Movies inspired by Gothic novels are back in fashion. The famous triptic that has inspired directors and actors for a century has given birth to a new generation of remakes in the last year: first there was Robert Eggers’ ‘Nosferatu’, followed by Luc Besson’s ‘Dracula’ and now, here comes this ‘Frankenstein’ rewritten and directed by Guillermo del Toro. The Mexican-born director has long wanted to make this film and in my opinion, this story fits perfectly with the visual universe, the atmosphere and the messages of many of his previous films. I was waiting with great interest to see how this film would fit into del Toro‘s cinematography and I was not disappointed. ‘Frankenstein’ is a film that manages to be faithful to the main ideas of the novel without being a banal transcription of it on the screen and is without a doubt, from the first minutes of the screening to the end, a del Toro film.
Guillermo del Toro changed quite a few of the details, but kept the main ideas and characters from the novel. Pretty much everyone has read the book and watched a few movies inspired by the book, so I won’t give away too much of the differences. I will just say that the story is moved about 30 years later than the date of the novel’s writing, to the Victorian era and relocated to Scotland which offers the northern lights and an abundance of castles standing or in ruins as a setting, and that there was a change of narrative perspective that I found very interesting. The scientist Victor Frankenstein is a version of Prometheus as imagined by Mary Shelley, who is driven by immeasurable ambition and realizes too late that he has created a monster endowed with powers that escape his control. Del Toro emphasizes two sides of the character – the childhood traumas that make him insensitive to the pain of others and the romantic attraction to the beautiful Elizabeth, who in this film is the fiancée and then the bride of his brother, a character who gets a longer and more significant life than in the novel. The character developed the most beyond the writer’s imagination is the Creature. I would say that he is a little more human than in the novel or other cinematic versions, while Victor himself is a little more monstrous (as a character).
The production is fabulous. Del Toro‘s imagination had the necessary funds to put all his dreams and nightmares on the screen. Including for the construction in the studios of a ship trapped in polar ice, because the director avoids, when possible, computer effects. Even if you haven’t seen the whole film, any minute of the film you watch would probably be enough to exclaim ‘it’s a del Toro film’ – from the somber colors in scenes lit only by the red that envelops the characters in key scenes to the fascination with water that accompanies almost all of the director’s movies. Add to that the retro-technological devices in the scientist Frankenstein’s laboratory, reminding us that the original novel is written in the transitional period between alchemy and science amplified by the emergence of electricity. There are many scenes of violence, with blood, animals that are killed and corpses that are dismembered, but they are not gratuitous because del Toro also inserts a subtle commentary on the absurdity of wars into the film. Oscar Isaac is very convincing in the role of Victor Frankenstein, and Jacob Elordi offers his almost two-meter stature and successfully copes with the makeup that transforms him into the Creature. Mia Goth is very well physically suited to the dual role of Elizabeth and Victor’s mother (another Freudian addition by the screenwriter), but the script was less generous with her. The romantic thread of the attraction to the Creature would have been interesting to deepen, but del Toro decided, perhaps intentionally, to leave it at the level of allusion. No viewer will probably come away dissatisfied after watching this version of ‘Frankenstein‘. However, I felt something was missing: the originality and surprises of Guillermo del Toro‘s earlier films seem to have disappeared. This film does not go all the way with the horror side (perhaps because we all know where it will end) and the monsters are not completely monstrous either. An alternative title could be ‘Frankenstein goes to Netflix’.