- 20 hours ago
Film Brain reviews Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited adaptation of the classic Mary Shelley story, which is certainly the *most* del Toro film imaginable.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Hello, and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, Guillermo del Toro reanimates the classic horror of Frankenstein.
00:07In the Arctic, the crew of the Danish ship Horizon find the wounded Victor Frankenstein, played by Oscar Isaac, and bring him on board.
00:31Frankenstein tells his story to Katzen Anderson, played by Lars Mikkelsen, and how he became obsessed with trying to conquer death after the passing of his mother and attempted to reanimate the dead.
00:42But when Victor succeeds, he becomes disillusioned with the creature he has made, played by Jacob Elordi, and suffers the terrible consequences of playing God.
00:52Mary Shelley may have only been 18 when she wrote Frankenstein, but she created one of the seminal texts of modern horror,
00:58one which has been adapted numerous times and inspired countless others.
01:02Del Toro remembers as a kid seeing the famous 30s film with Boris Karloff, and immediately identifying with the creature as a, quote,
01:09misfit freak, even saying that he was his messiah.
01:14And adapting Frankenstein to the screen has been a passion project for Del Toro for decades.
01:18He's spent so long trying to get to the screen that it's a miracle he's finally got it made.
01:24It's not surprising that he's been so passionate about doing his own take on it, because it's all about sympathy for the monster.
01:30And that has been a theme that has run through his work like a stick of rock.
01:34From Hellboy, to Pan's Labyrinth, to Shape of Water, he's always found humanity in what frightens us, and humanity capable of being monsters.
01:45A version of Frankenstein is the most on-brand Del Toro thing imaginable, and unsurprisingly, given its long development,
01:51it feels like a culmination of his work today, containing so many of his recurring ideas,
01:57but also in the way that it comes full circle to what inspired him in the first place.
02:02But despite being a core text, Frankenstein has rarely been adapted to the screen faithfully.
02:07Probably the version that has been closest is obviously Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
02:12which I do have some affection for, but is a very flawed movie and a quite troubled production.
02:18Kenneth Branagh directed that as a big bombastic vanity project, and got quite carried away with himself,
02:24to the point where I would argue that it's like the tale being told by Victor.
02:28While Del Toro's film does bear some obvious similarities, the difference when comparing the two is that his film feels like the tale being told by the creature.
02:37But while this is more faithful to the spirit of Shelley's book, it does have a number of significant changes and deviations from the source material.
02:44It's Del Toro reinterpreting the text, fusing himself and Shelley together,
02:50and engaging and expanding on the big ideas of death, creation, and family,
02:55and especially fatherhood in Del Toro's case.
02:58It is a deeply personal film in every sense.
03:02And while I can't claim to have watched every version of this tale,
03:06I believe that Del Toro's take is arguably amongst the best that I've seen.
03:10Maybe not the definitive version, but certainly richly rewarding.
03:16If revisiting the source material but putting his own stamp on it sounds familiar,
03:19then that's because that's the approach that he took to his last Netflix collaboration,
03:23his stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio.
03:26And watching Del Toro's Frankenstein, I was genuinely surprised at how much the two films echo each other,
03:32but perhaps I shouldn't have been.
03:34In a way, is Del Toro telling the same themes,
03:37one for families and one for adults?
03:40His take on Pinocchio was all about fathers and sons, and so too is Frankenstein.
03:46Charles Dance plays Victor's father, Leopold, a celebrated surgeon and a rather brutal father figure.
03:53He's very strict with Victor, played as a boy by Christian Convery,
03:57who you might recall was excellent as twins in The Monkey.
04:00And he wants Victor to follow in his footsteps, but act coldly towards him.
04:06It's not even the first time that Dance has played Frankenstein's father,
04:09as he previously played the role in 2015's Victor Frankenstein.
04:13Not that I really care, because Charles Dance is usually a delight,
04:17and is perfectly cast in a small but pivotal role.
04:21Leopold much prefers his more even-tempered little brother, William,
04:25played by Felix Camera as an adult.
