Guillermo del Toro is a director whom I admire more than love. Of his movies, I've seen Pan's Labyrinth, Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley, and his latest, Frankenstein.
I look at the above list and think that these are all good films that I don't ever really feel like rewatching (with the exception of Nightmare Alley, which is my favorite of his...and, ironically, is many folks' least favorite of his). But they're all undeniably beautiful and grotesque. They feature monsters and monstrous men. Del Toro uses practical effects and has proclaimed that he will never use AI in his films. So, even if his films don't rank among my favorites of all time, I can't help but admire his talent and craft.
I almost didn't see Frankenstein on a big screen due to some mediocre reviews coming out of the film groups I participate in on Facebook. I was just going to wait for it to hit Netflix. Thankfully, a friend of mine encouraged me to see it in a theatre. I'm so glad I did! And I saw it in a BTX theatre (which is like IMAX but for the Bowtie Cinemas chain), so it was an excellent moving-going experience.
It's been a long time since I've read Mary Shelley's masterpiece, but I do remember liking Frankenstein a lot when I read it. Although del Toro said he wanted to make a book-accurate adaptation, he changed some pretty major plot points. In the book, Victor Frankenstein is essentially a deadbeat dad who spends most of his life trying to animate dead tissue. When he finally succeeds, he almost immediately abandons his creation. The Creature is initially a gentle being who gains intelligence by reading and interacting with the blind patriarch of a family who treats him with kindness. But when the rest of the family see the Creature, they chase him away and try to kill him.
The Creature acts violently throughout the novel because he is abandoned, mistreated, and misunderstood. The novel is a tragedy about what can happen when you fuck around with nature without considering the consequences. It's also a lesson to treat people--even "monsters"--with dignity...or they might actually become the monstrosity you think them to be.
Del Toro's movie leans much more heavily into the Creature (played wonderfully by Jacob Elordi) being innocent and gentle. He just wants to be accepted by his creator. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is the villain of the movie. But even with him, we feel sympathy because we see how Victor's father treated him as a young boy: he beat him when he didn't perfectly memorize his anatomy lessons.
Years later, Victor passes that lesson in cruelty on to his creation: he berates the Creature for only being able to say one word: "Victor".
Yes, the themes are a little on the nose. The movie is basically Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse" in movie form: they fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had, and add some extra just for you." At one point, Victor's brother William even says "You are the monster, Victor". OOOH BURN!
But, you know, I think subtlety is overrated. Especially in a movie as fantastical and colorful as this one. Frankenstein is filled with anguish, violence, and passion. I've seen some reviews that suggest Oscar Isaac's performance is over the top, but I thought he was great. He's an arrogant, brooding, petty little asshole. In the novel, he marries a woman named Elizabeth (who, spoiler alert, the monster kills on their wedding night). In this adaptation Elizabeth (Mia Goth) is the fiance of Victor's brother, William (Felix Kammerer), and the niece of Victor's wealthy benefactor, Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz). So add covetousness and lust to Victor's sins. Mia Goth is delightful as usual, but a bit underused in this role. She has chemistry with both Victor and the Creature--she understands the intelligence and drive of the former while admiring the gentleness of the latter.
Jacob Elordi's performance as Frankenstein's Creature is GREAT. Most folks know Elordi from his role as an absolutely irredeemable shit head in the HBO series Euphoria (or as a slightly less irredeemable shit head in Saltburn). What a heel turn of a role here: the Creature exudes sensitivity and vulnerability from the moment he comes to life. He is basically a puppy dog who wants nothing more to please his master, but is only chained and beaten in return for his loyalty. This might sound funny, but Elordi reminded me of Rocky from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He's a big, strong guy who moves his body in this shy, almost feminine way. I'm going to talk about the film's eroticism in more detail below, but it's fascinating to watch a man who could lord his physicality over most people bend himself into submissive and shy stances because he doesn't know his own strength (at first).
After Victor tries to kill his creation by blowing up his laboratory, the Creature escapes and takes shelter in a mill attached to a house where a blind older man lives with his family. When the man's family leave on an extended hunting party, the Creature reveals himself to the man. Just as in the novel, the blind man accepts the Creature immediately, calling him a friend and offering to share food and books with him. The scenes with the blind man nearly brought tears to my eyes. But, of course, kindness can't last long in the cruel world of Frankenstein. When the blind man's family discover the Creature, they try to kill him, running him off into the cold, punishing world.
The one aspect in which the film truly fails, in my opinion, is the ending. The Creature swears revenge on Victor only to...forgive him in Victor's dying moments. Victor calls the Creature his "son" and apologizes for how awful he was and the Creature forgives him. This was very much an unearned happy (or, happy-ish, as the Creature is still destined to walk the earth alone without a companion) ending and just felt...dishonest. Both to the original source material, but to the rest of the film that came before it. Kind of a bummer! I wish del Toro had the nerve here to really break our hearts, but he decided not to and the film is worse for that decision, in my opinion.
Before I conclude, I want to briefly discuss how this film is considered to be a sort of erotic or sensual adaptation of Frankenstein and people have feelings about it. I thought it really added to the charge of the film. Granted, I am very sex-motivated when it comes to movies and if a movie is sexy in a way that I personally find erotic, I'm going to like it a lot more than if it's sexless. The novel Frankenstein itself is, frankly, homoerotic. You might think that's nuts, given that it was written in 1818, but it's pretty widely accepted as a queer text. And then you have the 1931 film adaptation, which was directed by the very queer James Whale. And, of course, the aforementioned Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is a total fuckfest of a Frankenstein adaptation.
My point is: this story is historically gay and horny. If anything, del Toro doesn't go far enough in sexing it up. But damn, Oscar Isaac wears these slutty little leather gloves in the movie that make me want to act up! And there are plenty of scenes where Victor and the Creature hold each other close and you don't know if they're about this kill each other or kiss each other. I've seen some think pieces floating around asking what "it says about us" that we, as a society, are "attracted to monsters". But we've always been attracted to monsters. Have these people not read Dracula? Attraction to monsters is not new, it's as old as stories themselves.
Frankenstein is an imperfect film filled with beauty and grotesquerie, passion and anger, violence and love. It's not my favorite film of the year...but it's damn near close.Grade: A-
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