After spending four centuries mourning the loss of his wife, Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) discovers she has been reincarnated in the form of Mina Murray (Winona Ryder), the fiancée of his lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves). Dracula sails from his home in Transylvania to London, where he intends to claim Mina as his new bride.

CRITIQUE

I saw Bram Stoker’s Dracula the night it opened back in November of 1992, and I was almost immediately struck by its style. I have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola--trying to figure out his next move is beyond futile. This is a man who spent several years in the ‘80s using the latest cinematic innovations to drain the life out of the simplest love story imaginable, and then turned around a decade later and decided to create a modern horror film with techniques almost as old cinema itself. There are times when I honestly believe he went crazy in the jungles of the Philippines, but every so often Coppola somehow manages to come through, and I think Dracula is--at least on a certain level--one of those cases. Whereas almost every move he made on One From the Heart only served to undermine his intent, what he did with this movie was ingenious.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who isn’t familiar with the Dracula story, and by the time this film was given the greenlight the tale had already been presented in just about every manner possible, from straight-faced and sober on down to campy and over-the-top. But Coppola hit on the idea of emphasizing the theatricality of the movie, in turn breathing much needed life into the Count’s story.

The sets have a predominantly minimalist look, no real effort is made to disguise the use of soundstages, and some of the acting seems aimed at the people in the cheap seats (especially that of Anthony Hopkins, chewing steak and scenery with equal relish as Professor Abraham Van Helsing). Eiko Ishioka’s costumes are stylized in the extreme, and Michael Ballhaus’s cinematography often buries half of any given shot in a stygian blackness while at the same time illuminating other objects with a force comparable to that of the sun.

But the oddest aspect of the movie is the antiquated cinematic trickery on display. At a time when CG effects were just beginning to come into their own, Coppola rolled back the clock and employed in-camera effects and arcane opticals, and even used an old hand-cranked Lumière camera for a couple of sequences (much of this work was overseen by Coppola’s son Roman, who would later direct CQ); these techniques call attention to themselves and are all the more effective for it.

The visual effects here, including old-fashioned matte photography and miniatures that rely on forced perspective, work far better because they’re simple and somewhat clunky. They’re not what we expect, and no attempt was made to conceal their artificiality, and as a result the movie has an otherworldly, distinctly weird feel, almost as if it were a fever dream. It’s without doubt a stunt, but it’s a damned effective one.

Although I think the movie is a rich visual feast, one worth seeing simply for its style, I nevertheless wish more attention had been afforded the script. James V. Hart (who wrote the first drafts of Hook and had a hand in adapting Contact) originally penned the movie as a made-for-television project for the USA cable network, and there are instances where the material isn’t up to the big-screen level (especially some the florid dialogue). Hart chose to keep the journal-entry narrative style of the novel, which often impedes the flow of the story; at times the movie is very choppy and episodic, and the chunks of narration only exacerbate this.

But I will give Hart points for incorporating elements from the novel most adaptations have shunned, such as what he has referred to as the “John Ford Western finale,” and for bringing some of the tortured Gothic romance back to the fore. (Much was made of this being the most faithful filmed adaptation of Stoker’s novel, but that’s not true. The movie takes quite a few liberties with the source material, although not as many as the Tod Browning-Bela Lugosi classic, and certainly not as many as the god-awful John Badham-Frank Langella version. For what it’s worth, the Louis Jordan-starring BBC production and the Dan Curtis-Jack Palance television version from the ‘70s remain the most faithful adaptations to date.)

But the writing isn’t the movie’s biggest problem. No, in this case the major detriment is the casting, or least two members of the cast. Ryder, who was cast primarily because she brought the script to Coppola’s attention and because he wanted to show her he harbored no ill will over her decision to drop out of the third Godfather film, is awfully bland. She comes across as something of a nonentity during the first hour, and seems completely lost when Mina’s relationship with Dracula becomes the focus of the story (she has claimed Oldman often kept to himself during filming, but there’s a reason they call it acting).

That being said, her performance is Oscar-worthy compared to that of Reeves, who comes close to sinking the movie all by himself. Coppola originally wanted Johnny Depp to play Harker, but Columbia wouldn’t allow it (what a difference a decade makes, huh?), so enter Keanu, whose performance is a combination of wooden and stone-faced. And whose attempts to pull off an English accent are laughable; he sounds like Ted Logan in a high school production of Mary Poppins.

Finally, I know he gets kicked around a lot, but Reeves can be a good actor (just look at his work in Permanent Record), although you wouldn’t know it from watching this movie. Seeing Reeves trying to hold his own against Oldman makes me wonder if the term “sore thumb” had been coined just for him.

