There’s something special about witnessing the manifestation of a lifelong obsession; a monster constructed through trial and error, ripped to life by unnatural means and dragged along on pale and lifeless limbs, within whose chest beats a soul of pain, love, and inspiration. Guillermo Del Toro, the most prolific of our modern monster maestros, has unleashed something quite unique with “Frankenstein,” a lavish, idiosyncratic, and deeply personal retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic science fiction tragedy. A project the auteur has clearly been fostering, building, and restaging in his mind for decades, Del Toro offers us a vision of man’s search to master the infinite, to become the type of benevolent life-breathing god never seen by the eyes of man, whose existence myth and religion can only hint at. But the thing about gods, especially the absent kind, is that animosity often breeds in the cracks left by their lack of affection and instruction. The unknowability of god is inherent, and yet it has been the long curve of art and literature’s breadth to seek out and question the absence of that which created all; a father to an abandoned offspring, crafted with care and carelessly discarded upon being enriched with the curse of life. While the story of “Frankenstein” has always been one of science run amok, of man’s hubris in the face of eternity, what Del Toro infuses this retelling with is the sad life of a man seeking the grandeur of his name living on into infinity, and “the monster,” jolted into existence by colossal power of malice, ego, and lightening, who was damned with a life he never asked for and is incaptable of ending.
Del Toro has always found solace in monsters. From his earliest films of misunderstood vampirism (“Cronos”), or the “Hellboy” films, which populated a universe with fantastical creations and unholy terrors, he seems always to be circling the theme that grotesqueries of the flesh are merely shells to inherent virtue, while the true abominations are those of unchecked pride and cruel ambition. His Academy Award-winning feature “The Shape of Water,” while very much an odd duck retelling of “The Creature From The Black Lagoon” where a woman falls in love with a fish man, is also a beautiful fairy tale told in a languid dream-like state; a fable peppered with empathy and hideous depictions of man’s ability to destroy the sublime and unknowable. Unsurprisingly, Del Toro has long fostered a fascination with Mary Shelley’s masterwork, the ultimate tale of misunderstood monsters, of fathers blind to the collateral destruction of their ambition, and the corrosive power of hate. While one might argue that there has been only one truly effective adaptation of the original novel, James Whale’s original classic from 1931 starring Boris Karloff, not to mention its superior companion “The Bride of Frankenstein” in 1935, the story was never able to get a fully faithful live-action film adaptation that struck at the tale’s cold, yearning heart. Whale’s film is impressionistic and somewhat sparse, in contrast to Shelley’s novel, which is lush and spans generations. We can chalk that up to limitations of the time, while giving Whale and Karloff all the credit in the world for crafting a creature that will stalk the collective unconscious of mankind until the end of time. All the same, there has never been a fully successful recreation of the novel that captured the tragedy of Shelley’s work, the wild ambition of Frankenstein, and the monster’s betrayal upon the realization that its creator is less human than it is. Del Toro sought to remedy that, and I would say, does so with ghastly aplomb.
The setup of “Frankenstein” is a simple one, and one that we all know in our own way. Told in flashback from a Norwegian ship lost in the ice near the North Pole, the film follows a promising medical student, the young Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who is entranced with the idea that he can create life from dead tissue. What Del Toro digs into, down to the elbow as if rifling through a bin of lifeless limbs, is Victor’s relationship with his parents; his tragically short-lived but lovely mother and his domineeringly cruel father (Charles Dance). Those forces, dead angel and surgeon devil, spur the young man to overcome the limitations of the flesh and create something beyond God himself. He finds a benefactor in Harlander (Christoph Waltz), an eccentric war profiteer who sees Frankenstein’s innovations as a means to some selfish end, who introduces the young virtuoso to his daughter, Elizabeth (Mia Goth). In classic gothic romance fashion, a Del Toro favorite, as anyone who has seen “Crimson Peak” can attest, Victor falls deliriously for the curious and kind Elizabeth, a new moral compass who hopes to guide his skills toward the purpose of goodness and life. Ultimately spurned in favor of his brother, Victor presses on with his obsession and, atop an elegantly designed tower in the midst of a lightning storm, breathes electrical life into his offspring; a man cobbled together from pieces salvaged from executed prisoners and soldiers ripped to pieces on the battlefield. It is not in the creation of his creature (Jacob Elordi) that Del Toro carves his unique flavor onto the centuries-old story, but in the afterbirth of an imperfect son born to a father incapable of accepting less than the divine.
Oscar Isaac makes for a dashing and haunted Victor, stalking across blood-strewn rooms, digging through piles of parts like a car mechanic searching for the right-sized muffler. Just look at the cock eyed hat that Del Toro dresses him in, this guy has swagger that belies a modern sensibility, perhaps anachronous to the film’s period. But Isaac pulls it off, allowing the modernity to give credence to Victor’s desperate need to stretch science to his snapping point. Goth brings a calm radiance to Elizabeth, eschewing her usual screeching scream queen persona in favor of something calmer, gentler, and lovely; a necessary trait for anyone attempting to lure Victor from his grand schemes. But, as with any great adaptation of Frankenstein, the heart of the movie must be “The Creature,” and Del Toro found his ideal vessel in Jacob Elordi. The “Euphoria” star is someone whom I have never disliked, but who has never been in a project I particularly enjoyed; the less said about “Saltburn,” the better. Yet, what Elordi is able to capture, perhaps more so than any interpretation besides Karloff’s, is the kind heart hidden behind the pale visage, the desperation to be accepted by his father and the world he was viciously ripped from, the great beyond, exemplified best in the sequences following The Creature’s birth, when Victor, ecstatic with the afterglow of scientific ecstasy, tries to teach it to speak. The Creature, overwhelmed by life and desperate to articulate its love for its creator, learns the name “Victor” and seemingly will say nothing more, throwing Frankenstein into a rage that terrifies and confuses it. Victor sees a failed test tube experiment, a hapless dolt of decaying flesh, and The Creature sees its father reject it for reasons it cannot understand. The pain in Elordi’s eyes had me sputtering, a state of being that was fairly consistent for the entire last half of the film as Victor tires and fails to destroy his creation, only to learn he has succeeded in denouncing the grave itself far beyond his wildest expectations. Thus, the groundwork is laid for a devastating cat-and-mouse game of death and discovery that takes Victor and The Creature from the bowels of his gothic birthing chamber to the furthest reaches of the Arctic. While Shelley may have been dramatizing man’s desperate ineptitude to seek mastery over God, Del Toro makes clear the devastation of love left to rot in the mud and the aftermath of its desiccation. This film, this labor of love, summoned from a bottomless chasm of unbridled feeling, is the antithesis of its subject matter, a masterful creation that should be celebrated, treasured, and embraced in the warmth of the sun.
“Frankenstein” is a masterful piece of moviemaking from a filmmaker who understands the soul of misunderstood things more than most of us know ourselves. Del Toro is a treasure, and I’m just glad he somehow convinced Netflix to fund this nearly three-hour crusade, a living, breathing creation that rode the lightning of madness and obsession that should stand shoulder to shoulder with the greats of the long-dead past. I think Mary Shelley and James Whale, and Karloff, for that matter, would be proud.
“Frankenstein” is playing on gorgeous 35mm film at the Prytania Theater Uptown.
Oh…and Happy Halloween, boils and ghouls!
