A Constant Visual Feast

Even halfway describing Radu Jude’s Dracula as a Dracula film feels like a lie; Dracula appears in it, yes, and plays a central role in many of its vignettes, but this is really a film about AI, within and without. Jude turned to AI image generation as a tool for making his movie for lack of better resources, and not out of any sense of advocacy for its use in art. The response to that choice, I think, surprised him; you can’t always anticipate how the internet will react to controversy, but in this case, I’m surprised all the talk about his use of AI, bubbling out of festivals from Locarno to New York, caught him flatfooted.

That’s why I liked speaking with him as much as I did. He’s forthcoming and honest, and holds little back; the result of our conversation is a more nuanced take on AI’s “place” in the movie industry. I’m not about to say that AI is okay by me – it isn’t; it sucks and I hate it – but the case Jude makes for using it, at least as far as it concerns Dracula, is compelling, or barring that, just understandable.

You can read the full piece over at Time.