04:27William even says to his brother,
04:29I was the calm, he was the storm.
04:32Victor has a much better relationship with his mother, Claire, played by Mia Goth,
04:36but her death giving birth to William begins his obsession with trying to defeat death itself.
04:42Her passing marks him.
04:44Literally, she smears him with blood as she's being carried away.
04:49And red becomes a recurring motif throughout the rest of the film,
04:53both in the frequent bloodletting, but also as a manifestation of Victor's madness.
04:58He's haunted by visions of the red angel, as he calls it.
05:02This twisted version of his mother tempting him to try and stop death.
05:07It's a bold image, but it also serves as a dark reflection of the blue fairy,
05:12or the wood sprite from Pinocchio, that brings the boy to life.
05:16As you might recall, Del Toro gave the sprite a sister in the form of death.
05:21And the red angel is like both amalgamated.
05:25Victor blames his father for failing to save her,
05:28and his anger at the loss and Leopold's lack of approval drives his need to surpass him.
05:34They will not simply delay death, he will end it permanently.
05:38By the time that Isaac steps in as adult Victor,
05:41he plays the role with a brash energy and mania.
05:44He's charismatic and dark, brilliant, and yet totally arrogant to that fact.
05:50Isaac's reintroduction after the prologue exemplifies this,
05:53as Victor demonstrates his research with a crude upper torso stitched together from two different
05:58corpses, which catches a ball in its hand.
06:02It looks visually reminiscent of Ivan the corpse in Hellboy,
06:06and there's something quite disturbing about the way he reanimates it with these
06:09rods that he stabs into it, especially the way that he turns it off by pulling out the rod in
06:15its chest, and it howls in pain as it returns back into being deceased.
06:21It's a scene that demonstrates Victor's brilliance and casual inhumanity all at the same time.
06:28The fundamental irony of Victor is that his whole quest is about creating life,
06:33but he has very little appreciation or respect for it.
06:38Christoph Waltz plays Henrik Harlander, a character newly invented for this film,
06:42but is inspired by Dr. Waldman, a wealthy arms manufacturer who gives
06:46unlimited funds to Victor after seeing his potential.
06:49Henrik has his own motivations, it later turns out, but he is for a while a perfect partner
06:56for Victor in that he's just as bitterly ironic, a man who profits from death,
07:01who uses seemingly endless money that he receives from it to try and stop it.
07:06Harlander also brings in niece Elizabeth, played by Goth in her main role,
07:10who is engaged to William.
07:11She is fascinated and appalled by Victor and his recklessness, and Victor clearly has feelings
07:18for his brother's fiancée, but they're definitely not reciprocated by her.
07:23There's a scene in her confessional where he tries to hide, and she identifies him immediately,
07:29and that kind of reminded me of a similar scene in The Mask of Zorro, except in this case,
07:34they have a kind of anti-chemistry.
07:36Casting Goth in both roles does mean that Victor's desire for Elizabeth has a certain
07:41Oedipal complex, but it also makes a certain amount of sense, because Goth does bring a
07:46certain maternal side to the role, especially in some of her later interactions with the
07:51creature.
07:52Until the creature arrives, Elizabeth is the film's most sympathetic character, serving
07:57as the audience surrogate in that she is the most attuned to the injustices and brutality
08:02that Victor tries to hide in his idealism.
08:05Her compassion makes her the film's heart and moral centre, even as she's unable to
08:10break through Victor's obsession, despite being what he yearns for, but cannot have.
08:16And in trying to end death and go against the natural order of things, Victor only brings
08:21pain and suffering upon himself and everyone that he cares for.
08:27But when Victor finally gives life to his creature, that's when the daddy issues really come to
08:33the forefront.
08:34After the creature is first animated, while Victor is initially excited about how everything
08:38is new to it, he soon becomes disenchanted, especially as his goal was to achieve reanimation,
08:45but he didn't know or plan for what came after.
08:50Victor is particularly incensed that his creature only keeps repeating his name over and over.
