Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of the classic Mary Shelley novel.

Bring on the Gothic… Storms. Gloom. Tragedy. A threatening man or two. A resourceful damsel. Real or imagined monster/ghost. Isolated castle. Swooping gowns. Long, tangled locks.

Director Guillermo del Toro was just getting started with Goth in Crimson Peak (2015). In Frankenstein,  director del Toro scales the heights of Gothic with his adaptation of Mary Shelley’s magnificent “Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus” (1818).

The film begins in 1857, in the frozen Arctic. A ship frozen into place with a desperate crew trying to dig the ship free in the deadly cold. An injured man is rescued. A monster lurks.

The man is Victor Frankenstein and he tells his story…

Victor is the scion of a baron. Victor and his mummy while away the months chatting over tea in the family castle while surgeon Father is abroad. Mother, who dresses in blood red, indulges the precocious Victor.

Father is a different story. Baron Frankenstein (Charles Dance) is a total bastard who drives his son mercilessly with studies on physiology and anatomy. If the child makes a mistake, he’s switched. For certain, Victor can’t wait until the dad is off again, leaving him with his beloved and heavily pregnant mother.

Gothic lit would have us think that most pregnant women die in childbirth. In fact, in pre-industrial England, lifetime risk of dying during childbirth was about 5.6%. Defying stats, Victor’s mom dies birthing William.

Poor Victor. He is doomed to be warped by his cruel father. And to have serious mommy issues. Grieving for his mother, Victor vows to one day conquer death.

Flash forward to adult Victor (Oscar Isaac) defending his work in a lecture hall, in front of a medical tribunal of bewigged old surgeons. In order to prove that he’s not violating God’s singular powers of creation, he demonstrates his method of reanimating a limbless torso, albeit briefly. 

The audience looking on from the hall’s seats are aghast. “This is unholy!” yells  one of the tribunal. Another declares Frankenstein’s presentation ‘galvanic trickery.’

Ah, who is this looking on with a mercenary eye? Christoph Waltz as Heinrich Harlander, an arms dealer. And with the Crimean War raging, he has no shortage of funds to finance any ghoulish project he finds intriguing. Waltz, like Willem Dafoe, can always be counted on to add some madness to a film. 

Undeterred by the medical tribunal’s condemnations, Victor feverishly returns to his mission to conquer death by creating life.  Heinrich approaches Victor and offers to finance his revivification work that involves correctly zapping an organism back to life with electricity. Victor gets excited when he sees the fortress-like goliath of a building where his lab can be located. Satisfying goth tropes, the place is in the middle of nowhere.

Victor enlists his now-grown brother William to get the lab up and running. William arrives from the continent with fiancée, Elizabeth (Mia Goth).  Ye Gads! She looks just like Mother!  Victor immediately becomes obsessed by the stoic Elizabeth. While William labors to get the lab up and running, Victor finds excuses to commune with Elizabeth. He thinks he has found a kindred spirit; she studies insects and is interested in his experiments. What he doesn’t register is that she is a kind soul while he is as cold and unfeeling as the corpses he gathers.

William and Elizabeth go back to the continent while Victor energetically attends public hangings, eyeing the about-to-be executed for bodies he might purchase. Back in his lab, he works feverishly, tracing pathways through cadavers, deciding where voltage, theoretically, needs to be applied. Finally…

The raging thunderstorm. Bolts electrify the skies. Victor hauls the reconnected body parts of fallen soldiers into the path of a lightning rod. Kabaaam! Frankenstein’s monster.

The internet has had a lot to say about Jacob Elordi as Frankie; declaring him Hot Frankenstein. The movie’s makeup team has outdone themselves with a statuesque, bald, ivory and bruise-colored creature. Elordi embodies the tragic creature with soulful looks conveying innocence and then, torment. So glad the actor didn’t find himself lost to second-rate movies as a hunky dreamboat- yep, I’m talking to you, The Kissing Booth.

Recalling the outset of the movie when an injured Victor Frankenstein has been rescued by sailors and bundled into the captain’s quarters. Something happens–I won’t say what– and the Creature has his chance to testify before the defacto judge, Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen). He turns from defendant to accuser. 

What did Victor do when confronted by the creature he made? He coaxes him to the veritable dungeon of the building and shackles him. All the creature wants to do is examine the little culvert within his grasp. He touches the water that drains through and wonders at a leaf he has retrieved. But Victor has other ideas. He wants to see how far he can bring his creation’s intellect. When the creature stalls at ‘Victor,’ he yells and hits out at him with a switch– just like his own mean father. Victor wants to keep his work secret, but stuff happens and William and Elizabeth show up…

All I’ll say is that Elizabeth is the first person who shows any kindness to the creature. Stupid, selfish Victor is angry because he thinks that the creature might have a romantic interest in her. Also, he doesn’t like getting a figurative kick from his crush, Elizabeth, when she upbraids him for the conditions under which he keeps the creature. Again, stuff happens and…

Victor and the creature get involved in a life and death game of cat and mouse, with each switching roles now and again. But not before the creature realizes the immense cruelty of Victor’s ‘experiment.’ The creature stalks across England, taking care to remain concealed. At a little farm, he does chores in the middle of the night, to help the people who live there. He has to be careful because a few of the guys have shot at his figure when he was unexpectedly in their line of sight. Circumstances find him with one of the inhabitants, an old blind man played by David Bradley aka the dyspeptic Filch in Harry Potter. Here, he is kindly and teaches the creature how to read. The creature shortly goes from the ABC’s to reading Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” 

While the creature torments himself for being so singularly peculiar, All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!

So sad! Who wouldn’t feel sorry for the creature? I’ll tell you who monumental bastard Victor Frankenstein. He deplores the creature whom he sees as a failed experiment. Personally, I wouldn’t travel to the frozen Arctic under the best of conditions, but Victor is so bitter that he follows him there to try and kill him. Good luck, because the creature has ungodly strength and has become cunning, owing to his experiences in the world.

Victor needs to have the realization that it’s not about the “monster” he created, but the inner monster he has fed. As for the creature, I see hope for him at a school for the blind where no one will be freaking out about the way he looks.

But Mary Shelley was too honest about humankind, she knew the hostilities foisted on the “other” before the other was even a concept. Not a surprise from a woman whose mother was a feminist in the 1700’s. Del Toro, however, finds some hope for the wretched and those who judge them. Nothing less than what I’d expect from the creator of the 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth/ El Laberinto del fauno, a masterpiece that also explores the human heart. And creatures’ hearts as well.

Movie Loon’s Movie Review Shortcut:

Grade:   A-

Cut to the Chase: A thrilling Gothic movie, underscored by strong performances, chiefly, Elordi’s as the creature.

Humor Highlight: The Crucible-level hysteria hurled at Victor Frankenstein by the medical tribunal. Also, humorous is VF’s unfazed reaction. Afterall, madmen aren’t good at questioning their own ethics