The recent large proliferation of film remakes is regrettable, but Dracula is immune to this. What makes the story so spectacularly adaptable is its thematic richness, exploring nostalgia, finitude, love, science and the middle class.
What is so significant about Luc Besson’s new version is its humanizing of Dracula which allows these themes to also be humanized.
The film spends a large amount of time on Dracula’s backstory, an element not present in the book, turning him from a character meant to be emblematic of the audience’s fears into a figure of empathy. The audience is meant to relate to Dracula. This effect is also achieved with the makeup and costuming where he looks a lot more human than previous adaptations where he appears more like a mime.
Van Helsing, the scientist traditionally meant to be the voice of reason who leads the fight against Dracula, is a priest instead. This is a powerful change in the way the story deals with the theme of finitude. In adaptations where Van Helsing is a scientist, modern rationality is depicted in triumph over the supernatural, the problem of Dracula is solved by the products of modernity. However in depicting Van Helsing as a priest, the problem of Dracula is solved only by Dracula realizing his finitude as restricting and getting in the way of some larger infinitude, here depicted as the will of God.
What is so significant about this change is that it gives agency to Dracula. The story subverts the common horror trope of portraying the villain as an impenetrable evil that can only be thwarted from the outside and instead provides an inside view.
With this change the themes can be related to on a more personal level. Instead of other adaptations which address the themes of the work more obliquely, Besson presents them in direct emotions.
The realization by Dracula that his insistence on finding his reincarnated wife is stopping him from realizing a more meaningful infinitude is not just religious, but a statement on how our finitude supplies us meaning. After Dracula obtains the object of his desire he realizes that the only reason he had meaning was in the finitude of the search. After the search is over, the finite realized, he knows that the obstacle that appeared to delay his enjoyment was the object of true enjoyment. Only the end gives him any meaning, only the search any pleasure. Only after this realization of the failure inherent in desire can he move on in a meaningful way to some infinitude.
Aside from this new thematic lens, the film also adds an army of moving CGI gargoyle children. This falls in line with the film’s unique focus on action, a definite weak point for the film. The fighting only distracts from needed character development, as Van Helsing and Johnathan Harker are less detailed than they should be.
In all, Besson delivers in providing an original interpretation of Dracula, one that subverts convention and enriches the common themes of the original work while at times being bogged down by a strange fixation on action scenes.
