Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula":
The Concise Editing of Thematic Designs
Of the myriad film versions
of Bram Stoker's horror classic Dracula (1897), most have assiduously
avoided the sexual overtones of the novel. This has indeed proved difficult,
given the unabashed symbolism of how the demon achieves his power, the
procreation that results from such encounters, and the phallic significance
of the vampire's extinction: one can only destroy him by beating him at his
own game, so to speak. Dracula, it must be admitted, is an erotic book.
While scholars have debated Stoker's own awareness of that eroticism, little doubt
remains as to its existence.
The most
successful effort at capturing that sexual energy on film has been Francis
Ford Coppola's 1992 film, "Bram Stoker's Dracula." More particularly,
Coppola encapsulates the essence of the book's eroticism as it relates to
the most important thematic idea of the work, sex as initiation. In ten
minutes of brilliant editing, he uses the cinematic technique of
cross-cutting scenes to suggest simultaneous action: the transformation of
Lucy into the Un-Dead, and the marriage ceremony of Jonathan and Mina in
Transylvania. As devotees of Coppola's work or moviegoers in general will
remember, the same editing technique was used in his 1972 film, "The
Godfather." There, as in "Dracula," the montage of disparate events captures
the thematic essence of the film: Michael Corleone's commitment to his role
as Godfather juxtaposed to the Christian initiation rite of the baptism of
Carlo's and Connie's child.
But while
Coppola's earlier work emphasized the irony of two events, renunciation of
the devil at the same moment that his enemies are being murdered, the latter
work captures the entirety of the film's symbolic meanings. Van Helsing
initiates the action as he gazes upon a depiction of the impaled victims of
the historical Vlad Tepes. The next shot shows us Prince Vlad awaiting Mina
in a private dining room, surrounded by candles on elongated stands. Dracula
owes to Mina his transformation from demon to lover, for, after centuries of
waiting, she appears to be his Elizabeta restored to life. But her rejection
of him for her other love, Jonathan, causes a physical change in the elegant
prince: the repressed, hidden ugliness--the beast within--comes physically
to the fore in his second loss of that which he desires. As the camera angle
looks down upon the raging, beast-like Dracula, the candles have multiplied;
no longer symbols of romance, they suggest a perverted rite and candle-lit
ceremony for the invocation of evil.
Van
Helsing feels and intuits that evil, as the winds that Dracula summon blow
within his own candle-lit study, extinguishing the light. "It is the cause,
it is the cause my soul," says Van Helsing, echoing Othello's monologue just
prior to his fatal encounter with Desdemona. Stoker's many quotations from
Shakespeare, it must be acknowledged, would come readily to a man who spent
his adult life managing the theatre of one of the finest actors in England:
the eminent Shakespearean, Henry Irving. While quotations abound from such
plays as Hamlet and King Lear, the majority of passages in
Dracula come from Othello, which does not surprise given that
Shakespeare's play concerns the forbidden love and erotic desire of two
people of different race, age, and background. Van Helsing's quotation
confirms, however, that Coppola understands the nature of the work with
which he deals, for this particular citation from Othello, while
so many others suggesting erotic desire exist, does not occur in Stoker's
book.
The lines
of Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing could not be more appropriate. Othello
intends to murder Desdemona for her supposed unfaithfulness, as he intones
his monologue--It is the cause, it is the cause my soul..."--beside his
sleeping bride who has comforted herself by a lighted candle. The Prince,
much like Othello, will take his revenge upon the closest "bride" at hand,
Lucy Westenra. In slow motion tracking shots, Coppola's camera becomes the
eyes of the monster, moving toward the sleeping Lucy. Along the way, a rose
withers, symbolic of the death of the beautiful Lucy, and equally suggestive
of the "destroyed" virginity of Mina by her husband-to-be, Jonathan. As if
to confirm the rose as an ancient symbol of maidenhood, after the cinematic
shot of the blackened rose, an innocent male figure is unceremoniously
slaughtered and left on a pathway, suggesting that Dracula resents any male
more potent than he.
