In the late nineteenth century, in darkest Whitby, fancy society wench Lucy Westenra (Tara Birtwhistle) is being courted by three bland men. Who to choose, when they’re all so meh? Even that might be a charitable assessment. We’ve got Arthur Holmwood (Stephane Leonard), who’s part of the aristocracy and has LOADSAMONEY; Jack Seward (Matthew Johnson), who runs his own mental institution, circa 1890-ish; and least importantly Quincy Morris (Keir Knight), who’s, like, American and has a gun, I guess? Seriously, how ever will she choose? Fortunately, maybe, there’s a secret fourth option; the far more exciting Count Dracula (Zhang Wei-Qiang) is more than willing to visit her at night for a bit of neck romancing, fnar fnar. So ultimately she’s pretty all right, at least until the arrival of Dr Van Helsing (David Moroni), who’s quick to notice that she’s far too sexy, which can only mean one thing: she’s under the influence of a devious foreign monster. Next they’ll be taking our money and our jobs. Something must be done!

So… apparently Dracula has the most cinematic incarnations of any character. I don’t know how true that claim actually is. Frankly it seems a bit weird legally as, theoretically, the novel was in copyright for a large part of the twentieth century (from my vague understanding of historical copyright law, it would’ve gone into the public domain in the UK and probably most countries that were signed up to the Berne Convention in 1963-ish),† but then again if Wikipedia’s anything to go by Dracula and Dracula adjacent films didn’t really start spilling out all over the damn place until the mid-‘60s; outside of the six or seven (depending on how you look at it) original Universal films and the first two Hammer films which were officially licensed by the Stoker estate, the rest are mostly a few nudge-nudge wink-wink films. Well, whatever, there’s no denying the ubiquity of the character and the story at this point. Therefore, why even bother with the synopsis? I pondered leaving it out, but, eh… Anyway, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the story might have noticed that the above is all about the stuff with Lucy and her suitors, rather than the stuff with Harker in Transylvania that opens the novel and, really, most adaptations of it.

This version is based on the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s adaptation of the story. The background, according to legend, is that the aforementioned Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Canada’s longest lived and swankiest ballet company (and reportedly the oldest active company in North America in general) premiered their take on Dracula in the late ‘90s to much acclaim. Winnipeg based film and television producer Vonnie Von Helmolt (a person who is more real than that name sounds) was so taken with it that she was determined to make a film of it, and hired, with some cajoling, Winnipeg based auteur Guy Maddin to take the director’s helm. Winnipeg.

So, yeah, this is a rare work-for-hire joint by Maddin. He was apparently not especially enthused originally, not being big into either Dracula or ballet. What a choice to direct. But other projects fell through, money woes were abound, that sort of thing, so in the end he went for it. The result has apparently been called “the most inept dance film ever made”. If we’re being pedantic, it’s hard to say if that’s actually true without seeing every dance film in the history of cinema, but the film is deliberately not a straight filmed version of the stage production. Instead in style it’s Maddin’s usual vice, the silent film. Well, perhaps his is more ‘early cinema’ as he has actually made talkies, albeit in the same style, but that’s by the by. Given as this is a ballet and has no spoken dialogue anyway, it’s an excuse to go nuts. In fact, the RWB seems to have been on board with it, with the choreographer even suggesting some old timey film techniques to pull off the sort of things that wouldn’t have been possible on stage (or at least without some very elaborate and prohibitively expensive rigging and that). To this end, if you’re watching hoping for some great shots of dancing, you’re probably going to be disappointed as the film spends a lot of time on disorienting shots and cuts that aren’t necessarily conducive to showing off the choreography, but are conducive to evoking the mood of Expressionist cinema, albeit in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, with production design which eschews any semblance of realism in favour of a dreamscape brimming with bizarre contraptions and suggestive imagery, eventually culminating in ol’ Drac’s castle, euphemistically described as “biological” by the producer.

