'Frankenstein' Has Some Sparks of Life Amidst a Slow First Act
Amidst a sea of abysmal adaptations, Guillermo del Toro's depiction of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is miles better than the competition. Still, that doesn't prevent it from being a little lifeless at times. Clocking in at two hours and twenty-nine minutes, Frankenstein is bloated with ambition, not going unnoticed. The film is much too long; removing certain characters entirely would have strengthened the narrative. What's the point of Christoph Waltz's character that couldn't have been made without him? Does he really need to eat up 15-20 minutes of screentime with dull exposition when the backstory is more than enough to give us a clear character motivation?
If there was one thing that never really worked in Frankenstein stories, it was Victor Frankenstein's (Oscar Isaac) motivation for recreating life. Guillermo del Toro fixes that by adding a traumatic childhood past (yes, that old cliche) as a reason for Victor to reanimate the dead. Losing someone very close to him, Victor decides that death does not need to be a final destination. It's the old theme of man playing God when believing that God is inept. Except here, we really understand why Victor is so driven towards his goal. It's not sheer hubris but rather compassion that drives Dr. Frankenstein. As Victor would learn, man's reach cannot exceed his grasp, especially when he transfers generational neglect onto his creation.
Victor may have grown up rich, but it didn't stop him from having daddy issues that he then bestowed upon society, kind of like the US President. Men aren't born monsters. They're made into them. Victor starts as a man who has love only to wind up becoming consumed with hate. When creating life, Victor is drawn closer to death. By passing on parental neglect, Victor becomes his father, adding nuance to his fall from grace. Somehow, though, the elongated length with a detailed backstory doesn't make up for a lack of reason behind Vick's turn to cruelty.
At first, Victor is loving towards his creation. Sort of. He chains up the Creature (Jacob Elordi) to keep it from wreaking destruction on his castle, yet the chains are a red flag right off the bat. And it only gets worse from there. In what feels like a matter of days, Victor becomes a monster to his Creature, treating him like one of Michael Vick's dogs. During the final scene of Act One, Victor makes a well-known decision from the book that comes out of nowhere in this film. It seemed to just show up because that's what needed to happen in the story, without considering how Victor reaches this point through a clear inciting incident. He just goes from nuts to batso crazy at the drop of a hat.
Frankenstein is very much Oscar Isaac's show, while his acting is merely okay. He's channeling the same voice he used in X-Men: Apocalypse, which, of all the movies from his career, why piggyback on one of his biggest failures? Nobody wants to hear smug, whispery Apocalypse again. We want Victor Frankenstein. Thankfully, the Creature himself is fantastic. Jacob Elordi is possibly the best on-screen portrayal of the Creature since Boris Karloff. Elordi is intimidating, yet vulnerable. He exemplifies pain and rage beautifully while looking like a mixture between Gollum and Prometheus. Elordi is certainly the sexiest Creature we've ever had, but it doesn't take away from him also being one of the most versatile.
The film's approach to the love interest, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), is interesting, if not a bit heavy-handed. Elizabeth is like the girl in King Kong. The remakes, at least. The actress showed no interest in Kong whatsoever in the original version. In the remakes, however, she was the beauty who was the only one who showed kindness to the beast. All while running around looking hot in a torn-up dress because the directors were horny when writing her character.
Elizabeth serves as a commentary on the disgusting nature of Victor's romance with her in the book, given that she and Victor were stepsiblings who grew up and later slept together. Here, Elizabeth is almost accessible to Victor, but they don't hook up since she shows empathy towards the Creature. Secondly, Victor is drawn to Elizabeth because she bears a striking resemblance to his mother, not just in appearance but also in terms of her gentility. Often, we draw our attractions based on our parents. If you're incestuous like Victor is in the book, then that's double the reason he wants to mate with Elizabeth. Yet, Victor's too emotionally far gone to have love in his heart. If he were a better person, he might find a good woman like Elizabeth. But his ego prevents him from achieving happiness.
The movie is divided into three acts, much like the book. If you've seen any of the movies, it's not hard to guess where each act goes. Although longer and in desperate need to cut some of the dull first act, plus Victor's out-of-left-field plunge towards insanity, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is one of the best adaptations of Mary Shelley's classic novel by being different, yet the same. It has del Toro's usually flair for the visual, featuring stunning set design and lighting. However, some of it does look a little too fake, like the boat at the beginning of the movie, which looks like an attraction from Disney World. Regardless, the film looks amazing and shouldn't be missed. Now, if Guillermo can go back to original stories like The Shape of Water or Pan's Labyrinth instead of adapting popular gothic material like a cultured, intellectual Tim Burton, that would be fantastic.
Frankenstein releases theatrically in select cities this Friday, the 17th, and will be streaming on Netflix on November 7th.
