KEEN for the FrankenSTEEN (a review of Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein)

Pictures sourced from IMDB.

---

It is safe to say that I really vibed with this film. But then, I am primed to love this film. I am a gothic fiction enjoyer, my Storygraph tag attests that I'm getting back into it, and I had a childhood obsession with Dracula.

I was equally keen for the Nosferatu remake, as I had watched the black-and-white version sometime between the ages of 10 and 14. Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula was very formative, but my taste for the vampiric was wide-ranging as a youngster.

However, I came to the Frankenstein novel much later, during my university literature courses. My lateness to the Creature party did not make me any less eager to see this adaptation of the tale.

I really appreciate Del Toro as a storyteller, and I really like a lot of his films. His sense of aesthetics in the Gothic make me drool, but I am also a fan of his stylisation more generally. I think his sense of fantasy, grandeur, and artistry is very compelling and very cool, while the dramatic cores of his films are very human and are communicated strongly.

It was so nice to see built sets! I can't lie, I like a good ship.

Look at her! Beautiful!

I do think the quality and reality of the sets do make a difference in the quality of the performances and the film overall. The costuming was also gorgeous, and the focal points of colour had impact and formed characterful embellishments that just popped off the screen. There's something so mysterious and secretive about the use of veils. Particularly, for Elizabeth.

Though this look wasn't used all the time, there is something of a metaphor hanging around the concept. Elizabeth is surrounded by men who don't really seem to see her or understand her. She is obscured from the men in her life, but chooses to show herself to the Creature. But still her thoughts and feelings are distanced from both narrators, Victor Frankenstein and the Creature. It isn't her tale, but like a ghost she haunts it.

I do think some of the gruesomeness in the film was played a little for shock value. However, gruesomeness was also a feature of Crimson Peak (2015) at times, another Del Toro Gothic I really enjoy (is it a Del Toro Gothic if someone's not wandering around at night with a candelabra?). Those ghosts really do creep me out, and I understand that it is part of the ambience of the film.

These violet, grisly elements are part of the Gothic appeal. Most of the gruesomeness in Frankenstein made sense. It was consistent with the ambience, with the characters as they were drawn, and with the violation of corpses that Frankenstein necessitates as a story.

I just found that there were times when the expectations that the film set as to what sort of film it was, and the gruesomeness of specific moments, led to a bit of a vibe mismatch. With a SAW film, I know what I'm getting. Some of the examples in Frankenstein of grisliness felt less purposeful than others to me, which is only weird because the rest of them made sense within the rest of the film's atmosphere.

As for the Creature, I think the performance was amazing! He's so big, and he way he lurks or takes up the frame is so unnatural, his body is so unwieldy, that he really steals the show. Yes, seeing Oscar Isaac descend into madness is incredible to watch, but the Creature is so arresting when he's on screen. The dark shape stomping across the ice is so visually appealing. The way his malevolence and fury towards Frankenstein is tempered by his expression of himself and his eventual eloquence is part of the fascination of his character. So much high drama is contained within him alone that as he experiences and learns more of the world, the things he learns to articulate are his own solitude, pain, and torment. The injustices of his creation that Frankenstein never gave thought to. The irresponsibility of his creator in making a person just to prove he could.

"Not something. Someone."

Finally, I also appreciate the ending. I think it is in line with the thematic drive of the film as an adaptation. And I think, because of that, it creates a satisfying ending for the Creature that excises some of the misery inherent in his existence.

As I said in my Letterboxd review: "The one rule of making a giant corpse son in the basement is that you have to love him."