Part of Maddin’s reluctance to shoot Dracula, beyond, in this case, admittedly not knowing anything about dance, was the aforementioned ubiquity of story. The world isn’t exactly wanting for Dracula films; how do you do something that hasn’t been done before? Don’t say it’s the ballet thing, by the way. There are in fact multiple ballet adaptations of Dracula, some of which have also been filmed. Leeds’ Northern Ballet has one that’s the same sort of vintage that has also been filmed and that the BBC trots out on Hallowe’en sometimes. Like all other productions by Northern Ballet that I’ve seen, it’s a bit shit, don’t bother. I digress though. Aside from covering the whole thing in his trademark style, the thing’s schtick is rather more based around the more unsavoury elements of the book.

The phrase ‘going back to the book’ invariably conjures this idea of something being more textually accurate. This is misleading here, as the film more turns a wry eye to the thematic elements of the book rather the specifics of the plot. That’s not to say it doesn’t follow the plot; it’s pretty much all here though it runs under 80 minutes and is conveyed without much in the way of dialogue. There are some intertitles, the bulk of which are direct quotes from the novel. But, yeah, saying that and then having a film where the Count is decently handsome and the ladies are actually sort of into it… it does bring up memories of the Coppola version, the one they claimed both to be super faithful to the novel, and then include a load of romantic anti-hero stuff that has little to no basis in the novel whatsoever with Dracula being Vlad the Impaler and Mina being the reincarnation of his wife and all that jazz.‡ This doesn’t do anything like that, and that the menfolk here are not portrayed as heroic in the slightest isn’t the same as it portraying Dracula as the hero; true, anti, or otherwise. At best, he’s neutral, and even then the chaotic kind; more of a force of nature than anything else, the unrestrained id. The Count does plenty of bad shit, at least in front of the male characters; this is a film that includes that bit where he tosses his missuses (missi / missupodes / etc.) a baby to eat. It also includes the hairy hands. Take that as you will. The word of God on this issue is that the Dracula of this film is fairly straight into metaphor territory; he is the female characters’ libidos, he is the male characters’ insecurities (mainly sexual, natch, but there are some others in there). Remember that bit about the production design? Just to ram the point home, the entrance to Drac’s castle is basically just one big and unsubtle bout of yonic symbolism. While I say he does these things ‘at least in front of the male characters’, but most actual shows of depravity are presented as part of Harker’s journal rather than stuff that happens in the ‘now’ of the film; the others never see him at all until the climax (ho ho). Incidentally, he also seems kind of into it, he just doesn’t like the idea of Mina being so.

I seem to be glossing over that the film really foregrounds the idea from the novel that Dracula is the nefarious Other so far as the character’s concerned; a foreigner with his weird ways, taking our money, and corrupting our women and our society and yadda yadda. In this film, that ties in largely to Dracula’s own existence being up in the air, because, you know, foreigners aren’t by their very nature trying to destroy (white, western European) culture, despite it always being a popular scapegoat. Frankly, the lack of particularly redeeming qualities on display here from Van Helsing or Harker or really any of Lucy’s suitors seems like a perfectly valid reading of the text to me. The novel spends a lot of time having characters talking up how wonderful each of them are as it spins its wheels waiting to set up the next cliffhanger, but has a tendency to shirk showing them acting accordingly. It extrapolates from that; it doesn’t really take much to go from that to Van Helsing being the grand Bête Noire of fin de siècle women, the creepy male doctor who obviously knows what’s best for them and is more than willing to blame them for their misfortunes in a patronisingly paternalistic manner; the film, in fact, gives very little to suggest that Lucy is actually dying before he starts prodding and probing her. 'The Yellow Wallpaper', probably the defining medical oppression of women story, was somewhat contemporaneous, you know.

† Given the historically rather byzantine nature of US copyright law, it seems it might never have been properly copyrighted in America. Universal apparently found this out after they secured the rights from Stoker’s widow. Surprisingly despite this, as I say, there weren’t really many film based passes at the material prior to the mid ‘60s, or at least not many that Wikipedia (the lazy man's resource) deems worth mentioning.

‡ Bonus points for, despite making a big deal of it, not actually being the first Dracula film to pull those cards.