By Gabriel Solis
When I heard that “Frankenstein” would be released on Netflix on Nov. 7, following a limited theatrical run, my first thought was, “Why?” The original 1931 film is a Halloween classic among cinephiles, and it only stands to reason that an October release would allow the remake to cash in on the season. Who wants to watch a monster flick with a turkey in the freezer?
Now, having attended one of the film’s theatrical showings, I get it. It’s not a monster flick. It’s not a gimmicky Halloween blockbuster. Guillermo Del Toro’s remake of the iconic IP is the kind of movie that should be sought out independently and examined carefully, not experienced as a bit of seasonal marketing.
In many ways, “Frankenstein” is Del Toro’s baby. He’s been talking about directing it since 2007, and has described it as his “dream project.” In 2016, he was quoted as saying, “‘Frankenstein’, to me, is the pinnacle of everything…I dream I can make the greatest ‘Frankenstein’ ever”.
These lofty intentions are plenty evident in the final product. As has become his trademark, Del Toro fully immerses the viewer in the macabre world he envisions for the story. The production design is exquisitely dark and gothic, with towering, almost intimidating sets to match the scale and pseudo-divine nature of the film’s events. There is something deeply unsettling, for instance, about the imagery of the impossibly massive laboratory, battered with rain, teetering over the edge of a cliff as if destined to be swallowed by the sea, juxtaposed with the comparatively puny figure of the doctor as he engages in his grotesque work. Del Toro takes us through this grim world with long, visually arresting shots that truly sell the illusion, making us feel like we’re in the room right alongside the characters. All of this is punctuated by Alexandre Desplat’s hauntingly emotional score, which feels sufficiently period-accurate with its heavy reliance on the string section.
What is a world, however, without its inhabitants? This film features a multitude of solid performances. Christoph Waltz’s Heinrich Harlander is delightfully deranged, and Mia Goth’s Elizabeth provides much of the story’s grounding and humanity. The clear standouts, however, are the two leads.
Jacob Elordi, teenage heartthrob of “Kissing Booth” and “Euphoria” fame, has quietly been making a name for himself as a serious actor in works like “Saltburn” and “Priscilla.” It’s about to get a whole lot louder, because his performance in this film is a masterpiece. Elordi plays the titular creature with such range, such enthusiasm, and such commitment that I forgot that I even knew who he was. His endearingly infantile expressions and movement choices when the creature is first “born” morph pointedly and believably into a violent sense of purpose as the character experiences the atrocities of human existence. Along the way, the performance invites us to understand the character’s pain, confusion, and rage, as well as his tragically unrequited capacity for kindness and love. Elordi demonstrates his ability to seamlessly disappear into a role (although, the fact that he does literally disappear into the remarkable makeup job probably doesn’t hurt). A small detail that I loved was that Elordi’s creature sported, amidst his tangled black mop, a single lock of white hair – a subtle homage to Boris Karloff’s look in the 1931 original.
Not to be outdone, Oscar Isaac as Dr. Victor Frankenstein is a hyper-compelling figure. Isaac’s physical choices ensure that the character looks and feels totally natural slinking around in the shadows, or constructing his ungodly workspace, his mind always occupied with the gruesome or the morbid. The stellar costume design really adds to this effect. The look isn’t everything, however. Nor is the surprisingly passable British accent (Oscar Isaac went to Julliard, folks!). What really makes the performance work is Isaac’s emotional range as his character walks and eventually falls off the line between ambition and madness, all the while becoming more and more isolated from the rest of humanity until he is as unrecognizable as his creation.
This character parallel is no accident. The film spends a significant chunk of its runtime exploring the similarities between creature and creator. Victor’s father beat him with a stick as a child when he failed to retain his studies. In turn, Victor beats the creature with an iron rod when he fails to retain information about the complex world Victor has thrust him into. As Victor loses himself in his efforts to defy nature, he finds it increasingly difficult to relate to the rest of humanity. This, too, is paralleled in the plight of the creature, as he is a new and innocent being, but ordinary people cannot look at him without instinctively seeing him as a monster.
The doctor spends his life immersed in death, only interested in the living if it furthers his pursuit of power over nature. His single reprieve from that obsession is the character of Elizabeth, who fascinates him endlessly. She, too, struggles to understand her place in humanity, and this creates a kinship between them. At one point, the unlikely pair captures a butterfly in a jar, seeking to understand its nature as they seek to understand their own lives. Likewise, the creature has a similar relationship with Elizabeth. She is the second being he meets, and the first to show him kindness without an agenda. The film takes explicit care to focus on the narrative parallels between the two leads, and in doing so, beautifully allows their shared arcs to drive home its thesis.
I have, rightfully, been singing a lot of praises about this movie. So I want to clearly state for the more cynical readers that it is not a work of perfection. Some things feel out of place. The pacing can be off. Some things happen faster or slower than they should. I suspect that there may have been some studio intervention here. The finished film is already two and a half hours long. Given Del Toro’s reputation as a detail-oriented filmmaker, and the fact that this is likely the most personal project of his career, I’m certain that some scenes were left on the cutting room floor at the studio’s behest.
Even so, what made it to the screen is such an intricate, meticulous adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic tragedy that it is almost overwhelming. In order to fully appreciate it, you really have to buy into Del Toro’s complex vision for the story, and do your best to soak in every little detail that he painstakingly incorporates. It’s no easy feat, and perhaps I would dismiss with some prejudice any other film that demanded so much of me. But not this one. This one is different. This one rewards the viewer’s attention with as rich, compelling, and fulfilling a narrative conclusion as any ever put to film.
We’re all familiar with the basic story of Frankenstein. It is ingrained in our cultural mind in a way that few works of fiction have managed. With that in mind, I knew before I even entered the theater what the message of this film would be. However, for such a uniquely and movingly tragic tale (and trust me, this film is tragic), I didn’t expect that message to be delivered in such a positive way.
If I had to choose a single aspect of the film that best encapsulates what it has to say, I would choose this: In an early scene, the Doctor throws a red ball into the air and catches it, proclaiming, “This…is life.” He likens the ball’s arc to that of each human life, rising and falling and eventually coming to rest exactly as it began. It is this inevitability that the Doctor drives himself mad trying to conquer, but what is important here is the color. The motif of red representing life crops up repeatedly throughout the film. When Dr. Frankenstein chases Elizabeth through the crowded streets of Edinburgh in the pouring rain, hers is notably the only red umbrella in a sea of black. As he splices his macabre collection of corpses together, suturing layers of death to create his beacon of life, he does so while wearing a pair of red leather gloves. When the Creature first encounters Elizabeth, she leaves him her red lace gloves, as a token of his only true connection to humanity.
It seems somewhat odd that red should be the color to symbolize life when we are, on a primal level, hard-wired to be wary of it. The evolutionary reason for this is obvious and simple: it is the color of our blood. But as humans, we recognize that to live is to bleed. It’s what separates humanity from, say, a butterfly in a jar. Our conscious knowledge that there is no life without suffering, and our collective decision to live it anyway. This notion the Doctor imparts on his tragic creation at his dying breath. The final shot fades out, and the immortal words of Lord Byron flicker onto the screen: “The heart will break, and yet brokenly live on.”
