Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is a silent version of author Bram Stoker's Dracula that also incorporates many ballet-oriented scenes.

My two principle reactions to the film were surprise and delight. I was surprised that the film is so traditional--the silent footage often looks like one is simply watching a film from the 1910s or 1920s. This is heightened by the score, which is extremely conservative, traditional classical music. This surprised me because the Sundance Channel promos for the film kept repeating, ". . . from avant-garde director Guy Maddin". There is not much avant-garde about this film, either in the literal translation of that phrase, as "new wave", or in the more popular sense of "experimental/uncompromisingly different and unusual". Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is decidedly old wave, and never more experimental, different or unusual than a couple small production design touches that might have been gleaned by anyone who is a big fan of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) and Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983).

Even citing those two influences might be misleading. The Brazil influence is primarily present in a single device--Mrs. Westerna's (Stephanie Ballard) ventilator, and the Rumble Fish influence primarily in the recurrence of red (and occasionally green and gold) within the context of mostly black and white photography (with occasional, very traditional silent film tinting for various scenes). But Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is so traditional that Maddin frequently even went for German expressionist influenced set design. The sets are wonderful at that, however, and occasional they're more surreal.

It's not that the film is bad for being so traditional, but it took me awhile to adjust my preconceptions, which were misled from the Sundance promo. However, the silent film aspect didn't exactly work well for me, either, and the ballet was a bit blase when it was present, which was less often than I expected. Most of the time I was wondering what the motivation was for the silent film aspect, aside from an exercise in nostalgia and/or cribbing a style of a bygone era, like trying to create a painting that looks almost exactly like Titian, say. On the other hand, it was effective in a couple instances, such as one decapitation-by-shovel (shot from an angle that allowed for minimal gore, to my dismay), where Maddin introduced foley "sound effects" that amped up the impact of the scene. The instances of bright red in the cinematography were also very effective, and not dissimilar to M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004), which postdates this film by 2 years.

My delight reaction arose when I realized that much of Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary can be read as an anti-immigration parable. This help explains why Dracula is Chinese here, rather than East European. Under this interpretation, the immigrant Others are invading white Anglo-Saxon shores, usurping authority, "stealing" women and economic power, and so on. It's also notable that Maddin's means of dispatching Dracula in the film is very similar to punishments meted out by Dracula's real-life basis, Vlad Tepes, aka "Vlad the Impaler" (and aka "Dracula" by the way). One popular theory has it that Vlad the Impaler's motivation for his atrocities was primarily to protect the integrity of his Wallachian burg, against what he saw as foreign political and cultural invaders. This makes Dracula's finale in the film fittingly ironic in light of the anti-immigration subtext.

Maddin's film is also interesting for presenting the story in two halves, the first solely centered on Lucy Westerna (Tara Birtwhistle), and the second on Jonathan Harker (Johnny Wright) and Mina (Cindy Marie Small). A pervert rendition of Dr. Van Helsing (Dave Moroni) was also unusual and amusing, but Renfield (Brent Neale) was mostly wasted.

Of course a potential audience for Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary has to be amenable to silent films, and not averse to ballet or traditional classical music. If you fit that bill and you have a taste for horror or an interest in Dracula, this film may be just up your alley.

Had "Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary" been made in Hollywood of with a huge budget, I don't think I would have been as favorably disposed towards the project. After all, the DVD is a bit rough here and there--credits shake a bit and a few of the computer effects (especially superimpositions) are very rough. BUT, you must realize that this is a production of the Royal Winnepeg Ballet. And, while it's a very well-respected and quality production company, it wasn't like these were seasoned filmmakers. So, I cut it a lot of slack. Based on this, it's actually a rather incredible production--with lovely sets, great costumes and a nice Gothic horror/romantic look about it. Heck, I hate opera and I still appreciated the amazing task they did in creating something like this. Probably not for everyone, but using modern dance and ballet, it does make a sophisticated art form more approachable to the masses.

I am completely revising my must see list after watching this. I know only one other of Maddin's projects, his "Saddest Music in the World" of the next year. I rated that in my category of films you must see.

The rules of that list are that no more than two films per year, nor no more than two per filmmaker can be on it. This almost bumped "Talk to Her" off that list. It may yet. Let me advise you now that this is powerful and important stuff, the only successful marriage I know of literature, dance and film. In fact I know few that successfully integrate any two, much less masterpieces in each medium.

The story itself is greatly enriched: all the most terrifying horror is beautiful, and this is: an arc of desire across your life for that hour and a half. Where the original was only about sex, this is written larger to race, money, power and all in an erotic context that transcends sex. You'll notice when seeing this that it is more true to the book than any other filmed version.

Now just think for a moment about this: Dracula has been filmed by Murnau, Browning, Warhol, Herzog, Franco, Coppola and herds of lesser lights. No where has the scope been this broad and sharp.

(The device of the diary has been changed from the detective's to the virgin's, a master concept that indicates the deep thought that went into this. Exposure to that diary makes the girlfriend sex-crazed, for instance, as if the art itself were the infected blood.)

The dance. The choreographer has put together something that is remarkable, even seen merely as a ballet. It uses Mahler's music, by the way. That music is usually so overtly ripe it smells of selfish world conquest. It says something that here it seems merely supportive, that what you see on the screen is bigger.

