I Watch Films: Bram Stoker's Dracula
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Bram Stoker’s Dracula
In 15th century Romania Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman) returns from the war to discover his wife has killed herself, believing him dead. Told she will be damned to hell, he declares he will renounce God and rise from the grave, becoming a vampire. In the 19th century lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is sent to Romania to meet a old, decrepit Count Dracula after his colleague Renfield is committed to an asylum (run as it turns out by Harker’s friend Jack Seward (Richard E Grant). The castle is strange; having completed the business (buying up property in London) Dracula spots Harker’s picture of his fiancé Mina Murray (Winona Ryder) and recognising her as being played by the same actress as his wife decides she is the reincarnation. He traps Harker in the castle to be seduced and bled by his three brides and heads for England.
Mina is staying with Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost) and has three suitors; Quincy Morris (Billy Campbell), Lord Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes) and Jack Seward. She picks Lord Arthur, but is then seduced and drained by Dracula. As she weakens Seward asks for help from his mentor Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), an eccentric scholar of both medicine and the occult. Van Helsing recognises this as vampirism, but won’t say it (because vampires are mythical) and takes precautions before leaving to try and learn more. Dracula tries to seduce Mina, but Harker escapes to a nunnery in Romania and she leaves England to go to him. Heartbroken, when he returns to Lucy the defences have been moved and he turns her into a vampire.
This gives Van Helsing the opportunity to show the others the truth of vampires, following which they then have to confront Dracula, drive him out of England and finally defeat him. Although perhaps more faithful to the novel than many adaptions, this takes liberties. But what magnificent liberties they are. This looks excellent, and the characterisation of Dracula as a monster created by love and grief (yet still terrible) has been very influential.
Watch This: Superior vampire film
Don’t Watch This: Still just a vampire film
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