THE VIDEO

Now for the bad news: the 1.85:1/1080p transfer is extremely disappointing. Much of the movie is flat and murky, with weak, indistinct black levels and very poor shadow detail. Grain can be very obtrusive at times, and digital noise is present in a number of scenes. Dirt and other source elements defects are also visible.

Color reproduction is uneven; at times primary hues can be bold and deeply saturated (look at the pages of Mina’s letter as they float atop the sea, or the scene in which she and Dracula dance while surrounded by hundreds of candles), yet they generally come across as dull and lifeless. The image presented here is also quite a bit darker than in previous incarnations (including the theatrical presentation), sapping the cinematography of detail and depth.

Truth be told, for the most part this doesn’t really look like a next-gen transfer (it brings to mind the early days of DVD, when many transfers were simply recycled from laserdisc masters but were passed off as being newly-struck). Even more puzzling is the fact that the footage from the movie that’s included in the supplemental featurettes looks quite good; it’s not perfect, but it’s a definite improvement over the feature itself.

Coppola reportedly approved this transfer, and it’s been said it more accurately reflects the look he wanted for the movie, but I can’t begin to imagine why (perhaps his intense desire to recreate the cinema of yesteryear clouded his judgment).

THE AUDIO

The uncompressed PCM 5.1 soundtrack fares slightly better than the video, but it’s still underwhelming. There’s a somewhat thin quality to the audio; it sounds more like a repurposed stereo mix than a full-blown surround mix. The surrounds are more active than I was expecting, but they’re not integrated into the soundstage very well. Bass action is weak, dialogue often sounds muffled, and Wojciech Kilar’s wonderful score has no heft.

Perhaps Coppola was attempting to recreate the sonic characteristics of movie from the early days of sound cinema; if this is the case, I’m once again baffled by his decisions. English, French, Hungarian, Czech, and Polish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included, as is a Russian 4.0 Dolby Surround option.

This is another of Sony’s Region A-B-C catalog releases, and they’ve once again gone for broke with the subtitle options; here you’ll find English, Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Romanian, Icelandic, and Bulgarian subtitle streams.

THE EXTRAS

As is generally the case, the commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola is as much about his life and thoughts on cinema as a whole as it is the movie itself. Not that I’m complaining, because Coppola--who also provides a brief video introduction to the movie--can always be counted on to give good commentary, and this is no exception. Covering everything from his love of old horror films to the artists and illustrators who influenced the movie’s design to the techniques used to create the movie’s distinct visuals, Coppola is a veritable treasure trove of knowledge and insight.     

Twelve deleted scenes (28 minutes total) are included. Most of these are actually scene extensions (including a longer prologue--during which the rivers of blood fill the chapel until Elisabeta is completely submerged--and an alternate version of the ending), but there are a few completely new scenes (including explanations of how Harker escapes from the castle and how Dracula sustained himself during his voyage to England). This footage looks to have been culled from videotape work print, as the quality is quite rough.    

The Blood is the Life: The Making of Dracula (28 minutes) chronicles the project’s origins and also dips into pre-production (including the extensive rehearsal and story meetings Coppola organized) and production. Many members of the cast and crew are featured in new interviews, which are mixed with vintage behind-the-scenes footage. 

The Costumes are the Sets: The Design of Eiko Ishioka (14 minutes) covers the costume designer’s Oscar-winning work. Before this movie Ishioka had primarily worked as a production designer and illustrator (we get a glimpse of a poster she created for the Japanese release of Apocalypse Now, a poster I’d kill to get my hands on) and Coppola states he hired her because he wanted to contrast strikingly elaborate costumes with the Spartan quality of the sets.    

In-Camera: The Naïve Visual Effects of Dracula (19 minutes) looks at the various techniques used to create the movie’s photographic effects.

Method and Madness: Visualizing Dracula (12 minutes) delves into production design and visual stylistics, exploring the range of influences the illustrators drew upon and how the evolution of the storyboards helped shape the final version of the script.

Closing out the extras are the movie’s teaser and theatrical trailers (the teaser is particularly memorable).

FINAL THOUGHTS

This was one of the titles I was most looking forward to on Blu-ray; I suppose I should be more careful what I wish for. Had this release met expectations, it would have been an easy recommendation. As it stands, though, I can only suggest you rent it; that way you can view the supplements and sample the transfer. Who knows, maybe you won’t find it to be as disappointing as I did.