written and directed by Guillermo del Toro
based on the novel by Mary Shelley
I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in college, many years ago, and I was instantly struck by how different the book was from what the movies and television shows from which I knew the story had presented. For one thing, Frankenstein's creation, more popularly known as the "monster," was a surprisingly articulate fellow, in stark contrast to the lumbering, monosyllabic creature featured in those movies. Also, he is far more of a tortured soul. Since then, I have seen two movies which hewed quite closely to Mary Shelley's original vision: Kenneth Branagh's 1994 adaptation, in which he starred as the scientist obsessed with conquering death and Robert De Niro starred as the creature, and now, Guillermo del Toro's adaptation available on Netflix, starring Oscar Isaac as the title character and Jacob Elordi as his hulking, tortured creation.
The basic story beats are still very much the same: a ship bound for the North Pole encounters a mysterious threat and then finds a man nearly frozen to death, who then proceeds to tell his tale.
Young Victor Frankenstein (Christian Convery) grew up with a loving mother (Mia Goth) whom he lost when she gave birth to his baby brother, William, and a stern father (Charles Dance) whom he lost to old age. His experience with his mother's death has formed an obsession within Victor to conquer it once and for all, and when as an adult (Isaac) he is expelled from medical school for demonstrating his ideas on conquering death, he then catches the attention of Heinrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz) a wealthy arms merchant who offers to finance his experiment. Harlander is the uncle of Elizabeth (also Mia Goth) who is engaged to the now-successful finance whiz William (Felix Kammerer). Harlander's deep pockets ensure that Victor has the equipment and the place he needs for his experiments, and his knowledge of when battles will take place provides Victor with a fresh supply of dead bodies from which to stitch together his creation (Elordi). Victor succeeds in his grim quest to reanimate the creature using a combination of lightning and the lymphatic system, but in fairly short order, things go horribly wrong as he learns the real reason for Harlander's interest in his experiment. Victor then finds himself confronted with the reality of what he has created, and with his own petty jealously as his brother's fiancee, with whom he has developed an unhealthy obsession, seems more enamored with the creature than she ever would be with him, and he attempts to destroy the creature by burning his entire laboratory down with the creature still inside. The creature lives, however, wanders the countryside and settles in a cottage beside a family, where he learns to read, and to appreciate people, until things again go horribly wrong, and he finds himself hunting down his creator once more to exact a final reckoning.
As faithful as this movie was to the book, I noted several liberties taken, such as number of prominent characters removed from the book that even featured in Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film, but more prominently, I noted that Victor Frankenstein was no longer an even remotely sympathetic character and his creature was depicted as almost completely blameless, which somehow felt right. The book and the Branagh adaptation had Frankenstein's creature doing fairly monstrous things, like outright murdering people which made Frankenstein's own rage feel righteous somehow, even though he was very much to blame for what happened. The Frankenstein of the books and Branagh's film was misguided but one could feel he had good intentions at heart. Del Toro's and Isaac's Frankenstein oozes of narcissism and vanity, and basically every truly horrible thing that happens in the film is as a result of Victor's own reckless disregard for others. Unfortunately, this little tweak makes the narrative denouement a little harder to accept, though I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the film.
In terms of production value, this film is a lush, extravagant throwback to the days of huge, imposing physical sets, and it was gratifying to see Netflix give Del Toro the money he needed to make this movie in all its gothic glory. Due praise should also be given to the heart-wrenching performances, from Isaac's magnificent mad scientist to Elordi's soulful, forlorn and misshapen creature.
It's a movie I could have liked a whole lot more if the ending had been written but a little differently, but it's still something I can recommend.
7/10
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