Dracula

I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 1, Scene 2



If I were a comic book artist, I'd make a story where the appearance of the characters, the very way in which they're drawn, reflected their inner feelings. I once had this idea for a short story, that I couldn't pull off, of a couple walking down the street; as they're walking a series of hot girls pass by, and the girl starts feeling bad about herself, and getting more and more poorly drawn from panel to panel. Then her boyfriend says something nice, like "I love you" and she turns into a Jessica Rabbit!

I don't know if Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (1992) is a good movie. It's good enough to make you wish it was great, without ever quite getting there. But Coppola succeeds in making Dracula a man whose very shape reflects his inner landscape, not only through Gary Oldman's facial expressions and body language, but thanks to his wildly theatrical characterization.

With a shape-shifter you never know what his real appearance is -- is it the old man, in regal costume? Is it the young lover in top hat and John Lennon blue spectacles? The hairy monster, the vapour, the bat? But the beauty of it is, he's exactly whatever he appears to be, as the mood strikes him. He is totally transparent.

A lot of the movie revolves around what he looks like at any given time, and what he's looking at, and how other people see him. As a predator he covets with his eyes, first at a distance, and then coming closer for the taking. Even when we can't see him, we still know what's going through his mind, because Coppola makes us share his hallucinations. He first sees Mina in a photograph, and we know she reminds him of his long lost bride, because a drop of ink falls on the photo, giving her the same long, black, silky hair.

The first time they meet he is in the shape of a monster, feeding on her best friend. He recognizes her from the photograph and says "Don't see me like this". There's a thunder and Mina forgets her vision. When they next see each other it's daylight, and he's at his handsomest, wearing an eccentric fashion style that marks him as a foreigner. "See me now" he whispers from across the street, and Mina finds herself looking at this stranger who is looking at her.

When she runs off to marry Keanu we see Dracula crying alone, in the same room where he danced with Mina so many times, and his face is again that of a monster, tears staining his face, trickling down like ink. When she is sleeping, he gets into her locked room through the window, by taking the shape of green vapour, and turns into her handsome lover. When men barge into the room to "save" her, he transforms into a fearsome giant bat, and then a pile of scattering rats. During the movie's finale he is unrecognizably old and wounded. Mina must chop off his head as an act of mercy, to put an end to his suffering.

Each time, what he looks like is a literalization of his feelings -- he feels young and confident, he feels like a beast rejected by the beauty, he feels like a monster rejected by God and men. He is what he seems, fully expressive of himself through his skin. He's an actor's dream.