08:55Victor!
08:58Victor!
08:59And the more it does so, the more it cries for his love and attention because it looks
09:04up to him, the more he resents it.
09:07Of course, as we know, Victor didn't have a nurturing father figure, and that's where
09:12he learns his malfunctioning parenting from.
09:14And the film's themes of parenthood are about that generational pain.
09:19Victor is doomed to inevitably repeat his father's mistakes of being an intellectual,
09:23but emotionally distant.
09:26And I think it's every parent's fear that you've imprinted your own pain onto your offspring.
09:32And once Victor rejects the creature as a failure, he treats it very inhumanely, chaining
09:37him up and brutalising him because he's aware that it doesn't know any better, something
09:43which Elizabeth directly points out.
09:46Victor doesn't see the humanity in his creation and nurture it, and instead punishes it for
09:52his failures.
09:53And he only realises this when it's too late.
09:57This fatherhood theme was a major part of Pinocchio before it, where, again, Geppetto pushed
10:03the puppet boy away and spends the whole film trying to atone for it.
10:08One of the fascinating connections between the two films is that Pinocchio and the creature
10:12become effectively immortal and unable to die.
10:16This is a significant deviation from Shelley's book in that the creature now has a regenerative
10:21ability, but it speaks to the themes that Del Toro is working with.
10:26Both the creature and Pinocchio are born out of the grief of their creators, and in doing
10:31so, they have made their pain eternal, and it transcends them.
10:35And both have to find a way to live with that and be better than those that made them.
10:41The real revelation here is Jacob Elordi, who is absolutely fantastic in his role as the
10:46creature.
10:47This is completely different to anything Elordi has played before, and he's totally and completely
10:52unrecognisable under all that exceptional makeup, including his low, guttural voice.
10:59Elordi plays the role with enormous subtlety and physical expressiveness, especially given
11:04the creature's limited vocabulary initially, as the creature's wounded innocence gives way
11:10a furious rage.
11:12It's that side that we first meet in the prologue.
11:15The creature shows up in pursuit of Victor and starts fighting his way through the ship's
11:19crew to get to his master with bone-crushing brutality.
11:23Elordi's already towering height is made imposing, and the creature is initially a monster, and
11:30that is our first glimpse until over an hour later, where we truly come to understand him.
11:36Del Toro retains the frame device with a Danish fishing vessel who finds Victor, and the film
11:41is split between two main sections from each of the protagonist's perspectives.
11:46Some might find that frame with Horizon to be unnecessary, but it's clear that that perspective
11:50shift is something that Del Toro believes is absolutely fundamental to the story.
11:55We have to see things from Victor's point of view, and see the monster that way as well,
12:00so that we can realise just how wrong he was when the creature tells it.
12:05Frankenstein is fundamentally a tale of hubris.
12:08He is a modern Prometheus, after all, and the captain has to see himself in the tale of
12:13Victor's destruction.
12:15If the creature is a manifestation of Victor's pain and vengeance towards his father, it ultimately
12:21follows in his footsteps, as his even more brutal rejection itself corrodes into retribution.
12:28The creature is furious at his master for not wanting to be made, but unable to die, and
12:34experiences life as a series of brutalities and rejections from those who were horrified
12:39at the very sight of him, with no possibility of release.
12:43Even the kindness he finds is often met with shocking violence, like a sweet scene of a deer
12:49bloodily interrupted by hunters.
12:52He's assembled out of the corpses of soldiers and wears their uniform, as if a soldier in
12:57Victor's battle with death, or fighting a war with life itself.
13:02There's a moment where the creature is temporarily killed, which he describes as silence, and then
13:08unbearable life, as his injuries heal themselves and return him to his tortured existence.
13:15One of those kindnesses is a blind man, a member of that hunting family, played by David Bradley,
13:21who befriends the creature and teaches him how to read and speak, helping the creature express
13:27himself.
13:28That's another Pinocchio connection, because Bradley voiced Geppetto in that, so it only makes
13:33sense that he plays the closest thing the creature has to a supportive father that allows him the
13:38tools to live, and takes pity on him because he's unable to judge him by seeing.
