“If you do not award me love,” the monster tells Victor Frankenstein, “then I will indulge … in rage.”
Watching Guillermo del Toro’s latest movie might put people in a similar frame of mind since his version — the 423rd full-length movie featuring Mary Shelley’s monster — is a creature of its own, a patchwork of excellence, befuddlement, and head-thumping stupidity.
The best thing about del Toro’s version is, hands down, the acting, especially of the dual leads of Frankenstein and his monster. Oscar Isaac brings the perfect pitch of intensity as Baron Victor Frankenstein. Whether presenting his theories before the University of Ingolstadt or selecting specimens for his experiments (including men just about to be hanged), this Frankenstein is a religious zealot who literally burns with his obsession. In a nice touch, del Toro brings this out of subtext through Victor’s dreams of the Red Angel, the being which takes the form of the guardian angel statue in his room and who, after his mother dies in childbirth, promised to reveal the means to conquer death.
Jacob Elordi, a relative newcomer to American audiences, brings the same excellence for the monster. At 6’ 5” tall (the same height, coincidentally, of Christopher Lee, who played the monster in 1957), Elordi naturally has the physicality the role requires. He is helped by Mike Hill’s makeup and prosthetics, which turn him into a literal patchwork quilt of different bodies. The changing shades of color on his face and the mismatched eyes are especially effective. But more important than either the height or the makeup, Elordi has the acting skill to make his monster a frightened child, a lost seeker, and an angry beast, sometimes all in the same scene. His is probably the best representation of the monster since Boris Karloff’s.
Helping the actors are the dollops of visual poetry. Instead of recreating the 19th century, Del Toro has taken after Tim Burton’s Gotham City and has made a dream-like No-Place. The world of del Toro’s Frankenstein is one of steampunk batteries and ammunition factories with huge, Medusa heads carved from the walls. In this world, the monster can find a moss-covered battlefield and can play curiously with skulls, in an image that says more than half a dozen essays could. The surface textures of the 19th century root the movie, helping audiences suspend their disbelief, while the poetic elements unlock the story from the pigeonhole of the past, emphasizing its timelessness.
The subtle nods to earlier Frankenstein adaptations — from the monster hiding in a windmill, to Victor’s gloves — are nice little flourishes, fun for cinemaniacs to point out while, at the same time, not so glitzy as to be distracting or annoying.
Unfortunate Adaptations
Unfortunately, these excellent qualities have to contend with a series of head-scratching changes. Some are annoying but relatively minor, like changing Alphonse Frankenstein, Victor’s father, from a loving family man into a cold-hearted jerk, or switching relationships so that Mia Goth’s Elizabeth is not Victor’s fiancé but his brother William’s. Others are more serious because they recalibrate Shelley’s entire story.
Frankenstein is a Greek tragedy precisely because there is no clear-cut villain. In the original, Victor is no mad scientist but a naïve, over-enthusiastic college student (much younger than Isaac at 43) who abandons his creation out of not just fear but disgust at its inherent ugliness, the daydream destroyed by its realization. But del Toro has decided to make Frankenstein the out-and-proud villain of the story. The tagline of the movie is, “Only monsters play God.” And, in case that was too subtle, del Toro has Elizabeth say the line directly to Victor.
This Frankenstein does not run away at the birth of his creation but chains him in the cellar of the ammunition factory/laboratory and tries to “educate” him through a curriculum that consists of naming a bunch of things, and asking, “Can you say that?” For a genius, he comes across as having no idea how to teach his creation. Del Toro almost leans into this idea, Victor saying at one point, “I never considered what happened after creation.” But the movie has no time for that and has Frankenstein burn the lab down in an attempt to destroy the monster after failing to get it to say anything other than, “Victor.”
If Frankenstein is not the villain of the novel, neither is the monster. The monster begins its life as an innocent who is beaten, trampled, and shot at because of his ugliness. This is what ignites his hatred of man and his desire for revenge against Frankenstein. To execute it, the monster murders Victor’s brother, his friend, and Elizabeth. Del Toro’s monster, however, only kills when it is being attacked, keeping the audience’s sympathy clearly with it. Adding to this, del Toro, for some inexplicable reason, makes the monster a combination of the Hulk and Wolverine, possessing superhuman strength (he can push a whaling ship out of its prison of frozen ice) and being literally immortal; even holding a stick of lit dynamite to his chest does nothing to it. One can’t help but wonder if this a bowing to the Marvelization of movies.
Appropriate for a Greek tragedy, Shelley’s story ends with the deaths of creator and creation. Victor dies of exhaustion brought about by his pursuit of the monster. The monster burns himself to death not only from remorse for his crimes but because he understands that he has no place in the world and, with Victor dead, there is now nothing to live for. It is a sober ending, a reminder not only that the road to hell is paved with wonderful intentions, but that those intentions drag more than just ourselves to the inferno. But because Elordi’s monster cannot die, and because del Toro insists on keeping the monster innocent, the book’s ending has to be changed. Now, only Victor dies, as befits a monster, while the monster leaves, implicitly to follow Victor’s last command, “Really live!” A rising sun illuminates the monster’s face to visually reinforce the dialogue.
Even if Hollywood was not in the tar pit it is currently in, del Toro’s Frankenstein would be a movie worth seeing for its acting, lush look, and genuine entertainment value. But it is disappointing that the true power of Shelley’s novel was muted and that Kenneth Branagh’s angsty Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is still the most accurate to the book. Maybe the 424th version will finally get it right.
