Book vs Film: Dracula vs Bram Stoker's Dracula

Primary Differences: The film incorporates the legend of Vlad the Impaler as a back story for the Count. It also cuts the book’s afterward which details Mina and Harker’s married life and the birth of their son.

For The Book: There’s no question that the book has been incredibly influential. It introduced one of the most recognizable characters in fiction and, along with Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, it helped establish the hallmarks of a genre.

For The Film: What I love most about the film is that it’s not just an adaptation of the novel but also of the major vampire films that preceded it; it’s like an appreciation of the entire genre. It’s also a film that doesn’t take itself too seriously and, as played by Anthony Hopkins, provides my favourite version of Van Helsing. Hopkins has a lot of great moments in the film, delivering lines with admirable dryness (my favourite? “I just want to cut off her head and take out her heart,” said as if it’s the most reasonable and ordinary thing in the world). Gary Oldman also delivers a great and memorable performance.

Winner: Film. It may be a classic, but I really dislike the book. Partly it’s the style (it’s told in epistolary form, which I hate) and partly it’s Stoker’s preoccupation with emerging technologies (which Coppola’s film alludes to) which I find really disrupts the tension that the story proper is attempting to build. For me, the book was a total slog .

The film, on the other hand, is an absolute guilty pleasure of mine. It isn’t a great movie, or even the best vampire movie, but it’s a lot of fun to watch, especially with other people. I think it’s a brilliant homage to the classics of the genre (literary, filmic, and mythological), a movie which is obviously made by someone who loves movies. And even though it features some questionable accents (hello there, Keanu and Winona) and some blatant pandering to adolescent male fantasies (Harker’s seduction by the Brides of Dracula, and a kiss between Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost which is perhaps meant to suggest Carmilla), I still adore it.

Canadian Film Review: Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary (2002)

* * * 1/2
Director: Guy Maddin
Starring: Zhang Wei-Qiang, Tara Birtwhistle, David Moroni, Cindy Marie Small

Guy Maddin is a filmmaker whose work is kind of difficult to explain to the uninitiated: you really need to see it to believe it. He's an artist who exists so completely in his own realm that there's not really any other filmmaker that he can be easily compared to. His style is reminiscent of films from the silent era but is also so thoroughly post-modern in expression that his works can't be mistaken for anything but contemporary. As a viewer you will either find him maddening or exhilarating - I doubt there's much middle ground.

Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary is, essentially, a silent film though it transcends the boundaries of genre and, indeed, medium. It's a ballet performed by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, but this isn't simply a filmed version a stage performance; it's very much a movie, very much in the Maddin style. Familiarity with Bram Stoker's novel helps, but isn't crucial. In many ways this is the most faithful adaptation of the story I've seen, perhaps because it's so overt in its analysis of the novel's themes. Dracula is played here by Zhang Wei-Qiang and in introducing him Maddin cuts between shots of him and shots of a map of Europe, blood trickling across it while words like "foreign" flash on the screen. One of the novel's major preoccupations is the idea of "pure" bloodlines being tainted, specifically by dangerous Eastern influence, and Maddin spells that out here in as clear a way as possible.

The other major theme of the novel, directly connected to the first, is anxiety about female sexuality. This adaptation engages with that aspect immediately, shifting the chronology of the novel so that the story begins with Lucy Westernra (Tara Birtwhistle), pursued by three suitors but seduced into darkness by Dracula. "Her blood is polluted," Van Helsing (David Moroni) declares after discovering that she has been visited by the vampyr. Vampirism as a metaphor for sex isn't anything new - it's as old as, well, vampire stories themselves - but the "pollution" of her blood isn't just attributable to Dracula. She receives transfusions from all three of her suitors and this is the heart of the matter, this literal exchanging of fluids with multiple people. Mina (Cindy Marie Small) is seduced by Dracula as well but she's also solely devoted to Harker (Johnny Wright) and that's why she can come to a different end than Lucy. It's Lucy's promiscuity which makes her unrecoverable in the wider societal sense and certain to die within the confines of the narrative.

