A Pigment of My Imagination

    Thus, instead of religious faith being the driving force behind the story, the filmmakers decided to replace this with a new element—romance. Stoker’s work presents a clear distinction between the sexually conservative Victorian life and the alluringly erotic world of the evil undead (most obviously embodied in the Count’s three “brides”). The novel’s strong and intelligent heroine, Mina Murray, is an image of innocence, purity and faith, a woman firmly in keeping with the strict boundaries of traditional Victorian ideals. The romance is the novel is minimal, with Mina’s marriage to Jonathan Harker not one of strong passions, but led by respect and devotion.

The film nearly flips this moral compass on its head. Coppola described his impressions of Hart’s script as story soaked in “passion and eroticism” (qtd. in Schumacher 437). This is where the plot and characters of the film most radically differ from the original material. The new take becomes a very romantic one—essentially a love story between Dracula and Mina. In a journal entry, Coppola described this relationship as two eternal “souls reaching out through a universe of horror and pathos,” an element not found in the novel (Clarke 213).

In fact, for the film, Hart and Coppola literally create a new life for the two lovers. This extends Stoker’s characters into a mythic past. Winona Ryder thus not only plays Mina, but also appears in the beginning of the film as Elisabeta, the wife of Lord Vlad. Elisabeta commits suicide upon hearing of Vlad’s supposed death. When Vlad (then a crusader for the Church) returns victorious from battle to find his wife excommunicated for her suicide, he runs his sword through a giant cross, drowning the room in blood, and renounces his faith, condemning himself to an eternity without divine mercy. As the movie progresses, we find Dracula searching for his lost love, and discovering her in the person of Mina (both of whom share a sort of psychic bond when they first meet). Later, Mina almost mystically becomes aware that she is Elisabeta reincarnated and thus destined to be with the Count. Consequentially, the scene where Dracula bites Mina and turns her into a vampire, instead of being a moment of horror and defeat, becomes a passionately erotic, mystical fusion of two souls, fated for each other in eternity (Dracula).

The character of Count Dracula similarly is adjusted. Like Mina, the Count has also been given a mystic link to the past. In the book’s third chapter, Dracula proudly recounts that he is a descendant of Prince Vlad (Stoker). In the film, Vlad is Dracula, cursed to be reborn into each new century, desperately searching for his lost soul mate. Instead of being a servant of evil, the ultimate villain, he now becomes a sexually charged and tragic anti-hero. With this new Dracula, played extravagantly by Gary Oldman, sexuality is no longer associated with moral corruption but is used to create a seductively alluring romantic icon.

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