 |
| Images courtesy of October Films |
The story of Bram Stoker’s Dracula continues to be
retold many times over across the silver screen including but not limited to
the recent Robert Eggers blockbuster Nosferatu which itself is a remake
of an unofficial adaptation that ran into legal trouble with the Stoker estate
originally. However, despite the face of
the ageless eternal bloodsucking tormented vampire and his areas of travel from
Transylvania to a populated city has never looked or played out quite like Cherry
2000 screenwriter Michael Almereyda’s gender-swapped Brooklyn-set take on
Stoker’s saga Nadja. Produced by and
featuring a cameo by the late David Lynch as a mortician as well as Lynch’s
longtime co-producer Mary Sweeney, this New York based iteration on the undead is
at once offbeat and more than a little noirish with dark smokey alleyways and
deep shadows. Oh and Van Helsing played
by Peter Fonda here might be an eccentric nutcase.
Dracula’s daughter Nadja (Romanian Schindler’s List actress
Elina Löwensohn) has just witnessed her father’s death by way of a stake driven
through the heart by Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) who has since been jailed for
the murder of the undead count. Intent
on scattering Dracula’s cremated ashes amid Brooklyn and pay a visit to her twin
brother Edgar (Jared Harris), she meets an apathetic young married woman named
Lucy (Galaxy Craze) and quickly forms an erotic relationship with her. Meanwhile Van Helsing is bailed out of prison
by his nephew Jim (Martin Donovan) who also happens to be Lucy’s husband,
further thickening the plot developments.
All the while, Nadja busily tries to her sickly brother Edgar through a
blood transfusion with baby sharks while commanding Lucy’s every move with her
entrancing gaze.
Though a Dracula adaptation transposed to modern day which
has been done before, Nadja with its shimmering grainy luminous 35mm cinematography
and occasional experimental Fisher-Price PXL 2000 ‘PixelVision’ camerawork by Boys
Don’t Cry cameraman Jim Denault and a moody jazzy noirish score by child-actor
turned I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead composer Simon Fisher-Turner is
something of a nighttime promenade through the dark streets of Brooklyn. Less of a horror movie and more of a surreal
mood piece that isn’t wholly sure of how seriously it takes the material with
Almereyda’s spin, it is perhaps best remembered for the David Lynch connection
as he bailed the film out as well as presented the film and sold it to October
Films who eventually also released Lynch’s Lost Highway. Often drifting in and out of genre-thriller
and experimental video installation piece, Nadja may be the closest
cinema will ever come to a David Lynch produced Dracula film.
Deadpan and dry, a bit like listening to a Bohren &
Der Club of Gore album of moody sexy neo-noir, Nadja despite
critical praise failed theatrically upon initial release. Costing around $1 million to produce, it took
in a measly $443,169 though it did pick up steam as an art-house favorite. Darkly humorous and even a little impish,
Almereyda’s filmmaking career nevertheless flourished anyway as he forged ahead
with films like Marjorie Prime and Tesla in 2020. Looking back on it, it serves as an
interesting footnote in Almereyda’s career, Lynch’s career and particularly
adds a unique dynamic to the ever-evolving lore of Bram Stoker’s timeless horror
literary epic.
While not the definitive take and certainly never intentionally
frightening, Najda is awash in murky rain soaked deep shadowed style and
seems to forecast Lynch’s reunion with Barry Gifford on his subsequent neo-noir
classic Lost Highway. As a
standalone film outside of the Lynch sphere, Almereyda debatably joins
avant-garde filmmaker E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten as a film that forces
viewers to look at the black-and-white flickering gothic-horror images with a
new pair of glasses.
--Andrew Kotwicki
