If this film doesn’t win an Academy Award for Tamara Deverell’s stunning production design, there is no justice.
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| Although initially delighted that he has brought life to a creation (Jacob Elordi, center) stitched together from scores of corpses, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) just as quickly worries that he may have made a colossal mistakes. |
All this said, I wish del Toro had matched his new film’s visual dazzle with a similarly exhilarating script. His take has about as much in common with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 Gothic masterpiece, as director James Whale’s 1931 adaptation.
Which is to say, del Toro has taken serious liberties with the original plot and character roster. A few high points remain faithful to Shelley’s novel — along with occasional references to Prometheus, as befit the subtitle of Shelley’s novel (“The Modern Prometheus”) — but for the most part del Toro merely borrows the concept of Frankenstein and his monster.
That would be fine, if the results were more consistently engaging. At times — and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a del Toro film — the narrative is protracted and boring. As often has been the case with other filmmakers, one must be cautious about embarking upon a pet project which — in del Toro’s own words — has been a “quest” ever since he saw Whale’s film for the first time, at age 7.
Del Toro has moved the timeline half a century forward, to allow the key players a greater understanding of advances in electricity. The saga therefore begins in 1857, with a prelude aboard the Royal Danish Navy ship Horisont, trapped in arctic ice while hoping to reach the North Pole. While attempting to free the ship, crew members spot a badly injured man, and bring him aboard.
He barely has time to introduce himself as Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), before the ship is attacked by a powerful, towering creature that demands Victor be surrendered to him. Ship’s Captain Andersen (Lars Mikkelsen) refuses, and six of his men are killed in the subsequent violent melee; the creature withstands all manner of gunshots and other damage.
The calmly resolute Andersen wins the moment only after using his blunderbuss to shatter the ice beneath the monster’s feet. It sinks into the icy waters.
“It’ll be back,” Frankenstein warns. “It can’t be killed.”
The story proper then unfolds as Frankenstein relates his saga to Andersen (Part 1: Victor’s Tale).
Young Victor grows up in a household ruled by his imperious and abusive father, Leopold (Charles Dance), a renowned physician with no patience for his son’s failure to learn medical technique at a speedy pace. Victor takes solace in the company of his beloved mother, Claire (Mia Goth), who dotes on the boy. She favors sweepingly ostentatious, blood-red gowns — merely the first of costume designer Kate Hawley’s many bizarre ensembles — and does her best to keep Victor out of his father’s path.
Alas, she dies giving birth to Victor’s younger brother, William, who instantly earns their father’s constant attention and affection. (William was “the breeze vs. my storm clouds,” Victor bitterly laments, to Andersen.)
His mother’s passing a constant torment, Victor embraces his studies, vowing to overcome death. Events cut to 1855, when — now an arrogant, undisciplined adult — he’s expelled from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, after demonstrating his ghastly ability to reanimate a corpse: a presentation he (ill-advisedly) orchestrates with the intensity of a rock star working a sold-out stadium crowd.
When one of the doctors on the disciplinary board scoffs that this is merely a trick of reflex action, Victor stuns them all by tossing a ball to the corpse ... which catches it.
(Credit where due: That’s a genuinely shocking moment.)
At low ebb, Victor is “saved” by arms merchant Henrich Harlander, a flamboyant, seemingly respectable gentleman who offers unlimited funding and the use of an abandoned tower, subsequently transformed into a lab. We wonder what Victor never stops to consider: What’s the catch?
Although slightly resembling the 1931 film’s lab design, del Toro and Deverell have made it uniquely their own, with chilly marble floors, an ominous metal spiral staircase, an enormous circular window, and all manner of disconcerting, Gothic-style artwork and statuary. Along with lots of nasty dissecting tools.
Meanwhile, William (Felix Kammerer) has become engaged to Harlander’s niece, Elizabeth (also Goth). She’s thoughtful, outspoken and unnervingly perceptive; she sees right through Victor’s arrogance, and coolly rebuffs his clumsy infatuation with her.
Stung, and also propelled by an increasingly impatient Harlander, Victor begins harvesting body parts from hanged criminals and dead soldiers frozen in place, during the ongoing Crimean War (the latter tableau granted additional shock by the looming, foreground presence of a frozen dead horse).
The subsequent, um, assembly is the film’s gross-out sequence, with Victor slicing, dicing, stitching and discarding gory body parts, with no more concern than a seamstress tossing bits of thread and material scraps. The process becomes even more macabre when composer Alexandre Desplat backs this carnage with a cheery waltz.
With an assist from an intense lightning storm, Victor succeeds ... and immediately has second thoughts. “I never considered what would come after creation,” he laments, during his recitation to Andersen.
This also is where the story briefly falls apart. Victor’s subsequent cold-hearted and cruel treatment of this enormous, sentient creature is bewildering. Has Victor suddenly become his father? What happened to scientific curiosity, or a desire to learn whether his creation has the capacity to learn. (It absolutely does, as we soon discover.)
Elizabeth, in contrast, immediately feels sorry for this gargantuan, stitched-together hulk.
Events proceed to a climactic crisis, at which point — having once again boarded the Horisont, to Captain Andersen’s uneasy amazement — the monster (Jacob Elordi) resumes the saga with his side of subsequent events (Part 2: The Creature’s Tale).
The film finally becomes genuinely interesting, even fascinating, as the Creature gradually learns how to navigate in the world. A lengthy stand-out interlude, involving a blind old man (David Bradley) who doesn’t fear of what he can’t see, is lifted more or less intact from Shelley’s novel.
Desplat’s score — mostly ominous and foreboding, in the film’s first half — shifts into a sweet, even hopeful classical motif.
The question, then, is which character wins our hearts and minds?
It’s impossible to sympathize with Victor; he’s condescending, blindly impetuous, cruel, spiteful and oblivious to how his behavior affects others. Isaac conveys these many lamentable traits all too persuasively. (No need to wonder who the true monster is.)
Kammerer’s William is unremarkable to the point of almost vanishing: deferential to his older brother long past the point where reason and common sense should have prompted him to steer clear ... particularly for his fiancée’s sake.
Elizabeth is more idealized fantasy than flesh-and-blood woman. Goth’s breathy, coolly philosophical pronouncements become almost laughable. Worse yet, Elizabeth has no sense of danger or self-preservation, apparently believing that her inherent benevolence always will be enough to survive whatever befalls her.
Waltz’s grandiose Harlander is by far the most interesting character, swanning through these events with sweeping, Shakesperean flamboyance. Waltz doesn’t merely chew up the scenery; he digests it whole, somehow bringing morbid comic relief to these increasingly phantastic proceedings. And yet there’s also a sinister glint in Harlander’s gaze, and we continue to wonder: What’s he up to?
Elordi is excellent, as the confused, frightened and temper-prone monster: ultimately a figure of genuine pity. Mikkelsen also is superb, as the resourceful, intelligent and masterful Andersen; we never doubt that his crew will obey his every command.
All this aside, and the stunning visual and sfx splendor notwithstanding, this film ultimately isn’t such a much. Having patiently endured its 149-minute running time, all the pre-publicity enthusiasm felt unjustified.
Better, I’m sure, to read the book again.
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