Francis Ford Coppola shows great interest throughout his career in large, mythic, screen depictions. He is best known for his direction of "The Godfather" trilogy (1972, 74, 90) and "Apocalypse Now" (1979). In the latter movie his use of both literary images ("Heart of Darkness") and Biblical references (Revelation) combine to give an interpretation of the Vietnam experience that is both surreal and timeless.
"Dracula" is a highly layered construction. The book, "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, gives the movie its title, plot, and characters. The movie uses the book's technique of telling the story by journal entry from various characters. It adds the perspective of the camera, which frequently lets us see the world through Dracula's eyes. The book never allows such a view. For Stoker Dracula is evil, other, enemy--the opponent of all goodness.
The allusions to Jesus, the development of female images, the creative bulk of the movie--its mythology--comes from the creative genius of Coppola and his associates. It is a quintessential American movie, whereas Stoker's book is very much Irish. What surfaces in the movie is our paranoia in the face of the uncontrollable, the "supernatural."
The paranoia expresses itself in images of women, blood, passion, and disease. Man is caught between the bestial and the sublime. Trapping him is Woman. She is the sexual creature, open to evil powers. She is tempting, seductive, carnivorous, castrating bride.
Woman serves the male powers of darkness, however. "Dracula" invites comparison to the Antichrist, but he goes beyond traditional Christian images of Satan. Now, he controls the winds, the beasts, the natural order. Creation itself responds to his power. Nature is neither good, nor benign. Especially it cannot be understood by the science of Man. In the Postmodern condition of paranoia, Modern science cannot create by theory or technology a moral universe because the universe itself is dominated by evil powers.
Dracula dies at the hands of a virgin bride who barely resists the temptation of blood. It is a personal euthanasia, not a sacrifice for the world. Death is release and peace, not enemy as in the death of Jesus. Dracula's death reconciles the passionate Man to God who is beyond body, beyond incarnation, beyond passion. The prodigal has returned.
This God may also be found in much of traditional Christian teaching. Mina denies her bodily passion, sublimating her desires to a higher spiritual love. Is this a new/old myth for contemporary men and women? Does it express our deepest fears? Does it resolve them?
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