The scene right after the robbery where the kids are drinking and laughing in the carriage and then everything rapidly gets even worse </3 When Manju's mother is told that it's best to forget about the past, it's a very pointed articulation of how the characters are forced to live in the present. They ally with people they've had conflict w in the past and their attempts to plan for the future are routinely ruined. Yet it's also so moving…

I haven't seen the 1922 film, so my primary point of comparison is the original Dracula novel. But narratively I love how the film heightens the focus on Ellen. On a basic personal level she is a literallyme for the ages, but also doing so allows the work to more explicitly tackle the eroticism of the novel and approach the eternal theme of women and love and sensuality in a way that is both deeply gothic and contemporarily resonant. The…