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Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary [VHS]

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"Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary" is a collaborative effort between Canadian avant-garde filmmaker Guy Maddin and Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Often called "Mark Godden's Dracula", the ballet was adapted from Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" and choreographed by Godden for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. It has enjoyed immense popularity since its debut in 1998, and continues to tour the globe. Guy Maddin has made this film of the ballet in the style of pre-1930 silent cinema, complete with awkward visual effects, colored tinting, soft focus, blown out highlights, and occasional graininess.

This version of "Dracula" incorporates two of the most prominent and controversial interpretations of Bram Stoker's novel in academia today: Count Dracula is a victim of xenophobia brought on by fear of the economic and social impact of large numbers of Eastern European immigrants that came to England in the late 19th century. That explains the casting of a Chinese dancer in the role of Dracula. Another prominent theme is the self-righteous, puritanical vampire hunters who are terrified of the sexuality that Dracula's bite awakens in their women.

"Dracula: Pages from a Virgins Diary" has two parts or acts that are vaguely delineated. The first takes place in Whitby, England, 1897. A young woman named Lucy (Tara Birtwhistle) must choose between 3 suitors who wish to marry her. After a nighttime encounter with Count Dracula (Zhang Wei-Qiang), Lucy's disposition changes. Alarmed by her coquettish behavior, Lucy's fiancé Arthur (Stephane Leonard) summons Dr. Van Helsing (David Moroni) to diagnose her malady. Several blood transfusions and fainting spells later, Van Helsing discovers that the source of Lucy's illness is a vampire. But his efforts to deter Dracula fail, and Lucy succumbs to him. The men get the idea to pursue Dracula to his castle from Renfield (Brent Neale), a patient at a nearby mental asylum. Thus begins the second act. Lucy's friend Mina (CindyMarie Small) has made the journey to visit her fiancé Jonathan Harker (Johnny Wright), who is recuperating at a convent, having narrowly escaped Dracula's nearby castle. But Dracula has his eye on Mina, and whisks her off to his castle as the vampire hunters arrive.

The vampire hunters -Van Helsing and the suitors- are not cast as heroes, but as small-minded, predatory, sadistic men whose fear of women and foreigners leads to violent persecution. Either Mark Godden or Guy Maddin has capitalized on Van Helsing's curious obsessions in the novel and made him into an outright dirty old man in this movie. Mina's reluctance to allow Jonathan near her after she has been vampirized in the book is turned on its end here, as Jonathan's experiences in Dracula's castle come between the couple. It should be said that "Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary" is the most overtly sexual of any cinematic adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel.

Mark Godden's "Dracula" ballet is beautiful and quite dramatic. I am not sure how to rate this film, however, since I think the Guy Maddin's creative decisions frequently hinder the story and characters. Ballet lends itself perfectly to silent cinema. It has music -in this case Gustav Mahler's Symphonies No. 1 and No. 2, expressive gestures, and no dialogue. What little dialogue there is in this film is done with intertitles. Black-and-white film is well-suited to capturing the lines of the dance and the expressionistic sets and lighting, with which Maddin emulates German cinema of the 1920s. So far, so good. But the graininess, soft focus, and overexposed highlights that we see in this film were due to technical limitations of early cinema, and I find that incorporating them here only makes the film difficult to watch and undermines the wonderful performances of these dancers, as well as narrative and character development. There is a rainbow of colored tinting: yellow, blue, red, purple, pink, orange, green, and, while some tinting may be appropriate, this is so garish that it's distracting. The occasional use of a round film format is also ill-advised. I expect that Guy Maddin understood the impact of this heavy-handed antique style on audiences, since he chose to go with plain black-and-white, rectangular format, with minimal effects in the film's two most powerful scenes: The staking of Lucy in the graveyard and the battle with Dracula in the castle. But I think it would have been a better film if he had consistently taken that approach. When there is great choreography, drama, lighting, and sets, I want to be able to see it. If for nothing else, "Dracula" fans will want to see "Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary" for the two aforementioned great scenes, so I recommend the film. Those scenes are powerful stuff.