Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/16/22

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Friday, September 16, 2022

Dracula 2000 (Patrick Lussier, 2000)

Cast: Gerard Butler, Christopher Plummer, Jonny Lee Miller, Justine Waddell, Vitamin C, Jennifer Esposito, Omar Epps, Sean Patrick Thomas, Jeri Ryan, Danny Masterson, Lochlyn Munro, Tig Fong, Tony Munch, Shane West, Nathan Fillion. Screenplay: Joel Soisson, Patrick Lussier. Cinematography: Peter Pau. Production design: Carol Spier. Film editing: Peter Devaney Flanagan, Patrick Lussier. Music: Marco Beltrami.

The cross as vampire repellent has become so much a part of the Dracula legend that Roman Polanski saw fit to spoof it in The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Threatened with a crucifix, a vampire reveals himself as Jewish: “Oy vey, have you got the wrong vampire.” But Patrick Lussier doubles down on the Christian mythology in Dracula 2000: His vampire isn’t threatened by the cross so much as he hates it. It turns out that Dracula is really the biblical Judas Iscariot, who when the rope broke as he tried to commit suicide after betraying Christ, was condemned to walk the Earth for eternity as one of the undead. Nobody else knows this except Abraham Van Helsing, who is still alive 103 years after Bram Stoker fictionalized his exploits. (In the film, Van Helsing dismisses Stoker as just a drunken Irish writer.) In 2000 he is posing as Van Helsing’s grandson, the owner of Carfax Antiquities in London. It seems he kept himself alive after capturing Dracula and imprisoning him in a silver casket filled with leeches that feast on Judas/Dracula’s blood. Somehow Van Helsing harvests the occasional leech from the casket and injects himself with that blood to keep himself alive. Unfortunately, this twist in the Dracula legend – borrowed from the legend of the Wandering Jew – is about all Dracula 2000 has going for it. Gerard Butler is not a particularly compelling Dracula, and Christopher Plummer doesn’t invest much of his considerable talent in playing Van Helsing. Jonny Lee Miller, as Van Helsing’s assistant, seems more confused than dashing in the romantic lead, and strikes no sparks with Justine Waddell, who turns out to be Van Helsing’s estranged daughter. It was a critical and commercial flop, though there are those who regard it as underrated, so it may some day re-emerge, like Dracula himself, as a cult film.