As a project he has spoken many times about and has longed to make, FRANKENSTEIN has been billed as the culmination of sorts for Guillermo Del Toro. Indeed, his adaptation of Mary Shelley’s landmark novel feels uniquely his; Del Toro’s story is a heartfelt meditation on the nature of creation and parenthood, with changes from the source that highlight these themes. His melancholy sympathies for the Creature sand a few too many edges off to preserve Shelley’s complexity and many of the enduring ideas, but the film is an engagingly executed piece of cinema.
The broad strokes of the story remain: Dr Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) reanimates dead tissue, resulting in the Creature (Jacob Elordi), which goes on to figuratively haunt and literally hunt its creator for complex and layered reasons. Supporting characters are redrawn and subtly recalibrated, such as the impact of Victor’s father (Charles Dance), and the role of Elizabeth (Mia Goth), reimagined here as the daughter of Victor’s financier, Harlander (Christoph Waltz), and fiancée to his brother, William (Felix Kammerer).
Victor, nearing death and found in the Arctic by the crew of a ship stranded in the ice, recounts his story to the captain (Lars Mikkelsen). This provides a framing device for the story, and an opening prologue where the Creature assaults the ship in pursuit of Victor; a thrilling sequence full of incredible cinematic movement and the guttural rage of Elordi’s Creature. Framing devices are a tricky thing which can suck the momentum out of stories when executed poorly. Del Toro’s opening here is a propulsive and intriguing one, which leaves the burning embers of violent threat even as the film settles into a more contemplative tone, replete with the emotional sincerity and discovery of beauty in oddity with which Del Toro is so skilled.
“Del Toro’s opening here is a propulsive and intriguing one, which leaves the burning embers of violent threat even as the film settles into a more contemplative tone…”
Many of the themes of the novel remain, with some heightened by creative choices and casting. The casting of famously handsome Oscar Isaac reinforces that Victor’s monstrous nature is hidden by outward superficialities, and Isaac relishes his line deliveries as the adult Victor, injecting them with wit and charm. Elordi’s appearance is clearly unnatural, but the actor’s underlying looks and the makeup’s maintenance of his imposing but elegant frame generally lacks the grotesque nature of his manner of creation. To provide contrast, Del Toro clearly relishes the macabre process, with blood and body parts strewn across grand, gothic sets like rotting confetti.
The relationship between Victor and his Creature is the pivot point that just about any adaptation of Frankenstein rests upon, and here Del Toro lingers on a parent-child dynamic. Rather than abandoning the Creature more or less immediately, as in the novel, Victor grows frustrated with his creation and becomes cruel. Victor’s transgression is not against nature or divine order (or this is at least not lingered upon), but against his responsibility as creator and protector. In this regard, Mia Goth’s Elizabeth plays an interesting role as a more mothering figure that directly contrasts against Victor. There are also Oedipal overtones in her interactions with the Creature, with the framing and tone leaving it ambiguous whether the underlying atmosphere is one of attraction or reverence. This dynamic also provides a further echo of Victor’s relationship with his parents. Victor continually carries forward the failings of his father, thinking his abilities to create life entitle him to greatness rather than earning it. Victor’s complete cluelessness in the face of creating life is a tragic and heartbreaking moment for his creation.
“Elordi will garner well-deserved plaudits for his role, but the film’s approach to the Creature is the first hint of simplification of Shelley’s story that, perhaps, delivers mixed results.”
That new life is embodied by Jacob Elordi, with a performance which grows and changes to show the different stages of the Creature’s development. The framing device means we first see him as a rag-clad juggernaut roaring demands with guttural rage (with some unsettling sound-engineered assistance), throwing men around like wet towels. However, in the wake of Victor’s successful experiments, Elordi’s performance is more childlike, and generates a considerable amount of sympathy for the Creature. During this segment, our sympathies transfer away from Victor, who we have seen receive callous treatment as a child, and he repeats the sins of the father.
Elordi will garner well-deserved plaudits for his role, but the film’s approach to the Creature is the first hint of simplification of Shelley’s story that, perhaps, delivers mixed results. In displacing some of the ambiguity behind what drives the Creature’s gnarlier behaviours, FRANKENSTEIN blunts some ideas based in moral complexity and examination of nature versus nurture. Aside from some violence in his icy opening pursuit of Victor and threats of it as the film’s second segment develops (told from the Creature’s viewpoint), Del Toro’s Creature does little wrong. The concept of misunderstood monster is common to both Del Toro’s oeuvre and Shelley’s novel, but Del Toro has always had a gentle understanding in such scenarios, best exemplified here by the Creature’s childlike observation of leaves flowing in a trickle of water. Del Toro’s Creature certainly seems unlikely to identify with Satan in the way Shelley’s did, even if some explicit Paradise Lost references remain.
All this being said, the thematic density present in Shelley’s novel, which has ensured its enduring legacy, probably necessitates a more narrow focus in cinema. Del Toro has brought his sympathetic focus to one strand of the story, and has done so with some visual verve, coaxing pathos-filled performances from his actors, especially Elordi and Goth. This isn’t to say the script always maintains that focus. A strand centred on Victor’s growing infatuation with Elizabeth presents challenging ideas, especially given the pointed decision to have Goth also play the young Victor’s mother before her death, but it is not developed in a way that deepens the emotions experienced by our lead characters. Characters also state things outright (someone quite literally utters “You are the monster!” to Victor) that Del Toro and his cast would be more than capable of expressing visually or subtextually. However, Del Toro has successfully created a film that feels faithful to the themes of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, yet is unafraid to make changes that also place it in conversation with the original text.
If Shelley’s novel can be considered the dense and sprawling sheet music for an orchestral symphony of ideas, then Del Toro’s arrangement here is sparser. However, even if the result lacks some of the richness laid out on the page, the tune of FRANKENSTEIN extracts tension, horror and beauty that harmonises with the full version.