Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 'Dracula': Anemic offspring in the bloodline Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 15:11:15 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE;MOVIES \HD 'Dracula': Anemic offspring in the bloodline \BY Gary Arnold \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of the original vampire classic, "Bram Stoker's Dracula," is so elaborately ponderous and unsatisfying that it shouldn't discourage competitors who anticipate the novel's centennial in 1997. Mr. Coppola leaves plenty of room for improvement while celebrating a Count Dracula whose lovelorn sorrows are treated with almost sob-sister solicitude. The most appropriate title for Mr. Coppola's doting travesty would be "Crybaby Vampire." Invoking Bram Stoker in the title implies a fidelity that director Coppola and screenwriter James V. Hart practice only in superficial, often stuffy respects. While posing as Stoker loyalists, the filmmakers take incriminating thematic liberties that have the ultimate effect of confusing "Dracula" with "Beauty and the Beast." Mr. Coppola doesn't eliminate the count's characteristic bloodlust and degeneracy, but he does agonize to a maudlin fault, making excuses for Dracula (Gary Oldman) as a guy with a broken heart that goes back four centuries. This sympathy-for-the-devil affectation takes considerable starch out of Dracula as a demonic menace. He weeps more tears of self-pity than any Dracula in memory. Mr. Hart has endeavored to return to the novel as his source, spurning the handier, compressed theatrical adaptations. But he dawdles and meanders in ways that demonstrate the wisdom of previous condensations for stage and screen. The exposition feels as heavy as granite, bogsging down initially when crosscutting between settings in Transylvania and England. John Badham's sumptuous, whirlwind 1979 "Dracula," contrived for maximum erotic impact and elegance by screenwriter W.D. Richter, saved narrative drudgery by concentrating the story in Yorkshire. This lugubrious new "Dracula" begins with a prologue intended to "explain" - and even forgive - Dracula's corruption by tracing it to his 14th-century origin as a bloodthirsty Slavic chieftain, Vlad the Impaler. Mr. Hart borrows the epistolary format of the novel, updating events as various characters exchange letters. The full complement of vampire hunters is restored, including the stalwart Texan Quincy Morris, played by Bill Campbell of "The Rocketeer," unrecognizable in moustache and Western costuming. The catch is that the movie stagnates while humoring its perception of literary loyalty. Restoring more of the plot becomes a structural snag when the young hero, Jonathan Harker, played by Keanu Reaves, gets mislaid in Transylvania for quite a spell. Shortchanging his eventual escape then compounds the problem. In a similar respect, Mr. Coppola makes a blur of the showdown sequence, which transports the surviving characters back to Dracula's castle in the Carpathians. There's no emotional payoff when Quincy's sacrifice is singled out, because the sequence is too much of a shambles to depict heroic action coherently. Mr. Coppola ignores the Bram Stoker who envisioned Dracula as an unmitigated fiend and source of contamination, attacking Victorian society through its most vulnerable idealization: virginal feminity, embodied in the overwhelmed and debauched heroines Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra. As Mina and Lucy, respectively, Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost look about as Victorian as an MTV promo. Mr. Coppola introduces them sniggering over the pornographic illustrations in a very private edition of Richard Burton's translation of "The Arabian Nights." Lucy is so inflammatory by definition that she can be summed up by a shorthand of red hair, red veils and an insatiable itch to disrobe. Stoker may be fuming in his grave. Nothing becomes Mr. Oldman as Dracula so much as the towering pompadour, flowing scarlet robe and desicated mug that he's given in the expository episodes while playing sinister host to Mr. Reaves (who fights a secondary, losing battle with an English accent). When transported to London and disguised as a young man about town, Mr. Oldman resembles a foppish reincarnation of David Hemmings and loses much of his humorous ghastliness. Neither Mr. Oldman nor Miss Ryder radiates sufficient erotic allure to create an eerie and unnerving impression about the seduction of Mina, Jonathan Harker's bride. Frank Langella and Kate Nelligan did have that sort of allure when playing the count and Lucy in the 1979 "Dracula" remake, and it was breathtaking to watch them flaunt it. Mr. Coppola's lack of charismatic romantic co-stars may account for grotesque sideshows with bestial shock effects: Lucy gets ravaged twice by Dracula in nonhuman guise, first as a werewolf and then as a jackal. It's a relief when Anthony Hopkins enters as Dr. Van Helsing and brings an amusing, coldblooded note of authority to the defense team. And it's somewhat surprising to find Richard E. Grant cast as a good guy, Dr. Seward. You'd have expected him to have a hilarious time as the repulsive, bug-eating lunatic Renfield, assigned to singer Tom Waits, a diverting choice. Cary Elwes' swashbuckling potential keeps getting squandered. Here,the role of Lucy's fiance, Arthur Holmwood, is too skimpy to exploit him adequately. Much of Francis Coppola's skill now seems to operate in a conceptual and moral fog. Maybe it was inevitable that the fog would coincide with an excessively solemn, tear-stained revival of "Dracula." As long as he's bogged down in the pathos of lovelorn monstrosity, Mr. Coppola might as well take on the next "Batman" sequel. He's getting the hang of the Tim Burton sort of portentousness. Alas. ***** TWO STARS TITLE: "Bram Stoker's Dracula" RATING: R (violence, nudity) CREDITS: Directed by Francis Ford Coppola; screenplay by James V. Hart, based on the novel by Bram Stoker RUNNING TIME: About 130 minutes MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM