracula.  She was Mina.  She wasn't supposed to feel comfortable in those scenes.  As soon as filming was over, he suddenly transformed into Gary again and all was well.  But on set, he remained in character, always.

Bram Stoker's Dracula had a very strong cast.  Anthony Hopkins was sinister as Van Helsing.  Richard E Grant was manic as Seward.  Sadie Frost was the most convincing Lucy that I've ever seen.  Then there was Keanu Reeves.

It's practically a cliche to call his performance wooden in a review of this movie.  But it's a comment that's richly deserved.  It's also acknowledged by the actor himself.  He later apologized, stating that he was exhausted during filming, having recently done one film after another.

Reviewers are more divided on evaluating Winona Ryder as Mina Murray.  She wasn't in the same class as an actor like Gary Oldman, and it showed.  But that wasn't to say that she wasn't decent enough.  Her English accent was better than Keanu Reeves's anyway.

She's also been called insipid and wooden in the role, but that was her actual character.  Mina is supposed to be the epitome of a stiff upper lipped, prudish Victorian woman. Winona Ryder nailed that.

Movie directors have always used Bram Stoker's story as a selection box. Taking a scene here, but ignoring whole sections there.

Francis Ford Coppola used it as his baseline. There are elements here which have never before been dramatized. It's the most faithfully reproduced version of Dracula to date. 

Characters unknown to all, but those who read the book, finally get their moment on the silver screen.  Quincey Morris and Lord Holmwood are the big examples here.  There are also scenes, like the voyage on the Demeter, which make it into the movie.  They are usually omitted.

Dracula, as Bram Stoker wrote it, is a tale told in diaries, letters and logs.  This is frequently honored in the movie too.  We see Mina writing her diary.  We glimpse the medical notes and the Demeter's captain's log.

However, this movie doesn't precisely take every nuance of the novel and film it.  There are still things left out and there are certainly bits added.  Bram Stoker never explicitly stated that Count Dracula had anything to do with Vlad the Impaler.  Nor was there any hint of the reincarnation love story in the original Gothic horror.

As movie adaptations go, it's close enough.  But Francis Ford Coppola was quick to clarify that he wasn't aiming for anything exact.  He included the author's name in the title as a mark of respect.  It was continuing a tradition from his other movies, in the same way as The Godfather was marketed as Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra are old friends.  They find themselves prey to a dark vampiric force. 

It will attack them, rape them, invade their very bloodstream.  Making it out alive is actually a minor concern compared to the fact that it could take their soul. Endless centuries of horror await, if they succumb.  But there's little to fight with.  It takes over their minds, their passions, their actions.

Therefore they patently have nothing more important to discuss than their respective marriages. 

Lucy (Sadie Frost) and Mina (Winona Ryder) fail to have a single conversation which isn't about a male character.  There are plenty of opportunities.  A huge portion of the script calls for them to share their thoughts.

I thought that the moment might come when Lucy was in extreme danger.  Only Mina's intervention pulled her back from the brink.  But in her lowest moment, all Lucy could talk about was Dracula.  He's male.

The Bechdel Test asks for two (or more) named female characters to have a conversation about anything other than a male character.  Despite theater audiences having a larger proportion of women watching these movies, their role models on the screen exist almost solely to lust after male leads.