The story is beautifully performed, the fact of it being a ballet giving it a dream-like (nightmare is probably a more appropriate word) quality. It reminded me quite a bit of Nosferatu, though that film is far more sinister. The thing I like about Maddin is that he's always in complete control of his style so that it never seems gimmicky or overwhelming. I don't know enough about ballet to comment on the skill of the performers, but I can say that Wei-Qiang delivers a memorable performance as Dracula, equal parts scary and seductive.

Maddin is an acquired taste and this film is no exception. If you think ballet is boring, don't see this. If films without dialogue can't hold your attention, don't see this. If you like your vampire movies with lots of gore, don't see this. This isn't the kind of film that has universal appeal, but if you've seen and enjoyed other Maddin films, you're likely to enjoy this one as well.

Review: Little Children (2006)

* * *
Director: Todd Field
Starring: Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley

“It’s not the cheating. It’s the hunger. The hunger for an alternative and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness,” Sarah explains, speaking as much about Madame Bovary as her own life. Little Children is a film full of unhappy people searching for a way out, another story in a long line of stories about suburban malaise. The problem with the film isn’t that its characters search for alternatives, it’s that after finding them, they opt to accept lives of unhappiness anyway.

Kate Winslet stars as Sarah, a stay-at-home wife and mother. She’s an outcast at the playground, existing on the fringe of discussion between the other mothers, who parent with efficient coldness, having finely tuned their children to very precise schedules which allow little room for variation. In comparison, Sarah is something of a mess, a mother whose style is perhaps best described as haphazard and, to a certain degree, desperate. The truth is that Sarah is unsuited for her roles as wife and mother, a fact driven home by the narrator who describes her as getting through her days by “counting down the hours.”

One afternoon a hush falls over the other mothers: the Prom King (Patrick Wilson), who figures heavily into their fantasies but to whom no one ever speaks, has returned to the park. His name is Brad and he and Sarah have an instant, albeit somewhat awkward, connection. Like her, he’s stuck, an emasculated stay-at-home husband and father who takes a backseat in all things to his wife (Jennifer Connelly), who holds tight to the purse strings and pushes Brad to take the bar exam for the third time, apparently unaware that he doesn’t really want to be a lawyer. The relationship which develops between Sarah and Brad is chaste until the tension between them explodes in a series of sexual encounters.

Running parallel to this story is the story of Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), a convicted sex offender whose release has stirred public indignation and widespread fear. Ronnie lives an isolated life with only his mother (Phyllis Somerville) to keep him company as he endures a barrage of harassment from an ex-cop (Noah Emmerich) who decides to make it his job to ensure that Ronnie never has a moment of peace. At various times, separately and together, both Brad and Sarah will come into contact with Ronnie, who indirectly impacts their lives in ways neither could have anticipated.

Throughout the narrative, Little Children alternates between bringing the audience right into the story with scenes of incredibly intimacy, and pushing us away with scenes designed to create an ironic distance. This mix gives the film kind of a lopsided feel, which is only exacerbated by the ending. Sarah and Brad are both unfulfilled in their marriages and manage to find something in each other which brings some light into their lives. In the end, though, they abandon each other and happily return to lives which made them miserable before and will, no doubt, make them miserable again. I’m not arguing that they should have ended up together, but rather that by having them return to where they started the film undermines its earlier message that it’s okay not to settle and to want more out of life.

Performance-wise the film is strong, though I’m at something of a loss to explain what attracted an actress as skilled as Jennifer Connelly to a character who ends up being such a non-entity. The two standouts are Haley and Winslet who, perhaps not coincidentally, have the two meatiest roles. Overall I’d say that the performances make the film worth seeing even though the film itself is a bit muddled.

Review: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)

* * * *
Director: Michel Gondry
Starring: Jim Carey, Kate Winslet

I have no reasonable explanation as to why it has taken me so long to finally get around to seeing this movie. Everything I’ve ever heard about it suggested to me that it’s the kind of movie I’d like and yet I managed to spend four years just never getting around to seeing it. It was, most certainly, my loss.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is a brilliantly conceived and executed post-modern love story – though on reflection it is perhaps better described as tragedy. Joel (Jim Carey) is a shy man who meets the extroverted Clementine (Kate Winslet) on a beach in Montauk, falls in love with her and then discovers one day that she has had him erased from her memory. Out of anger, Joel decides that he’ll erase her, too, and visits the Lacuna clinic run by Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). A map is created of Joel’s memories of Clem, each of which will be systematically wiped out as he sleeps. However, as she’s disappearing, he decides that he’d like to remember her after all and his unconscious self begins to rebel against the procedure.

