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Assuming the mantle of Murnau is a perilous journey even for Werner Herzog, "it takes sweat, and maybe a little blood," Renfield giggles. Grimacing mummies and a bat dive-bombing in slow-motion start things off, a bit of documentary and artifice to register the besieged stability of the couple. Lucy's (Isabelle Adjani) warnings of "a dark force, a nameless deadly fear" can't dissuade Jonathan (Bruno Ganz) from traveling to Transylvania, neither can the gypsy tavern that freezes at the very mention of Dracula. The Count (Klaus Kinski) is a gnarled mandarin pained by the weight of immortality ("Time is an abyss... profound as a thousand nights") yet with a tender yen for jugulars and cuckoo clocks. "Botanical experiments" is the official reason for his cargo of black coffins filled with soil, not so much a destructive vampire as a transformative one—the "enlightened century" doesn't really get color in its cheeks until the fiend and his rodent minions pull into the harbor and sully the storybook town. An incantation of silent-film gestures (i.e., Lucy before the mirror), a mesmeric tempo closer to Browning. Uncanny images, droll images: The unconscious Jonathan roused by a barefoot young fiddler, a panning shot that spots a little girl sneezing twice in the crowd, Dracula like a pale moon against a darkened cityscape and then disdainfully pushing away his feverish lapdog (Roland Topor). Wagner's "Das Rheingold" for the carriage ride to the castle, a handheld camera hopping in tandem with the pestilent revelers, "das letzte abendmahl." "We shall study this matter scientifically," declares Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast), the rationalist who finishes off the bloodsucking visionary and is arrested for his trouble. Ultimately Herzog honors the old monster, new potential gallops away with the clod who's finally found his fangs. With Dan van Husen, Jan Groth, Carsten Bodinus, and Clemens Scheitz.
--- Fernando F. Croce |