Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002)

 

Director: Guy Maddin

Screenplay: Bram Stoker (Original novel); Mark Godden (Ballet)

Cast: Zhang Wei-Qiang as Dracula; Tara Birtwhistle as Lucy Westenra; David Moroni as Dr. Van Helsing; CindyMarie Small as Mina; Johnny Wright as Jonathan Harker; Stephane Leonard as Arthur Holmwood; Matthew Johnson as Jack Seward; Keir Knight as Quincy Morris; Brent Neale as Renfield; Stephanie Ballard as Mrs. Westernra

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

[Intertitle] Betrothed by a scream...

I vividly remember Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary screening on Sky Arts, a satellite channel in the United Kingdom for "cultural" programming. Alongside John Cassavetes films I was sadly too young to appreciate, unless I have made up the memory, I swear to this was a broadcasting choice too. I would not be surprised if it was true too, as this is the one film, alongside its old DVD release from Tartan Films that many have likely seen this film Maddin and few others until his later productions after. Sadly, now, this does reflect an unfortunate realisation, that Maddin when being "artful" was easier to sell than pure, unadulterated films from his career. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is still a good film, undoubtedly, and I will not dismiss it at all with that comment. Instead, it does present the fact that, originally produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), this ironically managed what Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997) was supposed to be, a more mainstream version of the auteur's style, only for both to be with their quirks. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs felt the more mainstream of his style, one which both felt a weird and distinct film, but trapped with trying to restrict his visual down to something more digestible. This is contrasted in Dracula, adapting Bram Stoker's novel with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, a more appreciated film that, continuing the style of stylisation from his tribute the silent cinema instead, did succeed.

Maddin is still here, not hiding for example that this is a metaphor for xenophobia and fear of immigrants in England, as this skips directly to when Dracula (as played by Zhang Wei-Qiang) travels across the sea to England in a casket full of burial earth. The quirks of Maddin are here, depicting this in his monochrome fantasia, be it Lucy Westenra's mother living in a glass box or when, as Dracula has bitten her and started feeding from her blood close to her death, Van Helsing literally rests her on an entire bed of garlic. Jonathan Hawker and his wife Mina do eventually appear in the narrative, and Jonathan's trip to Dracula's castle in Europe is eventually depicted as flashback, but this is fascinating for devoting its first half entirely on Lucy, a figure who is a minor if important one within Stoker's novel. Having Lucy centre of place, though her narrative becomes tragic and gruesome as in other adaptations, does really stand out as a distinction for this adaptation; more so in that with Mina Hawker, especially in versions by Francis Ford Coppola and Werner Herzog (even F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922)) taking centre stage in a few prominent adaptations. Mina here does too, but arguably to lesser extent.

The decision to tell the tale through ballet is distinct. I will be brutally honest in saying some of Maddin's style, wonderfully on display with intertitles and fast editing, does not work simply because he cuts around the choreography too much at times. It is clearly intentional, but it feels out of place when the pair could have coordinated together perfectly. Other times, however, it works a treat. At one point, with Dracula trying to get into Lucy's bedroom, with pirouetting demons bounding around the bed, even pole dancing on the bed frame for a lack of term, feels like Benjamin Christensen's Häxan (1922) if adapted for ballet. Using the style he fully embraced by this point with films like The Heart of the World (2000), juxtaposed with uses as a monochrome film with striking colour (usually blood) painted on the images for effect, Maddin's take on Dracula is still a good version. Using the dance performances to retell the story adds its own logic too. For even those meant to represent fight scenes, having scenes which are depicted in the dancers' emotions in movement, with intertitles helping for context, makes sense for the director to have done. Considering how unconventional his storytelling aspects are in other films, to have his most conventional narrative told in this distinct way is an apt contrast.

It is a version told with fascination of the material even if it subverts it. It parts it is faithful to the tone. This proves you cannot cast a bad Renfield unless you really screw the pooch, and likewise here Brent Neale does a great deal just by gurning and looking as appropriately mad. Zhang Wei-Qiang as the silent but dashing Dracula really does a great deal, when Dracula can and has been cast badly, such as Lon Chaney Jr., try as he might, not really working even back in the Universal Horror days of Son of Dracula (1943). Maddin's sense of the macabre is found here eventually, where Renfield experiences interrogating by trepanning, and in mind to the sexual metaphors the vampire can have, with Mina just flat out trying to seduce her husband only for his experience within Dracula's castle to be unabashedly homoerotic. Only knowing Francis Ford Coppola managed to get away with a high budget Hollywood film with explicit nudity and gore undercuts what this has returning to the film; that this is still a more accessible film from Guy Maddin, a gateway production, but is a more subtly grittier take on the source until you start getting into the more exploitation adaptations; this is quaint next to Maddin's other work, but the tone is there.

Maddin's take on Bram Stoker's famous story, retold in ballet and silent film storytelling, is still an incredibly unique film. It is for me not one of his best, but it is certainly a little gem in itself, ironically one that would the perfect way to sell Maddin's other films, the gateway film. It is, with what it does, a jumping off point as rightly would champion this work's great virtues and lead to the others.