Certainly
Arthur, Lucy's fiancé, demonstrates his own inadequacy as he falls asleep
beside the threatened Lucy. His impotency at such a crucial, threshold
moment merely confirms Dracula's own power: he transforms himself into a
wolf, an animal of prey, which stalks its victim. Coppola then cuts to the
wedding of Jonathan and Mina in the midst of their own initiation; a
transformation takes place in the marriage ceremony, uniting husband and
wife as Lucy awaits her initiation into the realm of the Un-Dead, a bride of
Dracula forever.
Coppola's
juxtaposition of these two events evokes power, and its agency passion. While the church sanctions the one, Dracula imposes the other: "I condemn
you," he says staring at his victim, "to death ... to eternal
hunger for living blood." The God-like pronouncement propels him through the
window in the form of a wolf once again, and, as he devours his victim in an
orgy of blood, Coppola's use of simultaneous time takes us back to the
wedding and the couple's drinking of the Eucharistic wine. The image remains clear: life
exists in the blood, for both the sacred and the damned. And as a final
confirmation of both communions, the camera returns to the ravaging of Lucy,
a close-up shot of her ecstasy-pain spliced with the married Jonathan and
Mina passionately kissing.
Perversely, once the initiation of both ceremonies has occurred, Lucy,
not Mina, appears in the virginal white gown of marriage. Lying
in her glass coffin, the scene shocks our sensibilities, because Lucy
remains surrounded by her admirers, dressed as all of them had desired her. When the company of failed suitors later descends to her burial chamber, the
suspicions of Van Helsing become confirmed: her empty tomb suggests that she belongs to
another. Lucy herself then appears on her downward journey back to the tomb
"with child," so that Dracula's potency proves sufficient in
that the fruit of her
desires becomes evident, as her impotent suitors can only look on in horror.
But to
fight such power, these men must themselves learn to respond erotically. Arthur, the
intended husband and one who, through the transfusion, has also shared his
blood with her, drives the stake through Lucy's heart. His phallic action
symbolizes an ascendancy over the one who has stolen his love. When Van Helsing cuts off her head, the ceremonial rite reaches completion: Lucy, by
loss of her "maiden's head," belongs once again to her first love, if only
in memory and death.
Coppola's
thematic montage takes less than ten minutes yet captures the sexual
energy of Stoker's novel by its symbolic juxtaposition of erotic scenes.
While failings in the film all too readily exist--one thinks immediately of the limpid
emotions of Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker--the movie represents the closest
attempt at faithfulness in both spirit and plot to Stoker's Dracula.
Strange to say, critics of the movie have castigated Coppola for the
excessive eroticism of his screenplay. One reviewer from the Hartford
Courant, Malcolm Johnson, has even suggested that the movie departs more
from the movie than do previous cinematic efforts of the Stoker novel
("Coppola's `Dracula' a flashy but hollow version of classic," 13 Nov. 1992:
D1; D8). So too, Johnson criticizes Coppola for the cross-cutting montage
borrowed from his own "The Godfather."
Both
objections should surprise us. Earlier versions of Dracula have been
based more on the stage play than the book; few moviegoers would recognize
the story in its original form. And as for the repeated technique of the
montage of suggested simultaneity, both films creatively thread together
thematic ideas in a matter of minutes into a coherent, enlightening whole.
Shakespeare never minded borrowing from himself, nor for that matter did
Alfred Hitchcock; if the technique works, accusations of self-plagiarism
seem silly at best.
Coppola's
addition to Stoker's work, the love affair between Vlad and Elizabeta,
breathes life into the erotic quality of the novel. His film adapts its
symbols from the opening premise of a desire so strong as to transcend time
and death. So too the novel emphasizes that transitional moment of
initiation into a state of unparalleled power, sexual energy, and erotic
desire. What the added beginning initiates in Coppola's film finds fruition
in the cinematic climax of the movie and novel alike: life resides in the
blood, and the mingling of that life force becomes, as was believed for
centuries, tantamount to consummation. For both victim and lover, a rite of
passage has taken place, which initiates the pair into a new life of "one
flesh." Coppola's editing brilliantly conveys that idea in the concision of
a master film-maker.
Wayne Narey