Guillermo del Toro, a Mexican-born American filmmaker, is no stranger to monsters. In his new film, del Toro brings to life Mary Shelley’s classic, “Frankenstein.” With a career of fantastic creature designs such as the creepy Pale Man in “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) or the gruff “Hellboy” (2004), del Toro immerses the audience in this visual nightmare. Oscar Isaac brings the obsessive, brooding Victor Frankenstein to life, contrasted starkly against the gentle, childlike Monster, played by Jacob Elordi transformed by prosthetics and blue makeup.
“Frankenstein” seems a perfect fit for del Toro’s penchant for the vulnerable grotesque. The film’s art design is spectacular, from the lavish, gaudy splendor of the Victorian era to Victor Frankenstein’s bloodied, bare laboratory. The first half of the movie has the morbid touches found in del Toro’s other works: the top half of a corpse reanimated, shrieking in pain after having its lungs detached. However, the film’s pacing treats these gruesome scenes with a sense of levity. Victor flippantly handpicks body parts from prisoners condemned to be executed; he casually chops, hacks and cuts his way through the corpses lining his laboratory. Victor and the camera are both so obsessed with bringing the dead to life that the ethics of the experiment do not matter. This theme of sacrificing such ethics for progress are reflected in the characters played by Charles Dance and Christoph Waltz.
The film, divided into sections, changes from the perspective of Victor to his creation, the Monster. Jacob Elordi expertly portrays the Monster’s shift from innocence to vengeance. Mia Goth, who plays both Victor’s mother and his love interest, Elizabeth, seems caught between the rivalry between Victor and the Monster. This new dynamic between creator and his creation slightly shifts the context behind the later events in the movie and might be an issue for fans of Mary Shelley. “The triangle between [Victor, the Monster and Elizabeth] wasn’t in the original novel, and I think it cheapens the relationship between the Monster and Victor,” one fan and moviegoer, Joaquin Contreras, said in an interview outside Apple Cinemas Van Ness,
Some movie goers would argue that some of the complexity from the novel was lost in adaptation. Del Toro sympathizes with the Monster, and, in the movie, sanitizes his worst deeds from the novel. Christine Cainglet, a fan of the original novel, said, “You never really feel that the Monster is really that alone in the film. He makes close relationships with the old blind man and even Elizabeth which makes his struggle to connect with the world not as powerful as the original novel.” Del Toro took inspiration from more than Mary Shelley’s novel. The relationship between the Monster and the old blind man, played by David Bradley, is originally from the classic 1931 film, “Frankenstein.”
While the film might stray from the original vision of Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein” is a great adaptation with a star studded cast delivering nuanced performances. Visionary Guillermo del Toro’s dream project is an artistic, personal film that does justice to Mary Shelley’s classic novel.