So the choreography affects powerfully but what matters is the cinematic rendition. This is far more evocative as filmed ballet than a live performance can ever be, because we are allowed to have our eyes dance as participants. When a character's eyes flutter and question, ours do too. When the dance suggests a motion, it is us that completes it or gives it a resting place. The integration of choreography and cinematography is the best I have ever had in my life: beyond the sheer energy of "Red Shoes" to intimacy.

But it is the other cinematic qualities that make this unique. Dracula is a powerful story only because it evokes notions of the past that have power to awaken and live in our souls. Those notions are like the vampire and carried by him in the story. Once we touch them -- have sex with them, we are infected, transformed.

How to convey that cinematically? Why by evoking old film techniques as the story did literary ones. (Today that evocation by hacks is inaptly called "gothic.") So we have a silent film. Actually a postmodern comment on a silent black and white film. Lots of reminders of the camera in cropping and Vaselined lenses. Occasional tinting (blood and lucre), overtly theatrical sound effects, wobbling when we have to move quickly (or die).

The gauzy camera lens is made three dimensional with fog that extends the blur as the camera motion is also made three dimensional by the moving crowd. The whole thing has a phrasing and rhythm that is so well integrated among the dance, light, camera, story and music it is as if the things coevolved from the big bang.

Whoever did the art design deserves a reward. The sets are organic and in the last half in the lair, overtly vaginal -- so overtly it shocks. It must have been drawn at the same time as the choreography.

There's sex and beauty and seduction here. Be seduced my friends. Succumb. Art requires seduction and in the process some infection of urges. It is all about the dance -- Succumb, dance, die.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I had the pleasure of witnessing the world television premiere of this wonderful film last night. It had been a five-year wait since Maddin's last feature length effort, the disappointing "Twilight of the Ice Nymphs", so I waited with baited breath. It is with great satisfaction that I announce that Maddin is back in full form with his fifth feature, and twenty-second film over all. Told in Maddin's trademark, fever dream style, the film harkens to the cinematic days of yore (mostly in black and white, no spoken dialogue, only titles), and yet is at the same time fresh, intelligent, and energetic. Maddin fans will not be disappointed. Fans of the 1998 Royal Winnipeg Ballet, from which this film was adapted, might be surprised to see what Maddin has done. He has seamlessly blended the ballet with the narrative action, so neither distracts or takes away from the other. This is no "filmed ballet" (see Nureyev's 'Romeo and Juliet'). The camera moves freely, and Maddin's use of different film stocks and depth of field create an otherworldly atmosphere. Possibly the best way to enjoy this film however, is as a fan, or at least connoisseur, of the Original Bram Stoker novel on which both the film and the ballet are based. Maddin remains 100% faithful to the story. All the characters and event in the book are here, although Maddin is able to compress the information to its barest essentials (Jonathan Harker's invitation to Castle Dracula, his imprisonment, and subsequent escape, is told in one delirious, incredible montage lasting less than a minute). However, Maddin subverts the themes (or perhaps brings out the dormant themes) of the original to create a whole new take on the book. Dracula fans should find this fascinating. Of course, I've lavished all this praise on Maddin, but I must give credit where credit is due. The dancers (whom Maddin did not cast, as they were all in the original stage production) wonderfully evoke their characters without dialogue, through dance alone; something were not used to seeing in film. As I have said before, the dance and filmic elements work in perfect tandem. All in all this film gives us something new as Maddin lovers, Ballet lovers, Dracula lovers, or all three. It is a feverish orgy of the best things art has to offer. Bravo! Encore!

It's definitely true that when you know absolutely nothing about this movie beforehand, it might come as a bit of a shocker. It's a ballet version of the Dracula story and if that wasn't already enough originality and strangeness, it's also shot in a silent movie style.

Actually, I already was familiar with some of Guy Maddin's other work, so I sort of knew what to expect from this movie already. He's a director that loves to shoot his movies in a very stylish and old fashioned style, often from the silent movie era. But it's not like he just mimics the style, he makes it completely his own. It's like he's always giving his own free interpretation of the genre and completely reinvents it instead. Saying that this movie is done in an old fashioned style does not mean you could compare it to older movies as well. It's very much its own thing, which is also the foremost reason why this movie works out so well.

Basically the foremost reason why this movie is such an intriguing and perfectly watchable one, are its visuals. It's a spectacular movie to look at, even though it's almost entirely shot in black & white. The camera-work is very innovative and also helps to keep the movie going at all times.

It was also quite interesting to see the familiar story being told for most part from the viewpoint of the Lucy Westernra character. This was actually a very good idea in my opinion, since her character perhaps goes through the biggest transformations and is one of the more interesting, yet mostly ignored, characters from the Dracula story.

What also was quite interesting was seeing an Asian in the role of Dracula. It sounds odd but it actually was something that worked out quite well. Wei-Qiang Zhang, as it turned out, was a very charismatic choice, for the role of the well known and much portrayed blood sucking count.

And as far as ballet goes; this movie does mostly a good job at keeping things understandable and not all about its dancing and exaggerated expressions from its actors. But I should probably say that if you aren't familiar at all with the Dracula story, you probably will still have a hard time following the story in this movie. But then again, who isn't familiar with the Dracula story now days?

I should also probably admit that if the movie would had been any longer, I would had had a hard time finishing it. The movie as it is at times feels sort of overlong already, even while its only 73 minutes short. Watching a completely silent movie, with dancing characters, gets a bit of an endurance test after a while I guess but it still remains an ultimately rewarding movie, by the end.

Visually and technically speaking, its a great and interesting, original movie, that might not keep everybody constantly interested though.

7/10

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