13:44Again, it's a small but pivotal role, but Bradley gives some much-needed warmth.
13:51And that's what's so heartbreaking about the creature, and what Elordi's performance exemplifies
13:56so well.
13:57He has so much love to give, but he's constantly aware that he is an abnormality, and it makes
14:03him so isolated and alone when so few can look past him, and if he cannot be loved, he will
14:10choose hate instead.
14:13As you'd expect from Del Toro, the movie looks absolutely phenomenal, with these huge, enormous
14:18gothic sets, particularly at the castle where Victor does his experiment, which looks reminiscent
14:24of the setting of Crimson Peak.
14:26The production design is absolutely exemplary, and it is a constant treat for the eyes.
14:32You rarely get to see filmmaking on this kind of epic scale, but Del Toro puts everything
14:37on screen and finds beauty everywhere, even in dissected corpses and anatomy.
14:42Del Toro is an impeccable visualist, and the violence, when it does arrive, is absolutely
14:48brutal, but a quick, sudden shock.
14:52And this is extremely gory in places, but without being excessive.
14:56You get the impression that Del Toro has been sitting with this for so long that he's just
15:01throwing the kitchen sink into this.
15:04It's a dense film in terms of themes and images that might take a few viewings to digest
15:09all of it.
15:10There's loads of Christ and religious metaphors throughout the film, especially when the creature
15:15is reanimated in the crucifixion pose, itself a reference to an earlier scene where Henrik
15:21witnesses Frankenstein's demonstration, so Del Toro gets to even turn him into a literal
15:27messiah.
15:29Where I think this sometimes impacts is in the writing, which I do think shows some strain
15:33from trying to juggle all of these big ideas together.
15:36This is a story that has so many shifting viewpoints that Del Toro even contemplated splitting
15:41it into multiple films.
15:43And sometimes it does feel like it's trying to do so much that it doesn't all sit, but
15:48you always admire the ambition of it.
15:51And Del Toro has never been subtle, and I mostly mean that with affection, because I love
15:56how grandiose this movie is, but there is a moment where Victor is told directly to his
16:02face that he is the monster.
16:05Which, yeah, I probably could have lived without spelling it out so directly.
16:10I think the audience has figured that one out.
16:13That line is a real clunker that should have been snipped, and it's hard not to think of
16:19the Garth Merenghi quotes about writers who use subtext in that particular moment.
16:25That one moment aside, I enjoyed Frankenstein wholeheartedly.
16:28It's Del Toro pouring himself into the ultimate example of sympathy for the monster.
16:35Is it Del Toro's very best?
16:36I personally don't think so.
16:39I think that Pinocchio and Pan's Labyrinth are his masterpieces, but he's made so much
16:44excellent work, of which this is one of them, and it's always a delight to watch one of his
16:49films, because there's so much passion and artistry on screen.
16:54For a story about death and suffering, Del Toro finds so much life in it, exploring ideas
16:59of sins of the father, living, and forgiveness.
17:02It is doing so much that it doesn't completely succeed at all of it, but this is the biggest
17:08of swings.
17:09It's big and wickedly entertaining.
17:13And the biggest tragedy of all is that most people are going to see this at home on Netflix
17:19rather than on a cinema screen, because it deserves to be seen in the biggest form imaginable.
17:24Again, this isn't Del Toro's best film, but it is, I would argue, the most Del Toro
17:32film.
17:33If you like this review and you want to support my work, you can give me a tip at my Ko-fi
17:37page or our YouTube Super Thanks feature, which is right below the video, or you can help
17:41support my mad science over at my Patreon, where you can see my videos early among other
17:46perks, including access to my Discord server, and you can also join YouTube memberships for
17:50similar perks.
17:51Or you can just simply like, share, and hype the video.
17:54It all helps.
17:56Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, fading out.
Recommended
2:24
1:56
2:23
20:24
1:49:50
2:40
Be the first to comment