Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a richly enjoyable Gothic romance, though the acting is uneven and the pace sometimes drags. Gary Oldman’s conviction keeps the elaborate costumes and effects from taking over entirely.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula wants fear, desire and a good deal of admiration for the costumes, and Francis Ford Coppola gets most of what he wants. We recommend its extravagance, with a warning that the actors do not always seem to belong in the same film. The romance is taken seriously, however much the spectacle invites laughter. Coppola gives the familiar undead legend the emotional pitch of an opera and expects us to accept the volume from the start.
Gary Oldman makes that demand reasonable. As Dracula, he sustains the grand gestures by giving the yearning beneath them enough weight; we can believe that this creature takes his own unhappiness seriously. There is humour in the extent of the performance, but little sense that the actor is asking us to congratulate him on the joke. James V. Hart’s screenplay needs the attraction to carry as much weight as the threat, and Oldman does more than anyone to make that possible.
In Michael Ballhaus’s images, a costume can hold our attention as firmly as the person wearing it. Thomas E. Sanders’s production design supplies an extravagant setting, while Eiko Ishioka’s costumes make the people look capable of inhabiting it. We were delighted by the clothes, and by the film’s willingness to let us stare at them. Their extravagance makes the romantic gestures seem less ridiculous than they would in a more restrained setting.
Editors Anne Goursaud, Glen Scantlebury and Nicholas C. Smith give the montages a headlong energy, keeping even the busiest passages absorbing. The practical effects work because their strangeness matches the costumes and sets. Wojciech Kilar’s music supports the romantic feeling without sounding embarrassed by it, which is the right choice for this material. Together, the editing and score give the spectacle a momentum that the dialogue sometimes interrupts.
Keanu Reeves, playing Jonathan Harker, is the clearest mismatch. His line readings sound laboured, particularly beside Oldman’s ease with such exaggerated material. Winona Ryder, as Mina Murray and Elisabeta, fits the romantic mood more comfortably, though her performance cannot always match the emotional force of Oldman’s. Hart’s screenplay asks for wholehearted belief in these feelings, and too often we are left noticing how hard the actors are working to communicate them.
The pace also slips, and at 128 minutes the film has passages in which another flourish cannot make up for the lack of urgency. A Gothic horror film needs to leave us uneasy, and Coppola sometimes lets the beauty become reassuring. That is a limitation, though we would not trade all the theatricality for a more consistent supply of shocks. As a vampire romance, it remains absorbing because Oldman makes the Count’s longing worth attending to.
Give it an evening when restraint would be a disappointment. The costumes and effects merit a screen large enough to inspect them, but the real requirement is patience with actors who cannot all sustain Coppola’s chosen pitch. We recommend it to anyone whose pleasure in Gothic romance includes its occasional absurdity. Those looking chiefly for sustained terror should choose something less interested in the clothes.
