Here's a film I've been rabidly anticipating for a long time. Guillermo Del Toro's long-planned adaptation of Mary Shelley's iconic novel Frankenstein has hit theaters for a limited run before its Netflix debut on November 7th. Starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Mia Goth, the film is a stylish, tragic epic about ambition, ego, forgiveness, and accountability. As expected it includes outlandish GDT visual hallmarks, big performances, and lavish production values, and like his 2022 Pinocchio adaptation it is closely inspired by the source material while also veering significantly from it.
Upon the first viewing I had very mixed feelings about this version. As a decades-long devotee of Shelley's original novel (which I've read four or five times) I've been salivating at the prospect of a film version that faithfully brings her near-perfect story to life, and for some reason no film adaptation thus far has really done that. Even the 1994 Kenneth Branagh-directed version took unnecessary narrative liberties that distracted from the story rather than enhancing it (not to mention that film is just a hot mess of an exercise in schlocky melodrama). But when I first saw the trailers for this version it looked like GDT was going to hew very closely to the book. And in some aspects he's done that, but in others he strayed so far I once again found myself asking "Now why'd he go and change that?" instead of being immersed in this new take on the story.
I'm fully aware this is somewhat of a "me" problem - I'm such a huge fan of the tragic poetry of Shelley's book that any attempt to deviate from it puts me on the defensive - but with novels as timelessly relatable as Frankenstein and Dracula I wish filmmakers wouldn't always try to outsmart the original authors in telling these stories. It would be different if we'd ever gotten a truly faithful film version of either of these books, but we really haven't. I say this as a huge fan of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, mind you. Yes, most of that novel's structure is there, but calling it a faithful adaptation would be exaggerating by a lot. Thus far every filmmaker who's ever adapted Frankenstein has made at least a few major narrative changes, none of them for the better in my opinion. In the case of Del Toro's film, the parts of the story he's changed render the parts he's kept less powerful than in the novel. There are several important story beats left out which should inform important story beats that he left in. But now they don't carry the same weight because of what's missing. I wish a director would leave the story itself alone and concentrate on HOW it's being told.
Incidentally my all-time favorite Frankenstein adaptation is the 1973 Marvel Comics version, The Monster of Frankenstein, which preserves Shelley's narrative almost to a tee, while making minor tweaks to allow the series to continue. It's a spectacularly grisly, thematically haunting version, one that Del Toro pays a couple much-appreciated homages to in this film.
Alright, with that out of the way, let's talk about what does work. Oscar Isaac is a fantastic Victor Frankenstein. Like his literary counterpart he's ambitious to the point of self-destruction, single-mindedly devoted to his experiments at the expense of his personal relationships. In this version he also carries much unresolved resentment towards his emotionally abusive father, a cycle which he inadvertently continues when attempting to civilize his creation. In the novel he's so disgusted by the creature he abandons it immediately, but here he makes an earnest if misguided effort to "raise" it before giving up.
The show stealer though is Jacob Elordi as the creature, in a performance that is poignant and understated. In the grand tradition of Boris Karloff and Robert De Niro, Elordi manages to be the most human character in the film, despite pounds and pounds of makeup and prosthetics. The creature design is excellent; this is almost exactly what Shelley had in mind for her protagonist (aside from perhaps not being hideous enough). Elordi's creature is massive but lean, cobbled together from various corpses to give him the look of a jigsaw puzzle come to life. This film contains easily the best "assembly" sequence I've ever seen in a Frankenstein adaptation, though I wish filmmakers would resist the urge to make the creation scene such an explosive, lightning-filled spectacle - the novel doesn't have any of that. In his early scenes the creature's head is shaved, but later he grows the shock of long black hair Shelley describes, and one of his eyes has an otherworldly yellow glow. While not quite as eloquent as the creature in the novel, Elordi's creature nonetheless is able to convey the character's loneliness and desire to be loved with lofty dialogue and a gentle disposition (until he's wronged of course).
Mia Goth as Victor's love interest Elizabeth delivers a solid performance, but is written in such a way that she somehow has both more and less depth than in the novel. Her role in the story is very different here and as I said, I don't think the change was for the better. I enjoyed an early scene where she challenges Victor's ambition, acting more as a foil than as a romantic lead. But her fate carries much less tragic weight here than in Shelley's story, thus Victor's all-consuming lust for revenge in the third act loses the urgency it should've had. This is a prime example of Del Toro's story changes undermining the parts of the novel he decided to keep.
The other standout turn is from the always compelling Christoph Waltz, as Victor's mentor/benefactor Heinrich Harlander, a basically all-new character who's sort of an amalgam of the novel's Professor Waldman and Bride of Frankenstein's Dr. Praetorius. Waltz brings a mix of humor and demented curiosity, and while his character is a pretty major narrative departure, I'm never sad to see him onscreen.
This is a film I'm hoping will grow on me as I watch it a few more times. There's certainly enough here to warrant a repeat viewing, from the visuals to the performances. I just wish the script had stayed truer to the source material, which as I said is a near-perfect story. An attempt to improve the narrative of one of the greatest and most enduring yarns ever spun seems to me an exercise in folly. Not unlike Victor Frankenstein's attempt to play God I suppose....
This may change with further viewings but for now I give Frankenstein *** out of ****.
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