bram stoker's dracula by coppola is a masterpiece.. except for the final scene
This word masterpiece —
I think it does not mean what you think it means.
A movie isn't a masterpiece as a stand-alone thing — it is
someone's masterpiece, as in the major achievement in that person's body of work. As such, I think
Apocalypse Now or
Godfather II would exceed
Dracula as Coppola's masterpiece. But I do agree that it is really very good — much better than it generally gets credit for being — except, as you say, for the final scene (which I would define as everything following van Helsing's line "They're racing with the sun!"), and maybe even earlier, from the reference to Harker's journal about taking the train to Budapest. Coppola could have afforded to indulge himself with just a little more detail in depiction of the pursuit, I reckon, and certainly in the final confrontation, because in his cinema cut he doesn't manage to generate any sense of either suspense or desperation, and the film is diminished without them. (Dracula's never really much of a threat in Coppola's film, is he?)
I quite like what Branagh did with
Frankenstein — he caught the Gothic essence, i think, but also the questing intelligence behind the story — and I'm not sure that Coppola could have done any better, though he could quite conceivably have done worse.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
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vicky_lc2001-1
11 years ago
The poster before you said he thought Dracula was a masterpiece, not that it was Coppola's masterpiece.
I also disagree about Apocalypse Now, it is far from a masterpiece & I consider Dracula far & above that particular film.
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