This year marked the long-awaited return of the American film-making legend Francis Ford Coppola to the cinema, with Megalopolis: a $120m self-financed “fable” with a go-for-broke sensibility, about a time-defying architect trying to build the city of the future in the wake of his wife’s untimely death. Fans of its deranged overtures may do well to revisit Coppola’s other maximalist fable about a time-defying man grappling with his wife’s untimely death: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
It was lead actress Winona Ryder who first brought the project to Coppola – as an apology after she abruptly quit Coppola’s third Godfather film (to be infamously replaced by his daughter, Sofia). Coppola’s version of the gothic novel brings the bloodthirsty Count (a brilliant Gary Oldman) out of the shadows and into the forefront, reimagining the character as a tragic war hero, who – in renouncing God after the suicide of his wife, Elisabeta (Ryder) – is condemned to eternal life as a vampire. Years pass, and the shape-shifting Dracula discovers that the reincarnation of his wife, Mina (also Ryder), resides in 19th century London, where he eventually seduces her at the exhibition of a newfangled entertainment: the cinematograph.
In devising the concept for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Coppola took inspiration from the curious confluence of the novel’s publication, in 1897, and the birth of motion pictures. Utilising turn-of-the-century camera techniques and practical effects, he creates not only a delightful tribute to cinema’s origins, but one of the most visually striking films of all time. Coppola famously fired his original special effects department due to their insistence on deploying 90s-era CGI, hiring his son Roman instead to deliver Méliès-inspired magic.
The director’s commitment to his carnivalesque vision is evident in every department – cinematography, production design and makeup – each seemingly instructed to go for the jugular. Special note must be given to the gonzo genius of Eiko Ishioka, whose Oscar-winning costumes are entire set-pieces in their own right.
It’s pure pomp and artifice. The film brims with competing artistic influences from painters Gustav Klimt and Jan Toorop to film-makers Mario Bava and FW Murnau: an adrenaline rush that feels like a stake to the heart.
Released during the 90s heyday of the erotic thriller – and in the same year as Basic Instinct and Single White Female – Coppola’s orgiastic visuals exhume the repressed sexuality of the story’s Victorian era. Unlike in Stoker’s novel, the female characters here are open in their desire to be consumed by the Count, and once bitten, writhe between agony and ecstasy.
But Coppola can’t quite escape all of Stoker’s Victorian values. The punishment inflicted on those whose blood is “infected” has noteworthy parallels to the HIV/Aids crisis, an increasingly pressing emergency at time of the film’s release. Coppola counters this conservatism by creating a palpable erotic spectacle, drawing passionate performances from (most of) his cast, most notably Oldman and Sadie Frost, who deliver both full-bodied sensuality and terrifying, Kabuki-esque theatrics to match the visual grandeur of the picture.
“I have crossed oceans of time to find you,” Dracula says in the film’s most quoted line. The insatiable Count is perhaps the greatest stand-in for Coppola throughout his storied filmography – a man torn between the forces of love and fear, attempting to recreate the past to take control of the present, and using artifice to locate the truth.
Love lost and time wasted: these are the themes that have dominated Coppola’s late style. In films such as One from the Heart, Gardens of Stone and Jack (each released after his 70s masterpieces), Coppola has mined all manner of private tragedies on screen: extramarital affairs, the death of his eldest son, coming to terms with his own mortality. Pleasure and pain, for Coppola, have always been entwined – and the results in Dracula are sublime.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is available to stream on Stan and Binge in Australia, and available to rent in the UK and US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