Joel’s attempts to hide Clementine away in his mind are unsuccessful and he wakes up having forgotten her. When impulse compels him to go to Montauk, he and Clementine meet and fall in love again and then discover the lengths they had previously gone to in order to be rid of each other. It’s a bittersweet moment when, at the end, they quietly acknowledge that they’ll probably end up right back at Lacuna, but feel compelled to be together nonetheless. The idea that they’ve erased the details but failed to sever the connection brought to my mind a line from Memento: “I just can’t remember to forget you.”

The ways that director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman demonstrate the process of erasure is very well done, with memories overlapping and invading each other, losing details before our eyes, and with consciousness echoing into the unconscious and the unconscious trying to answer back. There’s a danger with movies like this, where the style is so pronounced, that everything else can seem muted in comparison, but there’s harmony in the elements of Eternal Sunshine... which allows the story and the performances to gain equal footing with the style.

Prior to this film, I never really believed in Carey’s ability to play straight, serious roles. I found him likable enough in both The Truman Show and Man On The Moon, but I never really felt like he rose above the broader strokes of those characters. Here he provides us not with a “character,” but with a person who seems genuine and realistic – no mean feat given the insanity that’s going on around him. Winslet, per usual, demonstrates that she’s one of the finest actors working today and adds yet another unique and layered performance to her ever growing repertoire. The supporting cast, made up of Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dundst and Elijah Wood, are uniformly good, operating at varying levels of zaniness.

What more can I say? This is a great movie, a funny, sad, and intriguing play on the adage that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Review: M (1931)

* * * *
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Peter Lorre

Fritz Lang’s M is a taut crime drama which forgoes the usual preoccupations of the police procedural story to concentrate instead on larger social questions. This isn’t a film that’s about whether a criminal will be caught and how he will be punished, but is instead about the society which delivers such a criminal into the world. It’s an uncompromising film about a brutal, ugly world, and it’s a masterpiece of tone and storytelling technique.

The plot of M hinges on the search and capture of a child murderer played by Peter Lorre. We meet him first as a shadow looming over his next victim and in certain respects this is as close as we ever get to him. He gives an impassioned speech at the end which illuminates – to a degree – his psychological state, but we don’t really get to know him, nor are we meant to. The film is far less concerned with the hows and whys of his crimes than it is with how his crimes affect his community and with what that tells us about the community itself.

The police are, obviously, under pressure to catch the killer, but local criminals have a vested interest in his capture as well. With the heat turned up, the police are especially attentive to and disruptive of the underworld dealings which had previously carried on with relative ease. Using beggars as their spies, the criminal community discovers the identity of the killer and opt to bring him to their own kind of justice with a mock trial and plans for an execution. The scenes of the hunt and capture of Beckert (Lorre) are extremely well done, especially the sequence which finds him hiding in a storage area, trapped like an animal with nothing to do but wait for the hunters to find him. The notion of Beckert as animal is further explored during the “trial” when he insists that he can’t be accountable for his crimes because he was acting on an impulse he can’t control.

The world created for us in M is one of shadows and decay, corruption and hatred. There is no doubt that Beckert is guilty, his crimes reprehensible, but what of the people who want to bring him to justice? Lang contrasts scenes of the police strategizing around a table with scenes of the underworld figures strategizing around a table – if the two groups are so similar (almost indistinguishable, in fact), what hope is there for justice? When Beckert is captured, the tribunal takes the form of a court complete with prosecutor, defence, and jury. It isn’t the crime itself but the corruption of systems of justice that Lang is focused on.

Mob mentality plays a large role in this exploration. Spurred by fear, individuals who are otherwise reasonable find themselves swept up in crowds, turning on their neighbours at the slightest provocation and acting out their fear through violence. M was made on the cusp of Hitler’s rise to power but it presupposes the mentality that would pervade the nation under his rule and which would play a part in driving Lang out of Germany for good. Watching it in this context only makes it all the more fascinating.